Hey Team,
I’ve been reading quite a bit about moonshine lately since I’ve recently decided I don’t want to poison myself like so many ill-advised hillbillies before me. As a result I felt pretty confident when I set out this afternoon to hunt down some grain for the “mash” to start the fermentation process. A quick half hour to and from the Tack and Feed store and I’d be set. Easy.
Here’s the thing. Nothing is every easy in my world. (Of course I wouldn’t have it any other way. Where would the fun be in that? And where would I get all these ridiculous stories from?!)
When it comes right down to it, even after HOURS of researching moonshine making techniques and recipes, all I really new was that the recipe I had decided to use (because it looked simple) recommended a five gallon bucket of “MannaPro Hi Grain sweet feed.”
I have no idea what that means.
“Hi. Do you guys sell, MannaPro Hi Grain sweet feed?”
“What’s that?”
“I thought you were suppose to take it from there. I don’t even know what the words I just said mean…I’m just on an errand for my aunt.” Ha! That’ll throw them off the scent. Now they’ll never know I’m secretly trying to make moonshine! (I’m ashamed to admit that is painfully close to what I was actually thinking when I said that.)
“Let me ask around.” She disappeared behind a door to talk to some sort of federal agent that knew “MannaPro Hi Grain sweet feed” was the preferred grain of moonshiners. (I’d been watching way too much “Burn Notice.”)
“Nope, sorry. We don’t have that.”
“Do you have any other ‘all grain horse feeds?’” I parroted the only other piece of information I could remember from the recipe.
“Blah blah blah gibberish nonsense.” She explained.
“Oh.” I blinked. “Thanks. I’ll just try somewhere else.”
I called around and was shot down by three other feed stores before finally deciding I needed to take a new tactic. After jumping back on Charley I found that an easy substitute for the horse feed would be corn meal. Easy.
I stopped at the nearest supermarket and took a stroll down the “baking needs” aisle. There was a box marked corn meal for about $4 that was only about a third of what I needed or several bags marked Harina Masa that as near as I could tell basically translated to “corn flour” and had as much mass as I would require for a doable $1.50! But not knowing if they would be interchangeable and terrified I was going to kill myself with this concoction I continued to stare at my options for another ten minutes before finally eliciting help from the internets.
Armed with newfound knowledge from multiple sources I stared for another ten minutes before getting flustered and leaving empty handed.
But NOW. Now, I have everything I need to start the fermentation process! Tomorrow is the big day…kind of.
It’s the day Moonshinery 2008 begins and I start the process that could easily be screwed up at any one of a number of junctures resulting in failure.
Wish me luck.
I’m done.
Brett.
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