[jeremy schwartz] this time on moonshiners...
[mike] we up on a mountain up here, ain't we, brother?
The heat's been on me and j for a while,
we just crossed over into north carolina.
We've got to build something new.
I'm gonna solder it from the inside.
Whoa!
[groaning] oh, god!
Here, you wanna do what I'm doing? For a while there,
it reminds you of being a teenager again.
The recipe that jb wants is all corn, no sugar.
Damn, you ain't never had a whooping for holding your breath, have you?
Glad I'm driving you out of here.
That's the biggest damn green strawberry I ever seen in my life, josh.
This is only going to make one still full of mash.
So what we're going to do is go back down to one of our old still sites
and we're gonna run it there.
Somebody's coming across the bridge.
[man yelling]
[man] this is how we make the moonshine!
[country music playing]
-[mark] oh, my god. -[digger] would you look at that.
This is where you and popcorn sutton made his last run.
I never thought we'd be up here thinking about making a run of liquor.
[jeremy] in haywood county, north carolina,
jb is leading mark and digger to the site
where their friend and mentor, popcorn sutton, made his infamous last run.
Tennessee's home to us. If we're gonna run liquor,
I'd rather run it in my back door.
But right now, that's not an option,
because the police are back out in full force.
They are on their a-game right now.
20 years.
It's been 20 years right now, come July.
-Yeah, that's what we are, it'll be 20 years. -Yeah.
Jb, this is sacred ground.
You're damn right it is.
If there's a holy grail of moonshine,
it's right here.
Wow.
[digger] this is where the rage of moonshine began.
This is where popcorn sutton did his video
the last run.
What little liquor comes off of this,
the right people will pay you $100 a gallon for it.
Popcorn, he was the outlaw moonshiner.
I'm just doing this so people can see how rough an old moonshiner's life was.
He kept telling me, "wish we could do a video
the way my granddaddy and daddy had done it."
he said, "we're gonna keep the moonshine tradition going."
this is the last damn run of liquor I'm gonna ever make.
I guess I'm letting you off.
They'll be glad of that 'cause they won't have to watch me no damn more.
[jb] he done it out in the open too much.
That's the reason he got caught, 'cause he got too bold.
If I hadn't quit when I did, I'd have went to the pen.
Cold chills runnin' over my arm. I swear, it's just...
Yeah, you're darn right. His spirit's here.
[jb] oh, yeah, so something will go wrong.
That's exactly what was going through my mind.
[mark] look, here, the old furnace.
Yeah, we cooked on this. Pot of beans and fried potatoes.
Fried potato.
Boys, we ain't gonna disturb none of this stuff.
No. Hell, no.
That'd be like jumping on the statue of liberty and cutting her ear off.
[mark] well, that's a fine stream.
[jb] yeah, it's good water.
Is this far enough back from the law?
I think it ought to do it.
If this ain't far enough out of the dadgum way,
-we deserve to be caught. -Caught. Yeah, right.
[laughs]
with the fact that law enforcement's on our trail,
we need to exercise all caution.
And, right now, we're just gonna hang out over here in north carolina a while.
-I'll tell you what, rader. -Yeah.
Seeing how you drug us in here,
this first run, it's gonna be yours.
You tell us how you want it,
-we'll do whatever you dictate. -Okay.
You got anything in mind you want to do?
Well, popcorn always said something about
making some pure corn, no sugar,
but he ain't never did do it.
Jb tells us that popcorn always promised him
that they would do an all-grain corn run, no sugar.
I want just pure corn choice,
he always said it was damn good,
but didn't produce much.
-[digger] don't make a lot of it. -No.
[mark] it'll get you about a half the run of what sugar would.
Yeah, yeah. Pure corn, about 103 proof.
You know, we always knew popcorn wanted to make an all-grain run.
He always talked about it.
But the thing that it is, popcorn didn't have the patience.
Let's get down here and get us a plan ciphered out.
Yeah. We gotta round us up some materials.
47 miles to get back out and get something.
[dramatic music playing]
[country music playing]
well, jerry, it looks like we've made it over the mountain, buddy.
Look at these valleys. Look at these mountains on both sides.
Yeah, bud, it's beautiful out here.
[jeremy] on the north carolina- tennessee border
after a police raid cleaned out a season's cache of moonshine,
mike and jerry are slipping across the state line
where they can operate as relative unknowns.
The heat's been on me and j for a while,
so we just crossed over into north carolina.
We need to be in a place we know we'll be safe
and can evade the law or any other human coming in and finding us.
So, where in the hell are we going to look for a still site out around here, buddy?
There should be a road that turns off to the left.
You know, I mean, some people would feel like
they're invading on somebody else's territory, but to me, it's neutral ground.
You know, we got to do what we got to do.
If there's anybody else over here that thinks we're stepping on their toes,
we'll deal with it when it comes to us.
