June 5th may mean different things to different people, but for us it’s National Moonshine Day. Moonshine will probably forever be tied to Prohibition and illegal alcohol dealings, but this bad boy of the liquor world has definitely gone mainstream.
We’ve talked a lot about moonshine before (remember our awesome Make Your Own Moonshine Tutorial?), so to celebrate National Moonshine Day we wanted to show you how many other people are talking about that famous white lightening in a moonshine news roundup.
- At the 44th annual Moonshine Festival in New Straitsville, Ohio, moonshine was finally served for the first time. The festival was originally established to celebrate this old mining community’s history with moonshine during Prohibition. Along with the normal fun fair stuff, people were always able to see moonshine made – it was licensed as legal for educational purposes – but then it had to be dumped out and no one was allowed to drink it. However, Ohio signed a bill into law in 2012 allowing the sale of moonshine and this year, Straitsville Special Moonshine Distillery was there to make sure everyone could get a real taste of the good stuff for the first time ever at the festival.
- Alabama has a Moonshine Task Force and they aren’t messin’ around. The first legal moonshine distillery since Prohibition didn’t appear in Alabama until 2013, but Alabama is having a major issue with people making and selling illegal moonshine. The Moonshine Task Force is a special unit of the Alabama Alcohol Beverage Control Board and they’re out to do away with black market booze. They’re concerned because a) this stuff isn’t getting taxed and b) it can be dangerous because if a cooker doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can seriously hurt people. Since it was formed last October, the Moonshine Task Force has seized about 500 gallons of moonshine.
- Moonshine is finding it’s way into your favorite foods. Restaurants around the country are starting to incorporate moonshine into not just their cocktail menus, but their food menus as well. It’s not just the smaller specialty restaurants, either – Outback Steakhouse just debuted a moonshine BBQ menu that we can’t wait to get our hands on. Moonshine BBQ ribs, anyone?
Do you have some cool moonshine news? Share the wealth.