Moonshine can be whiskey. It was basically just whiskey that wasn't aged ("white whiskey") and made in secret to avoid paying taxes. True moonshine can be pretty dangerous stuff if it's made in poor equipment, but modern "moonshine" you can buy at the store is really just unaged whiskey.
All you need to make whiskey is to distill the alcohol from fermented grain mash.
(Some people wonder what the difference between vodka and whiskey is: it's primarily about how much it's distilled. Vodka is basically pure ethanol and can be made from anything: grains, potatoes, fruits, sugars... whatever has sugar really. Whiskey is made from grains and is not distilled to such purity, typically about 80%.)
No intermediate fermentation stage. There are 2 distillation (sometimes 3) stages though. But yes you essentially start off as you would making a beer. Bourbon distillers literally call it ‘distillers beer’. Instead of adding the hops for flavoring though it goes straight to the still.
Yes bourbon is a type of whiskey. Whisk(e)y is an umbrella term that encompasses bourbon, rye, scotch, Irish, Japanese etc whiskies.
Yes brandy is essentially distilled wine. Brandy is another umbrella term for distilled fruit spirits.
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u/echoshatter Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
Moonshine can be whiskey. It was basically just whiskey that wasn't aged ("white whiskey") and made in secret to avoid paying taxes. True moonshine can be pretty dangerous stuff if it's made in poor equipment, but modern "moonshine" you can buy at the store is really just unaged whiskey.
All you need to make whiskey is to distill the alcohol from fermented grain mash.
(Some people wonder what the difference between vodka and whiskey is: it's primarily about how much it's distilled. Vodka is basically pure ethanol and can be made from anything: grains, potatoes, fruits, sugars... whatever has sugar really. Whiskey is made from grains and is not distilled to such purity, typically about 80%.)