Trade whiskey

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In the 80's I went to a lot of rendezvous in CA when I started in "Buckskinning" with a Mountain Man group, the popular drink was "Apple Pie":

A gallon of unfiltered apple juice warmed on the stove, infused with apple pie spices, allowed to cool and then the juice was poured off the sludge of spices. You then spiked it with 750ml rum or brandy and a cup of 180 proof. Awesome around the campfire. Just don't get carried away with it, or you'll be carried away... literally!
 
In the 80's I went to a lot of rendezvous in CA when I started in "Buckskinning" with a Mountain Man group, the popular drink was "Apple Pie":

A gallon of unfiltered apple juice warmed on the stove, infused with apple pie spices, allowed to cool and then the juice was poured off the sludge of spices. You then spiked it with 750ml rum or brandy and a cup of 180 proof. Awesome around the campfire. Just don't get carried away with it, or you'll be carried away... literally!
Wow! Sounds like just the thing to get you thru a cold spell!
 
When I saw the tag line 'Trade Whiskey' I thought WOW! REALLY? The comments I've read thus far aren't exactly what I
expected.
Had a good friend. sadly. long gone now, that prided himself in following Mountain Man traditions believing himself to be the spiritual heir of men like Jim Bridger and others. The subjects of Rendezvous, Green River knives and such came up often in our conversations. (He didn't even like the movie, Gray Eagle, because it didn't portray mountain men properly.) So did 'trade whiskey.' According to him, 'trade whiskey' was pure grain alcohol, a bit of chewing tobacco juice for color and according to him and other research I've done, since Indians, WOOPS! Sorry, Native Americans, at the time, didn't believe whiskey was any good unless it made them sick, just a bit of strychnine added for effect.
 
Well if you use diluted grain alcohol, and an alcohol flavoring agent, like Still Sprits Bourbon Essence, you get the right flavor, but..., you often still get a solvent flavor on the back end. This is what you want, for a trade whiskey would likely not have been properly fully aged, but would've had some flavor. Otherwise folks would've called it moonshine, or corn liquor, etc..., not whiskey in the journals, etc.

LD
 
Just buy some actual commercially available whiskey at the State Store or regular store depending where you live! PA is a "State Store" state, and will be till the end of time. No matter what any would-be governor-candidate says.
 
Some Pa. State Stores usta sell genuine Moon Shine. We drank a pint while we walked the 10 th St. bridge over the Allegeny river to down town Pittsburgh , on the way to the technical school to pick up our graduation diplomas. Let the fun begin , and it did.....1968.
 
Some Pa. State Stores usta sell genuine Moon Shine. We drank a pint while we walked the 10 th St. bridge over the Allegeny river to down town Pittsburgh , on the way to the technical school to pick up our graduation diplomas. Let the fun begin , and it did.....1968.
I think that stuff was called "Georgia Moon". Been there drank that.
 
Whitworth.........I think you are absolutely correct. "Ga. Moon." I couldn't dredge up the name . It's been a long time. Another note from long ago..........In the 1950's and '60s , we frequently hunted grouse on the Hadentown Mtn. which is South west of Uniontown , Pa..We would hunt the valleys and side hills clear down to where the Mason-Dixon line split the famous Laurel Ridge. Geo. Washington's Fort Necessity is not far from there. Any way , one afternoon in late fall , we hunted through a hollow and commented how nice the free flowing spring was we found there. We killed a grouse or two there , and the following fall we went back to the spring to start our grouse hunt that day. I walked into the opening , and got a shock. There must have been 200 or more empty sugar sacks thrown around the spring. Obviously some local hooftys were running off some shine by the spring during summer. We never went back there.
 
I have a bottle of 151 grain alc that I want to make into a reasonable trade whiskey.I'll cut it with water, but besides snake heads or tobacco what can I add to it?Im putting it in a oak keg to age for a month or so before rendevous( aged ya know)

You can also consider immersing a toasted oak spiral into the beverage to simulate it being shipped over a long distance over many days and sloshing about in the ked.

Toasted Oak Spiral for aging

LD
 

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