Well, this is nice, ain't it, jerry?
Sure is.
You know, we've been running in tennessee for the last two seasons.
You know, I think it's time, with the heat we got going on,
we've got to figure out something, and we got to do it pretty quick.
What's that over yonder?
That's a damn flag over there.
That means somebody put that there.
Somebody's been in here clearing this out
-for some reason. -It's a no-go.
That's just something we can't have.
[jerry] don't look too old, either.
No, it does not.
I'm not gonna put our operation here.
Ain't happening. We got to bust this place, we got to move on.
You know, this area that we're in right now, you know, I know it really good.
It's not where I grew up,
but it's dang close.
It's a great little valley to hide in, lots of woods.
This is not my domain.
Over in tennessee, people know exactly who me and jerry is.
You know, here in north carolina, we're just two regular guys.
It makes me feel a little more comfortable, a little more hid.
It's kind of under the radar.
Nice, some good-looking water right down through here coming out.
This is where the infamous popcorn sutton's from.
He made a lot of liquor over here, and he's got a big name over here,
and I respect that.
But it's mine and jerry's turn now.
We up on a mountain up here, ain't we, brother?
This is a pretty place. I guarantee.
[mike] I'll tell you what, man.
Me and jerry, we are struck by the sheer beauty of this place.
That's some big old timber in here, ain't there, buddy?
[jerry] sure is. Away from civilization.
You know, the harder it is for me and jerry
to get to where we're gonna go to our still site,
the damn harder it is for anybody else, and especially the police.
Man, look at the waterfall in there.
I say that right there won't never dry up, will it?
That ought to give us all the water we need.
[mike] think we can get down there.
I don't know about getting back up through here.
We got to get down to the creek and taste the water.
I know it's fine water, but I always like to put my mouth on it.
You're tasting it wrong.
You got to get your face in it.
[mike] you're gonna put your mouth on it, ain't ya?
There you go.
Is that not good water or what?
It's done that it's cold, clean as it can be.
[jerry] you know, this water source right here,
coming down the side of this mountain,
we shouldn't have no problem having water all season long and plenty of it.
What do you think about this little spot right in here?
I like being able to see the water.
Yeah. Well, the closer we are to the water, the better off we gonna be, ain't we?
Yeah.
You know, I don't want to haul that rig
and everything across the mountain over here.
You take a chance on getting caught with it.
So we got to do something.
I don't want to get caught crossing down state lines
with something illegal in the back of my truck.
That's a federal offense, then.
So we've got to build something new.
Well, what's your thoughts on what we're gonna run this year?
I ain't got no damn clue, really.
From what I've been hearing through the grapevine,
you know, people's getting some money back in their pocket now,
they're buying high-end alcohol. A lot of barrel-aged,
good, high-end whiskeys and stuff is what they're buying.
Everybody that I've talked to are wanting high-end, barrel-aged whiskey.
And they don't mind paying for it.
And that stuff takes time. That's something we don't have, a lot of time.
We definitely don't have time to start filling up barrels
'cause we've got to start making money 'cause we have none.
What if we had the best of both worlds?
What if we actually ran our liquor in a wooden barrel?
Run liquor out of a wooden barrel?
-Yeah. -A charred white oak barrel.
Yeah.
And how in the hell are we gonna do that? It's wood.
We're gonna just put a core through it.
Still don't get hot.
It'll get hot, but-- all we're doing is heating the steam.
We can mash right in the barrel.
I'll just have to draw it out and show you.
I just come up with an idea I just don't think nobody's ever tried.
I mean, who's going to try to make a moonshine still out of a wooden barrel?
Let's see what we got here.
-Here's our barrel, right? -Right.
We come in here, we cut us in a copper core
and we'll put heat to it and all that heat will come up this flute.
We're gonna try to put that barrel-aged aroma and taste into it
in the beginning while we're doing our mash.
What we'll do is we'll stop us
-a couple of pieces of pipe on top... -Mmm-hmm.
...So the core itself becomes part of the flue.
-Wood soaking all that mash in. -Mmm-hmm.
And then as we run it off,
we're gonna have something that's going to be essentially a charred taste,
but it's gonna be clear.
I think it's gonna give us a flavor like none other when this thing heats up.
Oh, it definitely will.
Usually, to get that wood charred flavor, you've got to let,
you know, your alcohol sit for two to four years.
That should give us the best of both worlds.
But our goal is to make it unaged aged alcohol.
I'm ready to rock and roll with it, brother.
[dramatic music playing]
[honking horn]
[josh] hell yeah.
-How's it going, boss man? -What's up, josh?
How is everybody?
Good to see you guys.
[jeremy] arriving in franklin county after a 4-hour haul,
josh delivers 500 pounds of ripe fruit to his shine partners,
eager to kick off their season with a run of strawberry brandy.
