It doesn't even help to live near the brewery. I drive through Tennessee and Kentucky frequently, and bourbon is more expensive than gasoline. The price is mostly taxes, regulatory compliance, trademark, and water rights.
If you're willing to scoff at the law, you can get something that tastes similar to a well-aged bourbon from an unlicensed distiller at a very low (relative) price, and any time you might have to wait for it is mostly because their trustworthy high-volume purchasers can jump ahead of you in line at any time. The moonshiners use tricks to flavor their product that are prohibited by law to anyone that wants to sell "bourbon" or "Tennessee whiskey", but since they're already outlaw, it doesn't cost them anything extra to put charred wood splints in a vat instead of using whole wood barrels, and forcibly cycle temperature and pressure to simulate the barrel-aging processes.
This area is just swimming in cheap grains, especially feed corn (aka maize), soft red winter wheat, barley, rice, rye, and sorghum. You can make beer out of any of it, and distill any beer into hard liquor. If you strip it down to pure azeotropic grain alcohol, you can dilute it back to 80 proof and add whatever flavors you want.
Some of the old-school outlaws have "gone legit" and sell their stuff (largely outsourced to one big industrial distillery, with one tiny local distillery kept mostly for show) as "flavored vodka" now. But that's just as expensive as anything else, because now they pay their taxes and comply with the laws and regulations.
It really is ludicrous. It is so cheap to make liquor here.
I don't doubt there's plenty of illegal stuff but it's not illegal to sell whiskey like that, as long as you don't call it bourbon. Calling it whiskey is fine (though I don't know if there's a law on "Tennessee whiskey"). Legitimate craft distillers make all sorts of weird whiskeys.
logfromblammo|7 years ago
If you're willing to scoff at the law, you can get something that tastes similar to a well-aged bourbon from an unlicensed distiller at a very low (relative) price, and any time you might have to wait for it is mostly because their trustworthy high-volume purchasers can jump ahead of you in line at any time. The moonshiners use tricks to flavor their product that are prohibited by law to anyone that wants to sell "bourbon" or "Tennessee whiskey", but since they're already outlaw, it doesn't cost them anything extra to put charred wood splints in a vat instead of using whole wood barrels, and forcibly cycle temperature and pressure to simulate the barrel-aging processes.
This area is just swimming in cheap grains, especially feed corn (aka maize), soft red winter wheat, barley, rice, rye, and sorghum. You can make beer out of any of it, and distill any beer into hard liquor. If you strip it down to pure azeotropic grain alcohol, you can dilute it back to 80 proof and add whatever flavors you want.
Some of the old-school outlaws have "gone legit" and sell their stuff (largely outsourced to one big industrial distillery, with one tiny local distillery kept mostly for show) as "flavored vodka" now. But that's just as expensive as anything else, because now they pay their taxes and comply with the laws and regulations.
It really is ludicrous. It is so cheap to make liquor here.
DennisP|7 years ago