I think traditional moonshine recipes called for boiling potatoes first to convert starch to sugars. Also baking yeast is quite effective at fermentation and survives to fairly high alcohol levels.

For fun some years ago I made some moonshine using cornmeal and brown sugar. Built my own still too, fun stuff. Just gotta make sure everything is lead free and discard heads and tails.

I used a valved reflux still and kept temps within a couple degrees of ideal. Ran the result through carbon filters at the end. Couldn't tell the difference between my stuff and everclear