Boys, I've been through hell.
-Yeah? -What do you mean hell?
Well, I joshed it up again.
Actually, the biggest damn green strawberry I ever seen in my life, josh.
Go back to the truck. I'm expecting strawberries.
And lo and behold, what we got, watermelons.
And then I look a little closer and there's pineapple.
Dang, josh. You look like you done skinned a gator!
Lord almighty!
Make me up a gator skin boot right there.
Yes, sir.
I really truthfully think
that that would make some good moonshine right there.
Maybe if the cores were out of it.
-[scoffs] I don't know about that [bleep]. -They're awful dry.
They're about rotten.
Yeah, we tried a lot of things over the years,
but alligator skin pineapple, that's just not on our list.
What you got in mind, josh?
There's a family recipe from back home
that's super famous called the green lizard.
We make it out of the watermelon, the rind, everything.
Just smash it all up.
It really brings out that watermelon flavor if you'd use the rinds.
I remember seeing the adults drinking green lizard when I was a kid, you know?
And my dad passed this recipe down, and that's how I found out about it.
We're not gonna use any sugar. When we run it,
we run it twice, double distill it, and it comes out so good.
This is only enough for maybe one pot.
I don't know how much this is going to wind up being.
You know, we've built this great big still site. There's eight pots.
This looks like a lot of watermelons.
That right there, that's gonna mash in one pot.
Look, man, this may not be enough to mash in all these stills,
but I think it'll bring good money. It's going to be good liquor.
-Ready to roll with it. -I'm for it. What do you think?
-Sounds good to me. -We got it, let's roll with it.
Now, how are you going to plan on busting all this stuff up?
-I got a smasher over there. -Let's go check it out.
Josh is telling us that he's got a special purpose for these watermelons.
We're gonna make a little higher-end liquor this year
than what we made during the pandemic.
Now, that everybody is coming out of it,
it's gonna be like the roaring '20s all over again.
People are gonna be out, they're gonna be wanting to drink.
They're gonna want to be celebrating.
We're gonna make sure they celebrate with our moonshine.
Basically, this fits pretty tight in there, okay?
And then this goes on here, okay?
What do you mean? Which way?
It'll go up here, like this right here
and then attach to this, okay?
And then that pushes it down and smash everything.
Josh has got this thing.
It's basically the biggest beer can crusher in the world.
He says we're gonna be able to smash these watermelons up with that.
Let's see what she'll do.
I ain't no rocket scientist, but a hammer does the same thing.
[josh] there we go.
-No. -Lift up on it and jerk it down.
Yeah, bring it up and jerk.
We're having a slight problem with this fruit crusher.
It's a little bit tougher to get the rind busted down.
-Is it smashing 'em? -Yeah, it's smashing 'em.
Smash. Keep on getting it.
[josh] that ain't gonna work.
[country music playing]
damn, I thought that was gonna do it.
It got a good start on it, but that's about it.
Well, I don't like how much work it is.
We've got these watermelons in this masher.
We can't get enough leverage on it.
It just... It's not going to do it.
What if we put a hydraulic ram on it?
You know, just hook it to a battery and use a little...
Button up and down, up and down?
I got a hydraulic arm back here.
Kind of a ditch witch.
[henry] show me what you talking about. I have to see what you mean.
Let's see. Where's that bastard at?
Back over yonder beside that table.
I call it the ol' boneyard.
[josh] right here's the hydraulic ram.
[henry] oh, no, no, no, no, no.
That's my damn wood splitter, hoss.
-I think we can make it work though. -Check it out.
Y'all can't tear out my wood splitter.
-It's got our handle. -Yeah.
All we got to do is unbolt it right here.
It's not even mine.
Whose is it?
It's been sitting here for five years.
[tickle] damn sounds like it's his now.
Well, I can't watch this. I can't watch it. Go on, take it apart.
-For real? -Yeah, for real. Take it apart.
Henry, he's got an old log splitter
and this suits our purposes perfectly.
This thing's probably got about a 20-ton cylinder on it,
and it's made to hook up to a tractor.
And so what we'll do is we're gonna make this fruit smasher hydraulic.
We're gonna take it and mount this up in a frame,
change that plate out to what we got on our smasher and put it right here.
Hook this to henry's tractor and smash fruit
and let back up off of it.
[henry] so be gentle. Be gentle.
This is where we're going to put our fruit in.
We're going to come up and build a frame up here, over and down,
and then we're gonna take this hydraulic cylinder and mount it right here.
Perfect.
And then we'll hook it to henry's tractor, and when we pull the lever,
it's going to mash down with about 20 tons of force.
All right. So, let's fire us some metal
and let's put this baby together.
[country rock music playing]
[tickle] a-ha!
There you go, buddy.
I don't know what it is about welding,
but it puts josh in this happy place.
I almost envision him in a...
