Guides

Clear moonshine doesn’t go bad. There’s too much alcohol in it for anything to grow, so the bottle someone tucked behind the canned goods three Christmases ago is still perfectly drinkable. Flavored moonshine stays safe just as long, but taste is another story. Once you open it, the fruit and […]

Single barrel bourbon is bottled from one barrel, start to finish. Small batch bourbon is a group of barrels (sometimes a pretty big group) dumped together and bottled as one. That covers the basic difference. The trouble is the labels. One of those terms is fairly literal, and the other […]

Moonshine has a reputation problem. Mention it and people picture a jar, a still in the woods, and something that strips paint. Some of that history is real. Most of what’s sold as moonshine today is something quite different. The actual difference between whiskey and moonshine comes down to one […]

Aging your own bourbon is one of the few things in the whiskey world that’s both genuinely legal to do at home and genuinely interesting to do. You’re not making the spirit. That part requires a federal permit. You’re taking finished spirit and putting it into wood. What happens next […]

Moonshine is one of the few spirits better known for its story than its taste. Most people can tell you it was illegal and made in the woods. Far fewer could tell you what’s actually in the bottle. Here’s the history, what’s true in it, and what the word means […]

Walk into any bar, and you’ll see bourbon and whiskey listed as though they’re two different drinks. They aren’t. Bourbon is whiskey, in the same way a golden retriever is a dog. What makes it bourbon is a specific set of rules about how it’s made. Those rules are written […]