[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] this time on moonshiners.
Good to see you again.
I'm back in north carolina and I'm back with brian.
We've been trying to find a still site,
start some making some runs,
start contributing to this business.
[engine revving]
[brian] oh, damn.
I got these bottles I wanted to show you.
Nice.
At this point, the wedding's coming up,
you know, and the pressure's on.
Yee-haw.
I've got to just get this blueberry champagne finished...
[laughs] liable to get blown.
Oh.
We've got to mimic
the sea aging here in the mountains.
Hello here, cowboy, how you doing, old buddy?
We wanna get in up there on top of the mountains.
We feel like we just got the key
to the kingdom so to speak.
Wow.
[man] this is how we make the moonshine.
[siren blaring]
[suspenseful music playing]
all right, listen, before you get on my ass,
listen, jerry's in the hospital right now, okay?
Sorry we're late, well, he's in the hospital,
throwing up, sweating, weak in his arms and legs,
can't use his left arm hardly or anything.
And they're now transporting him
to asheville over to the big hospital.
He's got bleeding on his brain,
takes him a little while to answer a question.
Um, so something's definitely going wrong with the...
With the mind, with the brain.
I don't know any... All the details yet.
But, uh, jerry's in pretty rough shape right now.
And, um, we're both in rough shape.
Yeah, I guess I can go on here
and check on the champagne myself
while we wait to hear some news
on what's gonna go on with jerry.
I always try to hope for the best.
I just hope that he gets better.
But he's got bleeding on the brain.
And his blood pressure is at a stage
that he should be dead at this point.
But this point, jerry's with some very smart doctors,
so I've got to just carry on. My wedding's coming up.
I've only got a few more days left, you know,
and the pressure is on, but I can't help
but be thinking about jerry.
This is mine and jerry's champagne here.
We're gonna get this ready for the wedding.
Well, speak of the devil, that's old jerry.
Hey, buddy.
[jerry] what's going on, man?
Playing with these champagne bottles
like you asked me to.
Biggest question is how you doing?
[jerry] I'm hanging in there, getting...
They're just trying to figure out what's going on,
bleeding on the brain, and trying to figure out why.
Oh, my god, man, that...
They have me hooked up to all these daggum machines
and ivs and pumps
and all kinds of gadgets and stuff.
But the main most important thing
is you take care of yourself
and get better and everything.
You know that the champagne
is important to you... To your woman there.
I wanna make sure we get that taken care of.
So continue on getting them bottles ready
so we can get that process done.
I will, I'll do that, brother,
but my biggest concern is you get better.
I need you. You know, you're my brother.
You're my other partner.
You see what I'm saying?
[jerry] I hear you.
I need you not to worry about all this.
But you know me, I wanna make stuff sure...
Make sure stuff gets done.
[laughs] I know you do.
The state I'm in.
You take care of yourself and keep me updated, okay?
[jerry] all right, see you soon.
All right.
He seems to be in real good spirits and talking,
but you can tell he's weak and he's real tired.
But, uh, there ain't no give up in him,
that's for sure.
It kind of lifts my spirits up a little bit,
and we're gonna make this happen...
We're gonna get this champagne ready for the wedding.
Well, I guess I just got to get them
upside down and vertical.
Me and jerry, we started the second fermentation
on the champagne a while back,
where we add our bubbles
by adding the champagne, yeast, and sugar.
Time to start rotating the bottles up vertically
so that leftover champagne yeast
will come to the neck of the bottle,
then when we freeze all that sediment
right here in this neck, we take it,
knock this cap off, blow the plug,
and then cork it off.
You definitely don't want nothing
floating around in your champagne.
That kinda turns people off.
Yeah, you know, people want their champagne
to be just as clear as it can be.
It can have color to it.
But it don't need to be cloudy.
So I've got to just get this blueberry champagne finished
and that's what I intend to do.
All right. We're good to go.
[upbeat music playing]
oh.
The higher we get, the slower we go.
Holy moly.
[narrator] in cocke county,
after successfully sea aging
their tennessee whiskey,
mark and digger are looking to replicate the results
500 miles inland in the smoky mountains.
[digger] you know, last year,
we put some liquor on a french shrimp boat agent.
Everything worked out perfect.
-[mark] hot damn. -There's something in there for us.
We put liquor in these about seven, eight months ago.