In a meadow full of flowers and, you know, birds singing,
bees flying by.
That's it, right after yonder.
And here josh is setting the whole thing on fire welding.
But you know what, he's his happiest there.
And it does make good to see josh happy.
Watch your fingers.
[grunts]
whoo!
-[henry] doggone. -Yeah.
[josh] all right, tickle.
-We need the tractor now, don't we? -Yes, sir.
Hook your tractor to her. She'll be good to go.
All right. I'm gonna get this right here.
This part is punkin' up.
There you go, josh. Stick it on down.
There you go.
[josh] look at that juice.
[all laughing]
-wow! Oh, yeah, man! That looks good. -There you go!
[tickle] now, that we've got our fruit crusher going.
This thing not only will mash watermelons,
it will mash anything we need in it.
What's up, bryan?
I just got here just in time for work, huh?
Just in time.
Now, it's time to mash in.
[josh] watch this right here.
[bryan] hell, yeah.
[all laughing]
son of a bitch.
Dude, you've done good, brother.
[country music playing]
[jb] oh, now,
only popcorn can find a place like this where it's hell to get in.
You ain't just a whistling dixie, rader.
Well, today is the day we're coming back to popcorn and jb's last run site.
We're going to mash in jb's all corn, no sugar mash.
All right, rader, what do you want done next?
[digger] jb back in the day was just a still hand.
But, today, jb is the boss, we're listening to him.
Before we light a fire, we got to
get up through yonder way and get us a flow of water started.
-Where'd you have that hose run from? -Up over there.
-Round this up here side. -Do you run it around this way?
-Yeah. -Yeah.
There was two reasons popcorn picked this spot.
[mark] look right here, baby man. We may be in business.
Number one, it was isolated.
Number two, it's got some of the finest water in the world
running 10 feet away.
This would be a pretty good place to run a hose
in the creek up there and run it right over to it.
-[digger] you got water? -Yeah, we got water.
Oh, it's cold, ain't it?
Hell yeah, it's cold.
[mark] there's one more thing I got to do here before we get started.
I've got something here that popcorn gave me before he died.
It's an irreplaceable piece of history.
People just forgot about it years ago and it showed back up.
[digger] I will be damned.
Looky there, boys.
Popcorn gave that to me. I asked him for it.
Six months or eight months later,
he showed up at the house.
He said, "I brought a few of that damn sign," and he doesn't want 'em.
He was notorious for building signs
-and making signs. -Oh, he loved making signs.
He couldn't spell for [bleep].
It ain't worth two cents,
but I wouldn't trade it for a damn rembrandt.
Well, it's time to quit being reminiscent and get to work.
Let's get after it.
There's the way I go now, the dreaded tri-stream.
[laughing]
wake up in the morning, and you're pissing in three different directions.
Why don't you do the honors and light this here burner and warm this water up.
[digger] oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's lit good.
You want to get that water kind of rolling a little bit
-before we add that corn. -Oh, yeah.
-Corn? -Corn.
The recipe that jb wants is all corn and no sugar.
[digger] coarse ground white cornmeal.
[mark] when you do all grains,
you have to use quadruple the amount of grain
in order to generate enough starch
and natural sugars to produce any volume at all.
-That thing is settled down? -Yeah.
It ain't going down none too fast,
but it might again when we get this bucket in there.
Once it starts releasing, the starches comes into a clump,
that's when it'll burn.
So when we dump all that corn in here, we go flame out.
We've got to keep stirring. We don't need no lumps.
We let this sit here from the 210-degree temperature it's at right now
till it gets down to about 160.
Then we'll put our magic dust in there and let it do its work.
Here, you want to do what I'm doing. For a while there,
it reminds you of being a teenager again.
[all laughing]
I tell you, it feels just like I'm stirring up
a dadgum giant bowl of cornbread batter.
As we stir and this corn's swelling back up, all the sugars are coming out.
Look at it.
[digger] well, they're still in long chains.
They just clump up, and then it becomes one big large mass,
just like cooking grits or oatmeal.
[mark] I mean, I love the way it looks,
but I never thought I'd ever see any liquor mash that looks like that.
[digger] if everything goes the way it's supposed to,
that amylase will break it down.
When it comes to making all-grain liquor,
there's a secret weapon that nobody can survive without,
and that's amylase enzyme.
Get that whooped in.
Oh, we'll whoop it.
Hella fun.
It's like mixing cement.
The amylase is a digestive aid basically.
It's in insect bellies, it's in our bellies.
Well, you can already see it's working.
In the name of simeon.
This amylase, basically, it's a meat cleaver for the sugar chains,
and it just chops them up into smaller bites
that the yeast can take in and convert into alcohol.
[mark] look at that, jb. Look how it's done loosened up.
It's making those sugars
-more accessible to yeast. -Yeah, right.
-This is insane. -All right.
