bulk liquor
 

Anyone have a good source for buying cheap but decent liquor for storage? BevMo seems to have some cheapies, but they probably taste terrible... In a SHTF scenario, liquor will be quite valuable in my estimation, good taste or bad. Good would be prefferable of course ;-)

Any points in the right direction appreciated. :beer:

Re: bulk liquor
 

Basically, state laws regarding alcohol sales require that warehouse clubs (Sam's, Costco, etc.) permit the purchase of alcohol without requiring a membership, allowing you to save 10-30% without having to pony up the $40-$50 a year. Here's the article:

Link to original article:

SUMMER BLOCK PARTIES, barbecues and picnics just wouldn't be complete without cold beer, fruity cocktails or a nice bottle of wine.

Stocking up on enough alcohol for a party can cost a small fortune. Your best bet — visit your local warehouse clubs, which regularly offer discounts of 10% to 30%. But what about those hefty membership fees, you ask? (An annual membership at Costco costs $50, while nonmembers at BJ's will have a 15% fee added to their bill.)

Thanks to some little-known state laws, nonmembers can purchase alcohol without paying a membership fee. These laws date back to the 1930s, when Prohibition was repealed. Massachusetts'3 law, for example, provides that applicants for a license to sell alcohol must "serve the public need and protect the common good." In simpler terms, alcohol sold must be available for purchase by the greater public — no membership restrictions. (The ol' minimum age requirement still applies.) "We uphold those old laws; therefore, any alcohol sold in our clubs in such states is open to the public," says Teleia Farrell, a spokeswoman for BJ's Wholesale Clubs.

Taking advantage of this deal depends on where you live, and at which discount club you shop. Here's a rundown of the policies at the three major players:

BJ's Wholesale Club
Membership is not required for purchases of alcohol in the following states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Texas and Vermont. Selection varies by store. (Some carry liquor, beer and wine, while others have only beer and wine. Some carry no alcohol at all.)

Costco Wholesale
Membership is not required for purchases of alcohol in the following states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Texas and Vermont. Selection varies by store. (Some carry liquor, beer and wine, while others have only beer and wine. Yet others carry no alcohol at all.) Costco.com carries wine and champagne. Due to shipping restrictions, orders can only be delivered to California, Idaho, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and West Virginia.

Sam's Club
Membership is not required for purchases of alcohol. Selection varies by store. (Some carry liquor, beer and wine, while others have only beer and wine. Some carry no alcohol at all.)

Examples of Savings:
Absolute Vodka, 1-liter bottle: $27.99 at mainstream retailer, $20.99 at Sam's (save $7.00 = 25% savings).
Absolut Vodka, 1.75-liter bottle: $45.99 at mainstream retailer, $31.09 at Sams (save $14.90 = 32% savings).
Sam Adams, 24-pack of 12-oz. bottles: $29.99 at mainstream retailer, $23.54 at Sam's ($6.45 savings = 22% savings)

Now, these policies are far from common knowledge. (Trust us — in our search for details, we called everyone from the Distilled Spirits Council to the American Bar Association and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. No one had heard of them.) Avoiding the fee may take some fancy footwork:

Find a manager. Don't expect to find an employee who has heard of this policy. So ask to speak with the manager as soon as you enter the store.

Bring this article with you. It can't hurt, and may convince a skeptical employee that you're in the right.

Stick to alcohol. This membership fee loophole only applies to alcohol. So don't push your luck by loading your cart up with other items. If you do, expect to pony up that nonmember fee.

Re: bulk liquor
 

I would be more inclined to learn how to homebrew. I used to know moonshiners who made some pretty wicked stuff and it was dirt cheap for them. If you store booze you have trade goods, if you make booze you have a business. I don't recall the specifics but the federalists do allow you to produce a certain ammount per year for personal consumption. Anyway, just google moonshine and still and see what you come up with.

The main catch is alchoholics, like junkies, will do some crazy stuff to get a fix. They'll do even crazier stuff when they're going through withdrawl, as if they weren't crazy enough already when they were drunk. Not the kind of people I'd want to do business with.