Yeah.
But we need to finish them off.
We need to get them aged up
like we did the ones on the boat,
so we can sell them and make some money.
Mmm-hmm.
Honestly, a shrimp boat
is just too much risk, too time-consuming.
It's a seven hour-drive in each direction
with two barrels of a untaxed whiskey.
Also, he's subject to coast guard inspections.
[digger] you know, mark, here in these mountains,
temperatures change pretty drastic day to night,
along with humidity. Barometric pressure changes.
We've just got to figure out
something that causes motion.
All the factors in aging liquors are important.
The barometric pressure,
the temperature change, humidity,
but none of them are as important for rapid aging
as the motion of the liquor in the barrel.
It don't matter what moves them,
as long as they move.
It's got to be something that occurs naturally,
land or water.
It has to be wind or water.
Wind or water.
Our dilemma is, we know we need to
make a ocean aged liquor, if you will,
in the mountains.
We ain't got no ocean,
but we got a lot of different kinds of water,
we got moving water, we got creeks, we got rivers.
Every piece of water in our neck of the woods,
somebody fishing it, kayaking it.
-Too many fishermen on it. -[digger] yeah.
Wind is gonna be our better option.
I say we go with wind right off the bat,
and see what we can do with it.
[mark] okay.
You know, digger's idea for sea aging
in the mountains is wind.
It just has to move this much.
[digger] that's all it needs.
Now the biggest problem we've got to overcome
is how do we replicate that constant motion?
I mean if it moved... If it do that right there...
-Ten hours a day. -Yeah.
So here we go, we got to find some place
to put our liquor in the wind.
-Cool. -Thank you, puss.
Oh, don't mention it.
[upbeat music playing]
there it is, nasty son of a gun.
[narrator] across the state line in north carolina,
josh is back on his home turf after a still site raid
blew up his plans with tickle and the laws.
Come on, come...
-[man 1 speaking] -[man 2 speaking]
[josh] well, we've had a really slow start to our season.
We've done got raided,
but even though I'm back in north carolina,
it don't mean that me, henry, and kenny,
and tickle don't still have a partnership,
it just means that I fled the scene,
I went back home until things cooled down,
but while I'm back home,
I'm gonna have to find a way to make some money
and contribute myself.
[dramatic music playing]
hey, man.
Show up just like you disappear.
Brian, after a lot of phone calls,
thought he was gonna maybe, like,
tell me he didn't feel like moonshining anymore,
but he finally showed up.
Well, it's good to see you again.
And I'm glad you made it.
They said they'd make sure you was took care of.
Tickle in there come down the dirt road and found me,
and loaded up a couple of stills,
brought them home, trying to set them up.
I've been trying like hell to get ahold of you.
You've been mia.
I didn't know what the deal was with that.
But if you're ready, I'm ready to put your ass to work.
So what's the... What's the plan?
So the plan is, is I got these two stills.
I don't know if it's worthy or not,
but I do got a place or two
that I wanna go inspect and look around.
If you want to go, I'm in.
Sure it is good to see brian
after all we've been through, getting back home.
It feels like we're back up in action now.
We're gonna go find a new still site,
move our stills in, and get them to running.
Just because we got raided at a still site
don't mean that we're not gonna be moonshiners.
He claims that he knows the place,
so what we're gonna do first
is we're gonna take the four-wheelers out
and make sure there's a creek nearby.
Make sure the land looks good,
and make sure it's off the beaten path.
See if we can set these stills up and make some money.
[josh] how's that, amigo?
Them bugs are bad.
-[brian] yeah... -[laughs] damn.
[engine revving]
I'll tell you what, nobody's driving a car
to where we're getting to.
Hold on, man.
Back up.
[engine revving]
[josh] now I'm back with brian,
we got our side by sides,
and we're gonna try to find us a still site.
And then hopefully get these stills set up,
start making some run,
start contributing to this business.
[brian] oh, damn.
[country music playing]
[mark] it's all about the notion of
letting tennessee whiskey sail.
Not sell, but sail.
Well, we'll see.
We've challenged ourselves now
to figure out a way to sea age liquor on dry land.
[digger] we'll give it a try anyhow.
[mark] we ain't about trying, are we?
So we're gonna go to an old barn
and see if we can't replicate that constant motion.
