Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) cheap, potent whisky.

1836		Weekly Advertiser (Russellville, KY) 25 Jan. 1/5: He has refused to keep anything to drink but ball-faced whiskey [DA].
1847		Southern Literary Messenger 151: Our boatmen will swear, perform at ‘old sledge,’ get ‘swipey’ on ‘bald face’ and ‘chaw tabaccer’.
1851		‘M’Cracken’s Experience’ in T.A. Burke Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 60: If you’ve got any more of that baldface, pour it out!
1854		Ipswich Jrnl 16 Sept. 3/7: Less will be consumed in the manufacture of bald-faced whisky [...] than of late years.
1856		N.O. Weekly Delta 23 Nov. p.1 in A.P. Hudson Humor of the Old Deep South (1936) n.p.: We adjourned over to the nearest dead-fall, tuck a whoppin’ horn of Ball Face.
1867		G.W. Harris Sut Lovingood’s Yarns 184: He war jis’ a-honin arter that ball-face whisky.
1870		Lippincott’s Mag. (Phila.) VI 465: Let him get a nigger fiddler and plenty of baldface whisky, and give forth the news that he expects his friends.
1871		C.G. Leland ‘Breitmann at a Picnic’ in Hans Breitmann in Europe 283: O keep a pringin juleps in, / Und baldface corn dat burn like sin.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 581: Bald-face, one of the many slang terms under which bad whiskey passes in the West.
1892		J.C. Duval Young Explorers 195: I’m not much on looks I know, but at any rate my breath don’t smell of onions nor bald face whiskey.
1907		Wash. Times (DC) 15 Dec. 46/7: ‘Blonde’ or ‘bald’ whiskey, cheap corn or moonshine stuff.
1913		A.H. Lewis Faro Nell 49: A pint of baldface under the buckle of my belt.
1953		Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 225: bald face: n. Raw corn whiskey.

2. used of brandy.

1852

Hartford Courtant (Supp.) 17 July 112/1: Having a large canteen of bald face brandy, the hardy fellow took a hearty swig and went on his way.