No, it's science.
[mark] this is jb's run.
He come up with this, and digger has learned me something here so special,
I volunteered to do all the bucketing over.
[digger] don't splash that on your leg.
[jb] no, it'd be hot.
You talk about doing that thumped keg walk,
you'll be doing the burnt sack boogie.
"burnt sack boogie." [laughing]
damn, don't want that.
You couldn't even hardly shake it off of the mash stick before.
And now it just...
It looks like mash is supposed to look.
Boys, you've done great.
Let's don't jinx ourselves, guys.
We ain't turned it into liquor yet.
We gave it a good healthy dose.
You can't never pitch too much yeast.
-No. -Looky here at this, jb.
-Yeah. -What do you think of that?
Oh, yeah, that's one good-looking mash.
-Now, we got to make some liquor. -Yeah.
-And make it 103. -103.
That's an honest day's work.
-For half a day's wages. -Yeah.
[jb] yeah, I might give you a raise.
[rock music playing]
[josh] we're using this watermelon smasher
and that stuff's flying everywhere.
I'm talking about if you mash down and hold it down,
and it squirting dang 8-10 feet straight up.
I want to start squeezing down, slow down on it.
It works awesome and it cuts our time down,
and this thing has got a ton of power.
It's badass.
This stuff only got to be busted up a little bit, it ain't got to be real fine.
As long as this stuff's broke up enough
to actually get it in there and get juice out of it,
that's all we really need.
[henry] this baby here is almost ready to put in
once I bring the water up to about right here.
Then we're going throw the yeast in it, baby.
Gonna make that green lizard, brother.
[tickle] as we're smashing these watermelons, I'm noticing that
we might fill four barrels up, which is enough for one small pot.
You know, we built this great big still site. There's eight pots.
The watermelon's gonna make some good brandy.
It's just not gonna make enough of it.
What's fixin' to happen here?
[henry] what we're gonna do here,
we're gonna kick this yeast off before we pour it in the tub.
We're taking a little bit of warm water, we're taking some of the mash bill.
And you'll see that baby kick in.
We're not gonna add any sugar at all to our liquor.
We want this thing to be all watermelon.
[henry] baby is working.
Get them in the barrels.
It's gonna make better liquor.
-Looks good. -Yes, it does.
[tickle] now that we've got everything mashed in and getting it working,
it's just a matter of waiting for this stuff to work off.
When it gets ready, we're gonna take this stuff down to the still site
and, hopefully, we come out with a great product.
Looky yonder.
Henry, this thing is working like hell.
-Perfect. -That's what we want right there.
[dramatic music playing]
bettin' ol' davey's got what we're looking for?
I'll bet if anybody stands a chance, he's going to have it.
[mike] jerry come up with a good idea
about trying to run some alcohol in a wood barrel
so we can have that aged charred flavors through a clear alcohol.
Dave.
Mike and jerry.
Me and jerry, we are mutual friend with a guy named dave angel.
He owns a distillery here in maggie valley.
So we need to go talk to him and see if we can't get a few barrels off of him
and try to work out some kind of price arrangement.
What we're looking for is some good charred barrels.
-How many you needing? -About three.
I just got done emptying some about two, three days ago,
so I got a few barrels here.
They were once used up in kentucky to make bourbon,
so we've reused them to make whiskey out of them.
They're made out of american white oak.
That charred layer, I tell you, the whiskey I got out of here
had some nice vanilla and caramel notes in it, so that should come through.
We're looking to do some top-quality small-batch whiskeys this season.
People's got money. They're ready to spend.
Economy's coming back and people want to spend that money.
They want good stuff. I hear that.
-Here's another big question. -Yeah.
What do you got to have for these barrels?
Well, I'm gonna have to replace them. I think we can do $150 each.
I'd say that's pretty fair.
And I want me just a taste of what that tastes like.
[mike] I'll tell you what we'll do.
We'll bring you a bottle of our finest
for one of these barrels and pay you for the other two. How about that?
I think we could do that.
We'll call it "experimental research" for me.
How's that sound?
-Sounds like a deal to me, brother. -All right, brother.
I'll tell you what, we're off to the races.
All we got to do is load them on the truck,
get them to where we're going and get started on these rigs.
Yeah, boy!
[jerry] we got us some barrels.
[country music playing]
[jb] man, it's a little rough getting in here.
[mark] man, I tell you, we're getting old, ain't we?
You're damn right.
[digger] hell, about that. It beats the alternative.
Well, the day has come to get in here early in the morning,
get this mash pumped over into the steel pot.
Oh, that smells good.
Today is the day, we run jb's all-corn recipe.
Yeah, that one's ready, boys.
We come in, check the mash.
It's dead as last year's calendar.
It's ready to run.
I'm going to set this little fella right here.
So, this is the general vicinity
-it's got to go. -Yeah.