Sometimes it's like being in a wind tunnel in this barn,
it gets big.
Show me what you got in mind here, puss.
Well, my first thought is
clip that rascal around there.
The best thing about this old barn is
it has accessibility.
We can drive right to it.
And we have the owner's blessing,
you know, those are crucial, crucial things
in the whiskey business.
And then mr. Chain.
[mark] this is overkill,
but we're simulating it being full.
I honestly feel that aged whiskey
will command a hundred dollars more per gallon.
That's not a lot of money
if you have to wait five years
in order to get it.
But if you can make a hundred additional dollars
in six months' time per gallon,
it's a good deal for us.
It'll hold it.
It'll hold 3,000 pounds.
Our plan is we'll use a chain pile
to pull the barrels up,
and then we'll suspend them on ratchet straps
between the poles and the pole bar.
You keep your toes out from under there,
-puss, in case... -[digger] why?
Don't you worry about that.
Oh, you watch your toes, too...
[laughs]
that was stupid as hell.
If we can get the barrel swinging in this barn,
it's perfect.
All right.
Yeah, tighten that bad boy up.
It's secure and it's easily accessible.
We can back the truck right in
to where we wanna hang the barrels.
I may drive back out from under it.
[digger] well, whatever, chief.
Whoa now.
[laughs] there you go.
You forgot I was back here, did you?
I forgot you was hanging on.
I thought you got down.
I just about did.
We got a barrel swinging from the rafters here now,
we got to wait on the wind to get here and move it.
You know, right now everything is hanging in the balance.
No pun intended.
[mark] see, it's moving a little tiny bit.
I just don't know if that's enough to jostle it enough.
We look at it, we take a step back from it,
and it's just hanging out there, you know,
like a hair in a biscuit,
it ain't really doing anything.
But we needed to move you know
about just at least that much right there.
I mean just to push with your finger on it,
it sends it moving, it sends it rocking,
doing what it needs to do.
But, uh, the wind has to do it,
digger and myself, we're not gonna be here
to push it backwards and forwards.
Is there any way even to check weather pattern?
Let me look at the wind,
I'll look at the aviation website.
How high are we here?
We're 1,327 feet.
Winds at this elevation are calm,
that's like this little boring
five mile air breeze.
We need a windier place.
-Yeah. -I don't know where to go.
But I know for a fact the higher up we are,
the more wind that blows.
Mountain tops are where you get your biggest wind.
We all know that.
Got that old topographical map to give us elevations,
all these knobs through here.
I'm thinking we need to go find my old topographical map,
look at the highest peaks,
and then try to find a way to get up there
and put some liquor somewhere to age it.
We know this will work.
It will. We just got to find the wind.
[dramatic music playing]
help me pick up this stuff right here.
Me and brian are riding all over the place,
trying to locate a still site.
Long story short, I turn them side by side over.
See, what happened was...
Joshua was coming in hot.
[josh] I still don't know what happened really.
I just know that it flipped over
and I knew as it was going I just locked on tight
and I held on as hard as could.
I knew it was too late to catch myself.
There was no freaking stopping it.
When it toppled over at some point,
it landed on my foot...
-[groans] -my foot hurting bad.
When I got up, I was thinking that my foot
was cut in half inside my boot.
That's what it felt like.
This [bleep] went on your leg, your foot was stuck
in the steering wheel and it was like flipped over.
So here josh sits with a purple foot.
Like this thing was instantly purple
and he could barely get his boot off.
All right, man, you gotta go to the hospital.
[josh] I just wanna go home.
My grandma and grandpa said,
"boy, if you're gonna be dumb, you got to be tough."
I was trying to get up and walk it off,
but I wasn't walking any damn where.
My whole foot is turning purple.
I gotta go to the hospital, I'm just telling you.
I know I do, my foot's crushed.
Look how purple it is...
-[bleep] just take... -Yeah.
Just take me.
I was trying to be tough about it.
Just another little old checkmark,
another brick in the wall,
broken bones, and injuries to the josh owens saga.
[engine starting]
[engine revving]
[acoustic music playing]
[sighs] well, my initial plan is today
is to fill these bins with ice.
I've got to freeze all the necks
of these champagne bottles, just the necks,
so I can pull it out and knock the cap off,
blow the frozen plug out,
which contains all the sediment of the leftover yeast
and particles that could have been left over into the wine.
