History Main / MilitaryMoonshiner

The moonshiner is often quite skilled at it. And the moonshine is at least drinkable without danger. However they curse it and describe it negatively, it generally doesn't blind or kill them, presumably because (from the characters' POV) if it were truly dangerous it wouldn't get the necessary nod-and-a-wink from higher up, and (from the writer's POV) they don't want to take out characters that way.

* There are stories of stills blowing up in American military bases in countries with strict alcohol bans.

** This is because They're selling it to the local mafia in fairly large numbers and in Noel's words:

* [[spoiler:Sir]] [[SergeantRock Horace Harkness]] from [[HonorHarrington Honorverse]] did it for the most of his recorded career -- and, probably, still does...

* Not military, but still a strictly regimented, all-male institution. A ChristmasEpisode of ''{{Porridge}}'' features one of the prisoners distilling hooch in one of the shower blocks. Served in a disinfectant bottle, it's taste causes Fletch to comment that they should have taken the disinfectant out first.

* Averted in BandOfBrothers, as Easy Company is not seen as having a moonshiner. The biggest drinker among the main characters smuggles his booze in the luggage of a known teetotaler, and later resorts to looting when his supply runs dry.

* The flight deck crew in the new ''BattlestarGalactica'' set up a still and are harshly reprimanded for it by Chief Tyrol... because it was a sloppy job that made "liquor" liable to kill someone. He gave them a list of parts necessary to make a workable still, and in a later episode XO Tigh "bonds" with the Pegasus' XO over rounds of the products of the flight deck still. The flight deck's moonshine also makes appearances elsewhere on the fleet, Chief Tyrol trades it for parts when he's building the Blackbird, and ''Pegasus'' crewmembers (who were evidently forbidden from anything even remotely resembling moonshine) treat it like ambrosia.
** Which for the uninitiated [[DontExplainTheJoke is the Colonial version of very good whiskey]].

** Which [[FridgeLogic is kind of odd]], as alcohol doesn't seem to be contraband in the Royal Manticore Navy.

-->'''Cecil Terwilliger:'' Now make yourself at home. Perhaps a glass of Bordeaux? I have the '82 Chateau Latour and a rather indifferent Rausan-Segla.\\
'''Sideshow Bob:''' I've been in prison, Cecil. I'll be happy just as long as it doesn't taste like orange drink fermented under a radiator.\\
'''Cecil Terwilliger:''' That would be the Latour, then.

* Brody assembled a still from the lab / kitchen tools aboard Destiny in StargateUniverse. The drinks usually taste horrible though this might be attributed to the flora of that galaxy.

* In ''StargateUniverse'' the Icarus team made a still even before they got the hydroponics dome set up.

* Hawkeye and Trapper John (and later, B.J. Hunnicutt), have a still in their tent on ''[[{{MASH}} M* A* S* H]]''. They say that they're distilling gin (hence the martini glasses), but what actually comes out is little more than high-proof grain alcohol.

* Philip Seymour wrote that during his time in the King's African Rifles, each company had one assigned brewer, who would knock up some kind of beer from whatever he could scrounge and let the company drink it once a week. "Horrible stuff, but it kept us sane."

** Which [[FridgeLogic is kind of odd]], as alcohol is not contraband in the Royal Manticore Navy.

* Moloch, in the {{novelization}} of the GirlGenius wecomic {{Agatha H and the Airship City}} is revealed to have been this, making him relatively popular amongst his peers.

** Chronic lead poisoning does take a while to start showing effects. Chances are that soldiers and POWs are more worried about the acute kind (you know, the kind that starts with a high velocity injection instead of leisurely ingestion). Saying that without the euphemism-why worry about toxic booze if you expect to get shot shortly?

* William Mandala has virtually nothing in common with his unit by the time he becomes a Major in ''TheForeverWar''. Except that one of the cooks has cobbled-together a still and is selling booze to the troops. More than anything, he's amazed at how they got the raw materials out of a closed-system.

*William Mandala has virtually nothing in common with his unit by the time he becomes a Major in ''The Forever War''. Except that one of the cooks has cobbled-together a still and is selling booze to the troops. More than anything, he's amazed at how they got the raw materials out of a closed-system.