Moonshiners live among us. By day they appear to be respectable members of society, perhaps writing software to make your Internet experience run smoothly. But at night and on weekends, after a visit to the farmers’ market or a nice brunch, they work in secret, sterilizing equipment, taking specific gravity and temperature measurements, and waiting impatiently as their illegal hooch drip, drip, drips out of tiny stills.
“‘Illegal’ is such a judgmental word,” jokes Doug (not his real name), who makes moonshine along with his friend Ron (also not his real name) at Ron’s house in the Upper Haight.
The two have been distilling for less than a year. “We started home brewing, then we got into ‘advanced brewing,’ as we like to say to the neighbors,” Ron says.