And then cork it off, put my wire cage on it,
and she's ready to rock and roll.
But first off, I wanna give old jerry a call.
You know, me and jerry are partners.
We do this stuff together. We need each other.
So I'm glad that he's able to communicate
with me through phone.
What's up, buddy?
Oh, I'm just laying here.
I got these bottles I wanted to show you.
Nice.
I got all the... All the bottles upside down.
I guess now, next thing is
I'll just start freezing those necks.
Don't forget to get two bags of ice
and add a little bit of salt.
I want about two inches up the bottleneck.
So about two inches?
-Two just over the neck, yeah. -Okay.
[jerry] now make sure you do it right.
-I'm gonna do it right. -[jerry] yeah.
Make me proud.
All right, brother, I'll do.
-See you, man. -Have a good night.
All right. Bye-bye.
Jerry is so hell-bent on me finishing it.
I want it to be as perfect
as I could ever possibly make it now.
All right.
I'm at the last process of this champagne.
I've got to freeze all the necks
of these champagne bottles.
Today is the final process of the champagne run.
When we freeze that neck, we can lock that top off,
shoot that plug of ice out,
which is gonna contain all the sediment in it
and then turn around and re-cork it
and it should be good to go.
I can do it by myself.
But, you know, it's always best
if you have you partner here with you.
He wants me to carry forward, I'm carrying forward
a little salt to it.
The salt, it starts
the process of melting the ice,
but it'll be colder
than the freezing temperature of 32.
As soon as you put the neck to your champagne bottles
in the icy, salty water, it's gonna immediately
start to freeze the neck of that bottle.
I'm gonna get my boards, got to lift this up
so I can get my ice bin under here.
But I'll tell you what, I wish jerry was here right now
to help me do this.
Yeah, I got to be careful
not to shake these things up too much.
I gotta bring the bottles up,
so I can slide the dadgum ice bin under them.
Now, I need to take a board out at a time I guess.
And then I got to bring them right back down,
but you only want your neck sticking down an ice
because that's all you wanna freeze
because that's where all your sediments' at, is in that neck.
All I got to do is wait for these things to freeze.
Jerry, I know he'd love to be there,
but he can't be and he's depending on me to do it.
So, you got figure it out for yourself,
you know, sometimes.
Well, oh, sure.
Oh, yes.
We got a good plug of ice in there.
We've got all the sediment from the yeast
and particles and everything left behind
that we do not want in our champagne
froze right here in the neck of this champagne bottle.
All right.
We got to take the cap off, blow it out.
It should blow the cube of ice out.
I hope like so.
Uh-oh. Here we go.
Let me shake that up, blow that down there.
It froze too much.
All we got to do is get that to blow out.
Oh, there we go... [laughs]
boy, what a good blow.
Here we go.
We got champagne.
Jerry's gonna be proud now.
So you got to be real, real quick.
Get back to the table, cork it off,
put the wire cage on it.
There we go.
We can lay it flat again.
If you don't put the wire cage on it,
it could blow the cork.
Right there. There's the plug of ice
that comes out of the champagne bottle.
That's your yeast sediment right there.
And we got good clean champagne.
Yee-haw.
I'm actually having fun popping these caps
and plugging it off, and putting the wire cages on.
You know, I'm about to taste this champagne
for the very, very first time.
There's a whole hell of a lot riding on this right now.
Damn it.
Calm down.
Oh, my god.
Jerry is gonna be proud of this.
I tell you what, man, this stuff is phenomenal.
He's got the blueberry coming through all the way.
Whoo, boy.
But right up there about the 12%, 13%
alcohol in there.
I'm tickled to death. I can't believe
that it's turned out this way. Whoo.
You know, jerry would love to be here right now
to help me do this, but he's not.
I just try to make it as fun as I can for myself.
He'll be proud of my work that I've done and completed
for both of us and it's a win-win at the end.
Oh, yes, we're getting there.
[country music playing]
it's getting here
and my eyes aren't poor anymore.
You know, mark and myself,
we got to figure out some place
where the wind moves enough to keep these barrels moving.
This topo map's gonna show us
where we're high up in the hills.
I've got an old topographical map
and it shows us what the elevation is.
One thing that we're not short on
that's, mountaintops around here.
And all the... All the highest peaks though,
the park services has got.
