On a slight tangent, I think Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" had someone making moonshine on the 'Roger Young' with a vacuum still. The strange movie "Moon Zero Two" has a bartender who plies the hero with his new concoctions, with the rationale that because freight costs from Earth are so high, booze is expensive. The hero takes a sip, makes a face, and says, "That tastes like rocket fuel!" The beaming bartender crows, "It is!"
My dad served in the Fijis in an engineer unit during WW2. They were tasked with setting up water purification stations. Up the road was a beast of burden station. Trucks would regularly take bags of feed there. One day, a bag of grain fell off a truck. My dad saw one of his comrades, a good ole boy from Appalachia named Little John, dragging the sack back to their bivouac. When my dad questioned him, Little John said he wanted to make moonshine. He made the still from a metal canister for dehydrated potatoes, and the condenser from a fuel line from a bombed out tank. My dad nearly blew them all to Kingdom Come when he tried to hurry the process by putting too much wood on the fire.
They did not drink the stuff themselves. They sold it to officers until they had enough money to buy a bottle of the good stuff.
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