Well, we've got a bigger pot than popcorn had.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
You might can set the pot right here.
Yeah, that'd work.
We want to put the still exactly where popcorn had his.
Let's see how it'll sit right there.
-Then that'd be real, real close, jb. -You're darn right.
It means a lot to be back here. It's fond memories.
It's changed a lot since 20 years ago.
Popcorn, I'd say he's looking down, thinking,
"what the hell them boys are doing?"
finish up what you're going to finish up.
I'm gonna build us a little fire
so we can have some coals cook on here directly.
All righty. Sounds good to me.
I'll work on putting some mash in the pot.
This is just a small run,
so we're gonna do it the same way that
the old man did it back in the day.
We're just going to bucket it from the mash barrel to the still.
It's going to be a lot different run,
but we want to do it as close as we possibly could to the original.
[digger] risk that falls down, I'm going to rake it back
and get us a bed of coals going.
I'll get us some...
Bacon going, and I'll make us some ramps and eggs.
All right.
That's what you call ranch lettuce. That's good stuff.
[digger] popcorn loved to cook when he was making liquor.
His menu was limited,
but he liked to flaunt his skills.
We're going to pay homage to that as well,
but it'll be something a little bit different.
We're gonna make a big run of ramps and eggs
while we run this liquor.
It's going to be delish.
[mark] digger is gonna feed the heck out of us.
We're going to eat good.
Right there under is some crispy bacon and fried tater.
-Look what's going in there next, rader. -Mmm-mmm.
[jb] that's the main one there.
[digger] almost right.
[jb] that's the main ingredient.
I brought my old cast iron skillet.
[digger] this kind of like a mixed-up omelet.
-Yep, it is. -Appalachian style.
[jb] appalachian omelet. Yeah.
Honestly and truly, this is our kind of chow.
This is... This is what we love.
They all right? You've outdone yourself.
This is as country cooking as it gets.
This stuff is so good.
I mean, you almost about got to lay down to eat it.
[jb] well, we better get some paste made.
You know, I never thought in a million years
that we would ever come back to this spot.
-A little more. -Yeah.
But we thought it was, you know, just lost to nature.
And probably if jb hadn't brought us up here,
it would have continued to have been forgotten.
[mark] thank god, jb's the paste master.
We're just trying to live something
that we didn't get to live 20 years ago.
We're trying to relive this thing through jb.
You know, we're still fortunate.
We're blessed to have jb with us here still.
-We're getting ready here, boys. -Yeah.
-We'll have liquor there, sure enough, any time. -Yeah.
Oh, we got liquor coming out.
-[digger] well, we do, don't we? -[jb] yeah.
[digger] better put this ol' coon dodger in.
[jeremy] on hallowed ground in maggie valley, north carolina,
mark, digger, and jb near completion on the first damn run of liquor
anyone's made here
since popcorn sutton did his last damn run of liquor
20 years ago.
Seeing this liquor run, you know,
this... This is wonderful.
-We're gonna get it here, ain't we, old buddy? -Yeah.
[digger] we're up here
in a place that started the rage of moonshine
with popcorn and jb.
I couldn't ask for anything better to be sitting in this spot right now
and liquor running out of that worm.
-It's your liquor, jb, you get the first holdin'. -All righty.
-Oh, it smells good, digger. -Oh, god.
It ain't no doubt.
Damn, you ain't never had a whooping for holding your breath, have you?
Glad I'm driving you out of here.
-Here we go. -What do you think?
Nailed it.
-You like it? -Damn right I like it.
By god!
You know, 100% corn liquor.
Nothing even compares.
I mean, it's... It's the best of the best.
I'm glad I got to do this with you, rader.
I am too.
This still site. This is hallowed ground.
I sense popcorn's presence around here.
I miss him. I could see him over doing that thump keg walk.
-Yay! -And here we go. And...
[mark] a lot of things are special about today.
None more important than the fact that we get to be here with jb.
-We've made three-and-a-half gallons. -Yeah, but hell.
We get it all tempered up, we'll have four.
Fine run on nothing but grain though.
You're damn right.
-Out of a little old pot like that. -Hell yeah.
[digger] this liquor right here,
I'll temper it to 103, and I'll put it in his hands.
It's his liquor.
-Jb, thank you, my brother. -Yeah.
Rader...
-Yeah. Yeah. -I love you, brother.
You know, moreover, this wasn't about making a big run
to have a lot of quantity.
We were about quality and paying homage to popcorn
and honor to jb.
Good and clear, too.
Some powerful stuff, right there.
Yeah, that's powerful stuff.
[jb] I'm proud of what we made today
and I think popcorn would've been proud of us.
[henry] it's looking good, y'all.
Tell you what, it tastes pretty good,
but it's still got a couple of days left to work out.
Yeah, at least a couple of days, I'd say.