Yeah, we can't be in no park.
You do not do anything illegal on federal land.
That gets you more time than doing the actual crime itself.
Well, we got to have some place
people don't infringe upon that.
It's got to be secure.
[mark] digger and I grew up in these mountains here
and all these bumps and these hills
are mountain peaks, a big huge area.
All the cherokee forest, smoky mountains,
private land, western north carolina,
eastern tennessee.
What about up here on bradley mountain?
It's got nothing but houses in development now.
Okay.
See anything right through here, see that?
That's one of the highest points of national park.
National park.
Most of these tops are in government land
or private land that,
you know, we don't know who owns them.
-Rattlesnake mountain. -That's the national forest.
See that cherokee national forest?
Yup, we have our cherokee. Yup. Sure is.
This narrows our search considerably
the fact that, yeah, the costs are there
but we don't have access to them.
This is maggie valley right here?
Yeah, this is the valley right there.
-Campbell creek road. -That's up there where...
That's the old popcorn site.
-Popcorn sites, yeah. -Yeah.
Mmm-hmm. Look here.
There's cataloochee. It's all private owned.
It is the highest peak of it is.
-There's a ski resort there. -Yup.
But just over here,
you know what's right there, don't you?
-That's a ghost town. -That's a ghost town.
The place we're looking at is the old ghost town.
It's an old theme park.
And that might work for us, puss.
Yup.
It was a shoot 'em up town.
There was old west shootouts
on every corner every two hours.
It was a place every kid wanted to go
when he was our age back years ago.
-And it's abandoned, digger... -Yeah.
...And it's got gates on the road.
-It's private owned. -It is private owned.
You know, I've got a lot of fond memories
from ghost town when I was a kid.
You know who's watching
after that property up there, don't you?
-Cowboy. -Cowboy.
[country music playing]
oh, damn...
[groans]
last night, I went to the hospital.
My foot is in pretty bad shape.
What in the world?
Yeah, I broke it in like four places.
It's gonna have to have some pins in it.
I was thinking, man. I can't really do anything.
Like I always can't do... [bleep] what am I gonna do?
It ain't the pain.
You know, I'm in pain, it's throbbing, but I'm good.
What I'm not good about is the fact
that I can't go do anything.
It hurts and I know it's there,
but when I wanna get up, I go to the bathroom or something,
I wanna get up and just go, and I'm like,
I don't go very far, far.
I realize I ain't going without these crutches.
There ain't no way I'm gonna be running two 450 gal stills.
Hey, I've been down before.
I'll be right back. It's just gonna be a minute.
-More than a minute. -I'm just saying.
Who you told about all this?
Have you old henry or kenny, any of them,
called tickle, anybody?
Man, it's just happened.
Hell, I ain't have time to gather my bearings yet.
Well, I got a partnership with henry, kenny, and tickle.
Yeah, I'll call them and see what they say.
They got all those stills up there running.
I'm supposed to have those stills
down here running and I don't have them running.
I'm gonna have a real hard time setting them up, too.
[man] joshua, what's going on, brother?
I got... I got myself into a situation.
-[man] what do you mean? -When I was in a rig,
I don't know if you could say
I crashed my foot or just broke it or what,
but I broke it multiple places
and I got to have surgery, so...
[man] oh, man, you got to be kidding me.
That's gonna hold up the whole operation, isn't it?
Yeah. I didn't even think about it 'till
-a few minutes ago. -[man] man, oh, man.
Well, listen, holler if you need us,
need a few thousand dollars to hold you over?
Well, I got a little something up my sleeve.
I'm hoping it might work out. I don't know.
It might be stupid as all to get out,
but it might be the best thing I ever did, too, so.
I'm trying to think of a way right now.
I might be onto something where I maybe
could make some money without the stills.
And if you could just, you know,
give me my cut worth of alcohol,
it'd be fine with me.
-[man] instead of money? -Yeah.
He told me to give me some money, whatever it took.
I told him just for right now,
-just send me some shine. -[man] that works.
We got things rolling pretty good here.
How am I gonna pull this off?
Want me to send it down?
I think I'll just send brian on up there to get it.
[man] all right. Well, just come on then.
-All right, brother? -Okay, brother.
[man] all right. Bye.
Sure is good to have good partners,
good friends.
What's the trick you got up your sleeve?
