Economic Slumpwatch: College-Educated Brooklynites Resembling Hillbillies

Making bathtub hooch:

Lance is not a hillbilly. He’s a quiet-natured young professor at a local college. Rousseau, Diderot, Hume, and Kant inhabit his bookshelves. Predictably, he’s erudite on even the topic of moonshine, explaining that Brooklyn hooch differs from that produced in, say, Tennessee because the mineral content of the water used for distilling alters the spirit’s flavor.

Lance isn’t the only local expert. New York City moonshiners are giving the spirit a new identity. Today’s urban moonshiners are sophisticated. But some of their palaver still has that country flavor. Take Tim. He describes his moonshine as “slightly sweet” with a “vanilla nose” and “a light taste of corn.” His final verdict is as country as cornpone: “It’s pretty smooth going down, but then you get a sunburn from the inside out.”