Man, you want to just go on ahead and get it down to the still site,
let it finish working off?
Well, I've been thinking about that.
You know...
Good run in and out of a still site,
you're taking a risk every single time you hit the road.
Every time.
We got that site, got a lot of money tied up.
We got stills here. We've got worms here.
We've got an old site that we used last year.
Why not we take it down to the old site and make this one run
and not have to worry about losing
-the eight we already got set up? -Yeah.
I know it's a little more work
setting up a still and all, but we've got big man here with us.
It should be pretty easy.
We get set it up, we get it running and get it out.
You want bryan to set these in the truck?
-Yeah. Sounds good to me. -Josh has been working out.
Here's your chance of hauling that barrel in, boss!
And I believe we'll take a kubota while you're all flexing.
This is only gonna make one still full of mash.
The risk is not justifiable
to endanger eight pots.
All right, pull it up some.
[tickle] so, what we're going to do is
go back down to one of our old still sites,
just set up a small pot
and we're gonna run this green lizard there.
[country music playing]
[tickle] all right, nothing to it but to do it.
[henry] these old damn stills are a whole lot harder to load than the big ones.
This still site, it has served us well.
We've made a lot of good liquor here.
We've done built a bridge across the creek.
This still site, it'll work just fine.
What we wanna do, we'll split this stick.
That still come on out, we're going to do the same thing.
So go back a little bit more.
Maybe a little bit more work bringing in all this equipment
and setting up another little still site.
But it's not like we don't have the help
and the equipment to do it with.
[henry] now, you all push back. So, we'll kick out.
Come on, then.
That looks pretty good there.
Man, I'm all fired up about this green lizard.
All right, there you go.
Josh's family handed it down
and telling us how great it is.
We ready to make some high-end liquor.
[tickle] these watermelon rinds,
they've been in there long enough.
We're going to drain the solids out,
get it over into our pot to finish fermenting.
And in the meantime, we can get everything else together
that we need to set this up as a working still site.
That's it right there, boss. It's full.
That's what we want.
Cover this baby up.
[tickle] all right, let's get the hell out of here.
Now, that we got the mash in the still...
Let's roll.
...It's only going to be a matter of a few days.
We're gonna be able to come back down here and run this thing.
Let's see if we can get this barrel off
and get a core in it, what do you think?
Something like that, bubba.
Me and jerry, we're making a still out of a wooden barrel.
-You got it? -Oh, yeah.
Usually, it's done been mashed in even before we got a still completed,
because we got all these barrels that laid out in the woods.
In this case, we're going to be mashing it inside the still.
I'm just ready to get this damn thing built and get in the woods.
And I'm ready to get a run done.
Heard that, man.
Basically, what we're trying to do
is we're going to try to use an american white oak barrel
to mash in and run.
And how we're gonna do that is we're gonna put a core
through the center of this thing.
This metal core can heat it from the inside out.
We can't just put a fire out under the barrel. It'll burn the barrel up.
[gasps] smells like whiskey!
[jerry] check that out.
[mike] yeah, well, there's liquor in there.
We can bottle that up.
There's no damn way I'm letting this go to waste.
We're going to go drain it out and take us a snort of it
and keep it for later on.
[jerry] what do you think? Hot?
It's good, by god. But it's hot.
Let me try it.
God dang.
I'll tell you what, boy, this whiskey it's strong
and it's got a really good taste to it.
You can taste the white oak barrel coming through it all the way.
I mean, it's charred.
I believe we're going to be in damn hot with this charred barrel.
That's what we need for this mash to potentially have its flavor.
[jerry] well, get to rolling this core, get her soldered up.
[mike] and we got to put this right in that damn hole right there.
And it's got to fit.
Yeah, I know.
Making a 4-inch core about 36 inches long,
stick straight through the middle of this barrel.
It's sealed, baby.
You know, the most important thing
about this whole entire build here
is getting this core slammed through the center
nice and tight where nothing's going to leak.
That's my biggest concern with this whole rig
that we're going to sit here and leak out mash out
before we ever get a chance to run it.
There it is, right there.
That looks pretty good, mike.
Now that we got the core through the barrel, all we got to do is
flange one end's direction with this hammer as we go. That way, it's a perfect fit.
With the flange to it, let's see what it looks like.
[jerry] I am super excited to get this thing in the woods.
You know, to my knowledge, I have never seen anything like this done before.
And if it works out good, it can be a whole new stepping stone
for the moonshine industry.
[mike] looks good, don't it?
My only concern, I think I need to solder this seam a little bit more.
These flanges should be air and watertight.
You can see it right there, but I'll tell you, I'd like to come on up with it.
And I noticed my solder joint soldered good all the way up,
but I want to put just a little more solder to kind of
ease on up with it up toward that wood.
Let's do it.
Right. I am gonna solder it from the inside.
Whoa!