-Just go get the whiskey. -All right.
Brian, he's picking up my cut of the liquor
instead of picking up the cash because I got this idea,
it's risky and it may not work.
But if it does work,
I think I'm really onto something.
Holler if you need me.
Keep that thing rubber side down.
What side's rubber?
On the tire.
[country music playing]
oh, yeah.
Last one.
I've got champagne now.
Whoo. Forty-eight bottles.
I've got every one of these bottles finished,
and I can't believe I didn't drop one,
spill one, you know, I got half
of the champagne going to the wedding
and the other half that I'm going to try
to sell to somebody to try to help jerry out.
We've got it done, man. We got to call jerry.
Let him see the finished product that it's done.
[phone ringing]
-hey, buddy. -What's going on?
I want you to see something, brother.
Look at here.
[jerry] oh, you got them... You got them corked?
I got all of them corked,
froze every one of them,
blow the plugs out,
got them corked off, and re-racked, man.
-We got good champagne. -[jerry] nice.
Ready for the wedding, huh?
It's all ready, man. That's for sure.
[jerry] well, I'm just gonna let you know that upfront
I don't really know what's gonna happen the weekend.
Yeah. That's okay, brother. As long as you get well.
It's all right if you can't make it,
it's fine.
[jerry] I wasn't sure expecting all this.
That's the... That's the thing, don.
No, man, we don't never know nothing about it, you know?
Nah, I sure don't.
I'm worried to death about jerry.
What if he has a major stroke
inside the hospital and he just dies,
you know, what can I say? What can I do?
You know, you can always rewind
and always tell yourself,
"I should have done this or why didn't I do that?"
you know, every one of us is guilty of it.
Well, I've got this done, brother.
[jerry] I'm proud of you, man.
I knew you could do it.
Take care of yourself.
I'll let you know if something happens tomorrow,
if I could get out, get out of this prison.
-Love you, brother. -[jerry] I love you, bro.
See you.
[sighs]
[dramatic music playing]
oh, man.
I don't even know if he's gonna be able
to work with me again.
[dramatic music playing]
we got her done, though.
Damn. [chuckles]
I hate getting emotional, man. I can't stand it.
I just figured he'd been good enough
to be at the wedding, you know.
I guess it's a bunch of dudes for you.
We think we're better than we are,
and then life hits.
Brings you down.
I just hope he gets better. That's all I can hope for,
that he gets better and I'll do everything
I can to help him.
Even if he can't be at the wedding,
even if he can't continue on working with me.
I might one day get somebody else to help me.
But they won't never, nobody ever replace jerry.
Ever.
[intense music playing]
[country music playing]
[josh] okay.
Oh, where the hell is brian?
He said he'd be here.
Henry, kenny, and tickle are counting on me
to pull my fair share of the weight
while I'm back here. Now that I broke my foot,
I don't wanna let henry, kenny, or tickle down.
So I sent brian to virginia to pick up my cut of liquor.
Now, I'm gonna have to be real creative.
You're gonna [bleep] when you see this.
[josh] why is that?
Just come look at it.
-110 gallons. -Hell, yeah.
There ain't no way I'm gonna be running in
and have a 600 gal steel site over and over.
So I've been thinking about something else.
We could take a little bit of moonshine
and turn it into a whole lot of damn money.
What do you wanna do with all this?
You know, everybody's into this hard silky thing.
Yeah.
I was thinking about maybe
trying to do something like that.
There's all these drinks
popping up with carbonation and stuff,
you know, and the, sort of, like soda
and some of them are really good.
We could make flavored seltzer water
and add a little bit of alcohol to it,
like of a homemade moonshine seltzer, you know.
I know that sounds insane,
but I think it might be a worthy cause,
because it's like such a big thing right now,
there's always companies popping up doing it.
You know, everybody's got a hard seltzer. Yeah.
I got to see... Here are two things.
Maybe we could take a little bit of moonshine,
mix it with some flavors and stuff,
pressurize it, carbonate our own drink.
We're really firing a hole this year.
We haven't hardly made a ounce of liquor.
I really need this idea to work out.
[brian] open up.
Every time josh tells me he's got some kind of an idea,
sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't,
but most of the time,
he knows what he's got going on.
All right. So my whole plan is just to try it out
on a small scale just to see if it works,
so I don't waste a lot of liquor.