I've been looking at growing some sugar and tobacco. People want these products just as bad, but I've never seen a violent sugar or tobacco addict, just a cranky one. You'd be suprised how much sweets and cigs go for in places where they're contraband or difficult to obtain.

Re: bulk liquor
 

I would not want to be around alcoholics WTSHTF and alcohol will not improve your survival skills either.

:wavey: not a prude...I have a glass of wine before dinner.

Re: bulk liquor
 

REV,

I'm almost certain distillation of any amount is illegal unless it is for fuel, and approved by the ATF. That's not to say there aren't thousands out there making it.

One problem I see with that idea post-SHTF is how to get yeast. Anyone know how they got/made yeast in "the olden days"?

Re: bulk liquor
 

not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic... and spirits are good as anteseptic to boot.

Re: bulk liquor
 

100 Gal per person.

Hard Apple Cider/wine is easy to make.
Water. apples/fruit. sugar. yeast.

Distilling
Illegal to even have a still (not BATF Permited) in your
possession (working or not)

legally you can't even distill your own water

It's a little to dangerous for my blood. It's
just like taking 3 gallons of GAS, boiling it
on your stove, and waiting to see what happens.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Cheap wodka gonna give
you best bang for buck.

On the rocks, I think it tastes
better than the fancy stuff.
In a cocktail no one will know
the difference.

dtnwn
___________________________

Pomegranate Punch

Jamb a rocks glass full of
crushed ice. Fill with wodka.
Add a few drops of pure
pomegranate juice.

Cheers

Re: bulk liquor
 

Best way to store yeast is to always have a starter
bach going. It's like sour dough bread or sour mash wiskey.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Most of the sugar that is grown here in the USA is not from sugar cane, but rather from beets.

I am a homebrewer of beer. The best long term storage of sugars for brewing beer is in the form of dried malt extract. It costs in the range of $3 per pound and will store for several years in a sealed airtight bag.

I did brew some hard cider and cyser this year. It is in the 10% alcohol range. I should be enjoying it for awhile. So if you want some other good sugar content things to grow. An apple orchard might be good. Just remember to have a mix of sweet apples and sour type apples to get a good blend for making pies, hard cider, plain eating apples.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Thanks for the info Alpine and Aikitrader.

I'm told apples are a no-go down here in FL, something about the climate being too warm for them to fruit. I've got citrus, blackberry, and I'll be growing some muscadines. Many people around here make strawberry wine as strawberry is the chief crop in Plant City and the surrounding area. I've heard of sugar beets before but it's all cane out my way.

I'd like to try growing what I need to make my own beer here on my property. I've heard the main ingredients are hops, malt, water and yeast. I'm still not sure how yeast was ever domesticated or how you'd go aboout getting some if you didn't have any. I have heard that certain kitchens and bakeries in Europe that have been operating for centuries have a natural population of yeast that will cause bread to rise just from exposure to that environment.

I'm planning on getting some bees at some point and I know people make their own mead, apparently it isn't too hard. I've never tried making it but I've sampled the end product and it's quite good. Anyway, I think I'll be using honey as my primary sweetner.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Honey is a good natural product, I've never used it tho.

I thought honey was very hard to clarify, it takes a long time.

I could be wrong tho...

Re: bulk liquor
 

One good thing about distilled spirits...

Long, long shelf life.

I have a book, "The Alaskan Bootleggers Bible"
Very good book, basically tells you how to make
booze in a SHTF situation.

It tells you how to make cheap cappers, malt
factory and stills.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Whoa! Plant City Fl. is not where I would want to be if TSHTF.
No offense intended but....

Re: bulk liquor
 

And all of those fools (addicts) can give me their guns, ammo, property, livestock, tools, vehicles..... whatever.

All for a drinky-drinky! :banana: The store is now open! :ARMS1:

Re: bulk liquor
 

Plant City ain't what it used to be, that's for sure. I often wonder if a good solid economic crash might send all those illegals back home? I don't live in Plant City myself, I'm well out in the woods, accessible by only 1 easily defended road. The nearest town to me is over 86% young white families who are engaged in trades and small scale agriculture. Being from Florida I really don't mind a large Latin population as long as they are lawful and have common sense, which was by far the greater portion of my experience before the floodgates of illegal immigration were opened.

