How Do You Make Peach Moonshine from Scratch?

Can you make Peach Moonshine from scratch, and if so then how do you do it and what is the best and easiest way to make Peach Moonshine?

If you want to make peach moonshine from scratch then you certainly can. Well, almost from scratch as if you want to make your own moonshine you should first read our post on Is It Legal to Make Whiskey at Home? [insert link] The same laws apply to making moonshine at home, or any other kind of spirit.

What Is Moonshine? 

Firstly, what is moonshine anyway? It isn't just an American term for hooch made in the backwoods of Appalachia. Countries all around the world have their equivalent of alcohol that's been distilled at home using local ingredients.

Making moonshine is usually illegal, though this doesn't stop it happening widely, particularly in traditionally poor rural areas. In the past, even if legal alcohol was available, not everyone could afford to buy it, so it's only natural some people would try their hand at making their own. After all, the skills of distilling have been around for a few thousand years.

In Ireland, as one well-known example, they call it poteen (pronounced pocheen) and it's often made from potatoes, the country's most widely-grown crop. In Greece they call it raki or tsipouro, and it's made from what's left of the grapes after the winemakers have finished with them. In the USA it's called moonshine and often made from corn.

What Is Peach Moonshine?

If peaches are grown widely, as they are in parts of the USA and Southern Europe, for example, then you can make moonshine from them. They provide their own sugar, to help the fermentation process. In the USA it's called peach moonshine while in other countries it might be called peach brandy or peach schnapps.

The main concern is a financial one. Peaches usually fetch a high price, so it's more profitable for the grower to sell them than to make moonshine from them. However, there will always be some peaches that are imperfect, so why throw them out when you can make perfectly good liquor from them?

Peach Moonshine Recipes

There are numerous recipes online for making peach moonshine, and they don't all involve using a peach brandy or peach schnapps as the base spirit. Some use white spirit, some blend white spirit with peach juice.

Some recipes use a grain alcohol called Everclear, produced by Luxco, and available at differing strengths according to your needs: 60%, 75.5%, 94.5% and 95% ABC (120, 151, 189 and 190 proof). It's potent stuff but remember that if you make a spirit that's too strong for you, you can always dilute it later with pure filtered water down to your preferred strength. After all, that's what distillers do unless they're making a cask strength spirit.

The Best Way to Make Peach Moonshine from Scratch

Some of the recipes for peach moonshine are quite complicated and involve tracking down several ingredients and then following complex instructions. You also often have to wait several days for the peach moonshine to be ready. The quickest, easiest and best way to make peach moonshine from scratch is with a Moonshine Magic moonshine making kit.

The Moonshine Making Kit is perfectly legal as you have to provide the base spirit. The kits come with a reusable 1-liter ceramic moonshine jar, and the essence for making three distinct moonshine flavors, including peach. The Peach Essence includes natural extracts, essences, and oils, and some caramel color of the kind often used by distilleries to add a little color to whiskies, rums, and other spirits. (They don't usually shout about it, but they do it.)

For the spirits, you can use Everclear or an inexpensive plain vodka. Costco sells vodka that is both cheap and better-than-average bottom-shelf vodka. Later (the moonshine jar is endlessly re-usable) you can experiment and try a corn or rye-based whiskey or bourbon. Only use small amounts of this at first, and you may want to mix it with some vodka initially, so as not to overpower the peach flavor, which is after all what you're looking for. This is by far the best and quickest way to make peach moonshine from scratch.

by Mike Gerrard