I'm gonna take a pressure cooker.
Whoa.
Hook it to a co2 tank.
You got to drink in it, it'll make it carbonated...
-[horn blows] -holy [bleep].
-[chuckles] -do it again.
[brian] fire in the hole.
We put the first batch of moonshine in there
and we put the pressure to it.
[brian] I don't know if I'd hold it right under your face.
[josh] I'm thinking this may be one of the biggest
harebrained ideas I've ever had.
But for the hole it fills,
man, we're definitely gonna be onto something.
Let see what it does if it damn carbonates
our moonshine or not.
Does that look carbonated to you?
[brian] I don't know.
Hell no.
[country music playing]
[mark] here. Better put a stop around them just for safety.
Son of a bitch.
You need me to help you out?
Don't throw the thing. Set that on there.
-Look here. -I know. It used to be...
Far down our backers just...
Well, I wouldn't put it any different,
I just have to stretch it out.
I don't need it stretched out.
Well, look here.
I need this son of a bitch the same stuff.
-Woosah. -[chuckles]
[laughter]
you're stressing a little [bleep]
and the bigger [bleep] thing that bothered you a bit.
-Now what's up with that? -[mark] I don't know.
It usually ain't like me, is it?
Too much caffeine, mark?
No.
-Thank you. -Hey, you're welcome.
I got you.
Woosah... [chuckles]
[country music playing]
[josh] that's not carbonated worth a damn.
That didn't pan out for me too well.
We're using some pretty highproof moonshine
and when I carbonate the liquor,
I see bubbles in it and I see it's carbonated,
but it goes flat almost instantly.
[grunts] that's not carbonated.
[josh] I don't know. I'm not a scientist.
We got a lot of experimenting to do.
Adding that to moonshine just don't make it carbonated.
Alcohol contents are high in it or something?
Here's a jar of some cherry moonshine in there,
that we could put in there.
Shoot, let's try it, hell, it's worth a shot
and it can't hurt it.
I've been thinking, you know,
I've tried to carbonate this high proof alcohol,
well, water carbonates, soda carbonates,
and all these things are forced carbonated.
So maybe if I use different ingredients,
maybe, like, if I use a lower proof liquor,
an alcoholic beverage with other ingredients mixed in it,
maybe that'll hold carbonation.
Just gonna dump the whole thing in there?
Yeah, let it rip, tater chip.
Josh, he's got some cherry bounce.
We're gonna put it in this pressure cooker.
Hopefully it's not gonna be a cherry bomb.
Light a fire to it, son.
Why we both getting back?
Tuck her up real tight.
I'm not scared to touch it.
You ready?
All right.
-Good theory. -Oh, I'll just be damned.
Wait, look here. It fizzes just like a coke.
Now that we got another concoction in here,
seems like it's holding the fizz.
[brian] what do you think, josh?
That's wild.
Went from tasting like a moonshine in a jar,
to more like a soda with a little alcohol in it.
It just kind of took a little bit of the edge off of it,
and put a little bit of fizz in it.
-Is that not damn good? -That's damn good.
Yeah, that's damn good, puts a spin on it, don't it?
You know what josh owens would say, don't you?
-[josh] what? -Damn.
[josh] I know a lot of alcohols like beer,
sparkling wine.
They create their own carbon dioxide.
But that's not what we're doing.
We're creating an alcoholic drink
and we're pressurizing it.
We're putting the co2 in it.
We're putting our own carbon dioxide in it.
-You see that? -Cherry bounce seltzer?
That's crazy.
If we can take this and turn this into something
that actually holds up and we got the corner
of the market far as I'm concerned.
Two barrels of shine out there
and in the... In the van.
That will go a long way,
you go to making some flavors with that shine,
because you're cutting it down with that right there.
It's gonna stretch it out and double the money.
That's over a thousand courses, at least.
This broken foot may kick my ass
but it sure ain't broke my ass.
I think we might be onto something.
I hope we are.
Something other than a broke foot.
[josh] yeah, no doubt.
[country music playing]
how out of place is a wooden barrel
gonna look in the place called ghost town?
Ghost town is an abandoned theme park
from the early '60s
and, you know,
what makes ghost town so ideal for us
is it's behind a locked gate.
It has a road leading directly to it.
It's not accessible to the public,
and it's on a mountaintop.