As far as fools trading you guns for booze or any other fix, I wouldn't count on it. In fact having lived in the ghetto for many a year myself and seeing this kind of stuff in action I can tell you the way it usually goes down is the crazy addict either robs you or somebody else with that gun in an attempt to get the booze. You could very likely get tools and chickens or goats in trade. The other problem with being known to distribute booze under such circumstances is that the drunks will always be looking for you, wanting to come bother you on your property for a drink, maybe trying to rob you. Ever seen a crackhouse?, cause that's basically what we're talking about here, being a drug dealer. Some people can manage that and some don't even mind it, not telling anybody what to do just offering some feedback.

I've got some tobacco seed on order. I haven't found any state laws regarding tobacco yet but the feds seem to not mind about an acre or less grown for personal or familial consumption. I'm not intending to grow nearly that much, just a few plants for mostly non-smoking applications as tobacco has some real practical uses. If TSHTF I likely would grow a little more as a cash crop and mostly trade to folks who enjoy a chew or smoke but otherwise are functional hardworking people. If you could limit your alchohol trades to similar I'm sure you'd do fine, the quesiton is one of volume. I'd also give things a while to settle down so I don't get caught doing business who was formally a stable person who'd have an occasional drink but broke under pressure and now is a rolling drunk.

Re: bulk liquor
 

http://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm

Here's a good read from the 70's.
The gal that wrote this had some real understanding about living.
Some interesting information on fermentation and home distilling,
among other living off the land topics.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Didn't use yeast. Used ground corn sprouts. Had to find a miller that wouldn't talk. You took a bushel of fresh sprouted corn and had them grind it. Add that to your mash for fermentation.

Re: bulk liquor
 

I've read the possom living lady's ramblings before. All I saw was someone who had little regard for anything approximating a stable, harmonious co-existence with the systems she relied on for her survival. I'm glad she's no longer in my state, I wish the rest of the parasite yankees would leave too.

I knew about a similar process to the one MtnMan describes. You took a spoonful of corn meal and dumped it in a coconut, capped it and let it ferment a while. I never really understood how that works.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Buy Orange Juice

Re: bulk liquor
 

Must be the sugar in the Coconut. But if ya can't get yeast, where ya going to find a coconut?

Re: bulk liquor
 

Down here in FL I'm up to my neck in coconuts. I don't know anything about yeast, though.

I've occasionally run into old still sites from the bootlegging days when boating down in the 10,000 Islands, they ran on the process you described. I'm growing corn anyway, most for chickenfeed but also for personal consumption. I ought to familiarize myself with the process of moonshining, not much of a drinker anymore but it sure could come in handy as a fuel, disinfectant and cleaner. I found some neat stuff at this link,

http://www.green-trust.org/ethanol.htm

Re: bulk liquor
 

Pick up a copy of the "Foxfire Book" vol 1. later on you'll want all 9 volumes. All about country livin' written by country folk.

Re: bulk liquor
 

Here's the whole collection...

http://keystoneweb.com/users/wennawo...re&store=books

I also posted a link on these...

http://goldismoney.info/forums/t1007...to-bugout.html

Re: bulk liquor
 

I paid $9.99 for a 1.75 liter of house brand vodka in a plastic bottle, any ideas if long term storage in plastic is safe? I think in bad times booze will be a good item to have stored.:albertein

Re: bulk liquor
 

Nothing that is going to be leached from storage in plastic into that "vodka" is worse than that "vodka" to begin with.

Please drink responsibly!

Re: bulk liquor
 

This sounds more like malting to me using the enzymes of the just sprouted seeds
to convert starches to sugar which the yeasts can then eat and turn to alcohol I just bought 80 pounds of barley to try malting for some home beer brewing today.Yeasts are everywhere some good some not so good
wild yeasts can brew but with uncertain results I once accidentaly fermented
a bottle of lemongrass tea with honey as sweetner that i left in a turned off
fridge for months and it tasted great but i am sure that it was the exception.
Have made mead and beer and found the mead less complicated than the beer.