[groaning] dang it!
Oh, god!
[groaning]
[digger] they have ramps everywhere.
Oh, there's plenty right there, plenty more right there.
I might pick this little mess.
You get up around west virginia, they call them wild leeks.
We call them ramps.
They come up for about three weeks out of the year
and they're a delicacy.
These big clumps like this, you've got to work for them.
They make you work at it. And there's your prize right there.
Fry you up a couple of pounds of bacon,
throw them ramps in there and you've got a meal fit for a king,
and they are delicious.
But they'll make your breath nuclear.
I guess that's why we like them. That way, nobody gets in your face.
[mike] I think I need to solder this seam a little bit more.
Let's do it.
I'm gonna solder it from the inside.
Whoa!
Damn!
Oh, god!
[mike groaning and gasping]
stick the flame to it,
that bastard blows up the side of my head, burns my arm all up.
[bleep] barrel blowed up with alcohol in it.
I need something, I need... I need something to get on my arm.
It [bleep] got me up all the way down through here.
If my face would have been one inch closer to that hole,
I'd be in a bad burn unit some damn where right now.
That could have got somebody damn killed right there.
I'm gonna be fine. It's burnt, it's burnt up
and it come up the side of my damn head.
We're just trying to get the build done and wasn't thinking.
Alcohol vapor is volatile.
When you put flame to volatile vapor, it's going to explode.
Me and mike just poured a gallon of alcohol in this thing.
I mean, we might as well have poured gas out of this barrel.
This barrel could have blown apart to shreds,
and this thing would have splintered apart, lost eyes.
I mean, I'd even hate to think what would have happened.
Man, you all right?
I'm gonna make it, man. That scared me to damn death, I know that.
You know the crazy thing about it is, both of us is welders.
I don't know why neither one of us was thinking about this,
but here we are in a damn hurry.
Building a damn still pot that's already soaked in alcohol vapors.
I'm beginning to think me and jerry
both ain't nothing but a bunch of dumbasses.
God almighty dang, man.
Look at that, man. Flatter than a pancake, son.
Whoo!
[mike] well, that right there
prime damn example of damn alcohol fumes in a vacuum.
You know, the only damn thing that's going through my mind right now,
we're down on our luck. We're broke.
We're on the other side of the mountain.
Ain't nothing we can do now, but start all damn over.
I'm beginning to think our damn season's over before it ever gets started.
[country music playing]
straight back, all right. That's it. Good.
[josh] all right, though!
Well, today's the day. We're gonna run the green lizard,
got to bring everything in worms, caps, all that expensive stuff.
She's ready? Gonna make some money, some green lizard, baby.
[tickle] we've had a few battles to fight.
First off, it was supposed to be strawberry.
We managed with the watermelons
and it filled up one of our small pots.
All right.
By the time you split a dollar up five ways,
don't no nobody got enough money to buy anything.
We're going to have to go a whole lot bigger this year.
We got to pump liquor and keep it going.
We got to get us more fruit.
Oh!
I hate that freaking pump. I mean, listen to it.
That pump is so loud, you can hear it
for a quarter of a mile, half a mile,
but we don't have to run it very long,
just long enough to fill that water box up.
All right.
Damn that pump's loud.
[henry] so we'll be firing in a second.
[josh] go ahead and fire that bitch up.
Don't pull that hose out. Don't pull that hose out!
Hold on. Put that block on that hose, so it won't pull out.
There you go.
Lights, camera, action.
There you go.
Won't be long. We'll have some green lizard.
I tell you what, it smells real good.
Hell yeah, it's going to be good. I am telling you.
-That better be good. -It will be.
[tickle] it's all lizard liquor.
A lizard liquor.
Yes, sir, it's all lizard liquor.
Are you a lizard licker?
[tickle laughing]
on a normal basis, if somebody told me
something was called green lizard, I wouldn't want to drink it,
but I know what went into this.
And, uh, hell, I'll drink any liquor we make.
Where's your cap at? We'll get some paste made up, or something.
Baking cornbread. They don't know it yet. That's not too bad.
[tickle] don't eat up the damn paste.
I'm really excited about making the green lizard.
I think we oughta go ahead and cap it off.
It's been steaming for a few minutes now.
I grew up with it,
and the old-timers would say,
"hey, take a drink off of this stuff right here!
This'll put some hair on your chest.
Either put it on or take it off, warn. I guarantee you.
This thing's good.
That's green lizard, baby. That's what we want.
[henry] it's so good to get outside again.
You know, we were inside through the winter and that was okay.
But there's nothing like getting out in the woods,
setting up on a nice creek. All that nice fresh air.
Here you go, bryan, you need you some paste over yonder?
-Yeah. -All right, there you go.
Y'all got enough over yonder?
[josh] this stuff works awesome.
Somebody's coming across the bridge.
[man yelling]