A few years ago the BBC reported that young denizens of Brooklyn and other clusters of hipsters were making illegal moonshine in their tiny apartments. They managed, as usual, to take a relatively cheap hobby and spend thousands of dollars on gear for it, keeping entrepreneurs like Arkansas’ Colonel Vaughn Wilson in business.

The outlaw aspect of risking a $15,000 fine and five years in prison is likely part of the allure too. That and the possibility of the getting the temperature wrong during one point of the process and poisoning yourself and and anyone else dumb enough to imbibe your rancid artisanal hooch.

It didn’t take long for the safe and legal variants of moonshine to hit the market and for Bon Appetit to feature them.

Moonshine is now being served at trendy restaurants. That’s right, where there used to be a list of local microbrews or outrageously expensive tequilas or organic wines, there is a list of the flavored moonshines on offer. Hipsters have left behind those previous alcoholic obsessions, as well as absinthe, bastardizations of the martini, small-batch bourbon, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Hooch is hip.

The safe, legally produced and distributed brands include NASCAR’s Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon and Howling Moon Moonshine. You can buy Troy & Sons’ Platinum Moonshine and Oak Reserve Moonshine at, among other places throughout the Southeast, Walt Disney World’s Wilderness Lodge.

Distillers are as pleased as highly spiked punch, because moonshine provides an immediate profit, as opposed to other sour mash products like whiskey that require years of aging in wooden barrels.

The manager of Husk restaurant in South Carolina tried to describe the taste of different kinds of moonshine to Bon Appetit, obviously struggling not to fall into wankerish wine-speak:

Compared to other clear spirits, you can definitely taste the corn. Sometimes there’s that cereal profile, and sometimes, like with white whiskey from a Tennessee distillery called Prichard’s, it has a little bit more of a sweetness, and that kind of comes forth, like a corn cake or johnnycake.

On a side note, further appropriation of Appalachian culture by hipsters (besides the unemployed film school graduates walking the Appalachian Trail this summer and horrifying locals by showing up unwashed and funky at local eating establishments along the way) is Stewart Copeland’s (this one, not that one) new documentary on buck dancing, Let Your Feet Do The Talkin’.

The Moonshine Yoda, Mike Haney the CEO of Hillbilly Stills, below:

 
Previously seen on Dangerous Minds:
Dead Zones: New York City’s Hipster Heat Map