So for what we need it for,
it's the perfect solution to our problem.
I ain't seeing no cowboys since popcorn was still alive.
Cowboy got his nickname,
because he was a gunfighter at ghost town.
He was one of the first employees there.
He's always been the caretaker.
Every time it's changed hands,
they've always entrusted cowboy
with keys and with the property.
But, you know, if anybody knows
about ghost town, it's cowboy.
He always told me he's the first man
to blaze a trail in there.
Here comes his ford pick him up truck.
All right. Maybe.
That sounds like what a cowboy oughta drive.
[cowboy] are you fellas lost?
-Hello, old buddy. -Lord, there's my buddy.
-How you doing, old buddy? -Hello there, cowboy.
How you doing old buddy?
I ain't seen you in a long time.
I ain't seen you in 15 years.
Well, I ain't no purdier, son.
Well, let me ask you a question.
Just lay it on me, brother.
Now your role as a gunfighter in ghost town.
-Yeah. -Actually bought you a part
in the hollywood movie of deliverance , then?
Deliverance.
Cowboy's claim to fame, I guess,
he was a character in the movie deliverance.
Yeah. On the show was jon voight
-and burt reynolds. -Yeah.
And all them, and I went to hollywood.
[mark] he was one of the mountaineer men
that had the encounter
with ned beatty's character in the movie,
which wasn't a very pretty scene.
I did have my two front teeth out
when they done the movie deliverance.
Cowboy's most famous line
is "you sure got a pretty mouth, boy."
of all the lines in that movie,
that one sticks with you.
-He's an icon. -What do you need me for?
-Uh... -Well,
we think you're the only one that may be able to help us.
-Well, if I can, I will. -I know you will.
We wanna get in up there on top of the mountain,
at the old ghost town.
What are you going up there for in that old place?
Well, you know that man,
popcorn, and mark, all of us, you know what we's into.
I know what you're into. I know.
You know it don't hurt us any by the fact
that cowboy was friends with popcorn sutton.
We'll tell him what we have in mind.
We don't wanna keep any secrets from him.
We got some barrels we wanna take up there
-and let them age. -I see.
Yeah.
The weather changes up there are drastic.
-Oh, yeah. -And we're wanting to...
We're wanting to age our liquor up there,
and you know as well as anybody
when that... When that weather changes,
-that barometric pressure... -Oh.
Drops, that liquor goes in all that wood.
And makes it work there.
And we're gonna try to set it somewhere
where it'd wobble around like, you know, it's almost...
And the wind blows up here, yeah.
And we need that weather changing
-drastic every day or so. -That's good.
What's the weather like up there?
-Does it change quick? -Oh, lord,
it can be hot today and cold tomorrow
and the wind would be blowing,
that's what you need, the wind blowing and...
These are the things that we wanted to hear.
This is what we're looking for.
We know that it'd be safe up there because...
-Yeah. -You know,
-nobody can get to it. -Yeah.
And the thing that we want more than anything...
-What? -We want you
to be the only one that knows that they're there.
Yeah. You know why? It's none of my business.
I know. Well, we trust you with everything we got.
Do you care to let us in up there and...
I'll let you in and let you out.
Ain't nobody gonna know.
I know where to turn the cameras off and turn them on.
We appreciate that.
Cowboy said yes and I couldn't be any happier.
The mayor of this town handed me the keys to the city.
[cowboy speaking]
now, you'd go off like a rocket.
-Yup. -[cowboy speaking]
you can just follow me up.
That sounds like a plan.
We'll follow right behind you, old buddy.
All right. You follow behind me.
You know, we don't know exactly
what we're looking for,
but getting in the gate's half the battle.
We'll have to fix old cowboy up a little bit of alchy-hall.
Yes, we will. Cowboy said yes.
Under his conditions he has to let us in and let us out.
Cowboy, thank you, old buddy. We'll be in touch.
Yeah. All right. Well, take care, you boys.
-All right. -And I'm watching.
All right. Hit the leak here baby, man.
We got access.
We're in the middle of nowhere,
that's the main thing.
[country music playing]
we feel like we just got the key to the kingdom,
so to speak.
Wow.
Damn, this is a lot of memories.
It was a big deal to get come up here when we was a kid.
We're about to enter the emerald city
as far as whisky aging we hope.