Cape Breton's Magazine

Rita&Rory; Murphy &Moonshining; Days Rory Murphy: I was born right here in Reserve. My people before me made moon? shine. It was never legal. An uncle of mine taught rae. He didn't have to teach me. I was just with hiai every day and I learned it. Simple. Half the people who make it today make it for their own use, only make a couple quarts at a time. I was making it hy the gallon. I was 11 years old when I first made it. My old man was just after dying then. So we were only getting like the fellow says 60 dollars a month for 8 of us home. So maw was 9. So I was making a few dollars on it then* Good? I hope to tell you it was good. (Is it true you can poison yourself?) How are you goin' to poison yourself? It's only sugar and water and yeast. That's all it is?? There's nothing in it that'd hurt you. Same as eating a bite to eat in a house • no difference. Of course, it's all according to the people who make it. You have to give credit to the Murphy's of Reserve. I guess they're about the best at it • right down to the point they drink their own stuff. What you call bad moon? shine comes from people who are greedy. And they'll doctor it up and water it and they'll put anything at all into it. Try to make more to make raore money. You see, in a gallon jar you get about 7 quart b?er bottles. And they're not satisfied, they want to make it to 10 or 12. You'd have to have good water. You raake it out of molasses. Sometimes you make it out of sugar. You set it with sugar and water and yeast and you leave it brew for two weeks. And it's sweet, and then it turns kind of a sour taste when it's brewed out like • like it's flat. It's ready for running then. It's only the steam you get off it. You take it to your still and you build a fire and you boil the steam through the coil • comes out there on the bottom • and it comes out clear just like the water in the tap. And you'd run that right off perhaps 25 or 30 gallons of it. Hien you put it back in again, back into the still. Run it over again. Then you take the first four gallons off it • and that's all you taJce. And it's ready to drink. The rest you just throw out. That's four gallons off of 50 pounds of sugar. You use the same still • but we've had as high as 35-40 barrels at one tirae. We'd always have a bunch of barrels set, four gallons would come off of each barrel. When you're making shine for your customers, you've got to run it every two weeks, or every week, trying to keep up. I had enough customers for it all. Rita: And they're just crying for it. Especially the old-timers. Rory: Jeez, they're after me all the time to make it. Fellows that work in the pit. Jeez, get us a good gallon for Christmas, get us a good gallon for vacation time. But I quit CAPB BRETON'S MA3AZINE, NUMBER FOURTEEN WRECK COVE, CAPE BRETON, NOVA SCOTIA SECOND CLASS MAIL • REGISTRATION NUMBER 3014 A Member of the Canadian Periodical Publishers' Association