[steven ray tickle] this time on moonshiners...
We're gonna dig a trench down to the 'still site
that we can gravity feed right down to the 'stills.
That's gonna make our 'still site that much more undetectable.
[tim smith] whoo! Lot of action going on over here.
How many agave go in there?
[carlos camarena] about 45 tons,
enough to produce about 5,000 liters of tequila.
[mike cockrell] what the hell have you brought me to? This is field corn.
This ain't sweet corn.
-You walk around in them overalls every day. -So what does that mean?
Well, it means that everybody that wears overalls is not no farmer.
[man] this is how we make the moonshine!
[josh owens] man, this is sweet.
Needs a little work,
but I think this could be frickin' super cool.
[narrator] in franklin county, virginia, josh needs a place to stay.
So henry and kenny decide to kill two birds with one stone
by moving josh into a century-old farmhouse,
which will become the control center for a new 'still site.
I broke up with my girlfriend, I had to move out.
I need a place to stay.
Man, this is nice, right here.
-[henry law] check the inside out? -[josh] heck yeah.
Besides being a moonshiner,
henry's a real estate investor and a landlord.
[henry] hell yeah.
[josh] needs a little work, but damn.
[henry] you didn't think you'd get a taj mahal, did you?
Josh, he's been having a rough time lately
and he was telling me he needed a place to live.
Well, I got a place that some people just moved out of.
That's a bathroom right there. Big old kitchen.
Not only is it pretty good for josh,
it has some of the best well water.
Best I've ever seen.
I think we can work us in and get josh in that house,
and maybe make a little bit of liquor there.
[henry] look at that view.
-You do like to hunt, right? -You know I do.
[henry] 300 acres of land.
I'm gonna be in business.
I can... When can I bring my stuff over here?
Living in the middle of frickin' grand central station
for hunting and fishing
and making moonshine.
So it don't get much better than that.
I'm appreciative for this right here,
I've been needing a place and this fits me perfectly.
I got room to put all of my stuff.
Hunting and fishing and [bleep] country,
-and being able to run my 'still, making money... -Making money.
Josh, he's loving it. He's all excited about it.
[josh] some painting and some new carpet.
[henry] vacuum this up.
[kenny law] what's wrong with this? It's brand-new.
[josh] the house needs a little work.
That ain't really that big a deal.
It's just a little work here, a little work there, some painting...
This place is gonna be great.
[henry] right here is a key, down here is the downstairs basement.
Down here is where we're planning on operating everything from.
This operation here that we set up is unusual, to say the least.
We're gonna set up our 'still site about 100 yards below the house.
But water, fuel, electricity,
everything will be operated from the house.
There'll be no tracks going to the 'still site.
Everything will be hidden.
That should give us a lot of security there.
A lot of room to store liquor down here.
[josh coughs]
damn, bro, what the hell is that smell?
-What smell? -It's moldy as [bleep] in here.
Moldy?
-Damn, bro. -Everything's perfect.
[josh] I can't do it.
[henry] what's he talking about? Where's he going?
[josh retching]
ugh! [retches]
[coughs] ugh.
[kenny] basement make you sick, josh?
-I can't deal with mold, bro. -[kenny] you can't?
-Seriously? -Yeah.
It tears me up bad.
-You a country boy? -[kenny] he comes from the city.
Would he come from the city? I don't think... [laughs]
-you can tell it, even to how he sits. -[laughs] okay, sorry.
The house is great.
But at this point in time,
there's no way I'll be in that basement mixing up anything.
[henry] instead of going in that basement,
we could use this, possibly.
Operate everything from right here.
My plan was to work out that basement.
We could work everything from the ground levels
instead of going down the steps.
[kenny] those steps is rough.
But you know, you run into situations like josh with that mold.
Yeah, we're figuring out what to build here beside the house.
Right here is where I'm planning on putting the 'still site,
right down through that hill.
Whole key to it is, is getting everything in there to start with.
We'll just have to drive that down.
Now, our water, fuel, electricity,
we gotta have lines buried back up here to this building.
Run it, pump the liquor up here,
cycle after cycle after cycle.
No more running in and out with a truck.
We will stay secluded, nobody will find it. That's the key.
-[josh] not as much of a trail going to it. -[henry] not at all.
-Yeah, I got you. -You drive in here, you fly in here,
you see nothing.
-Well, I'm dying to see where we're gonna set it. -Let's check it out.
[henry] we're building to operate everything from that house.
Josh is living here watching everything,
if anybody comes down to the farm,
we'll know everything going on.
We'll be able to keep a close eye on it.
[josh] nice and thick down here, look at that.
[henry] right, that's what we're looking for.
[henry] the big cedar's perfect.
[josh] it's a good spot right here.
It'll be far enough away, won't be able to smell anything.
Won't hear anything.
So we won't have anything but thump it out here.
-And a cooling box, and never have a track down here. -No.
-Won't nothing be seen. -Nothing be seen.
[henry] again, you got to rent a place in your own name, put the power in your name.
The only downside to that is,
if they come, you're going to jail. You know that.
-All right. -But you got a place to live.
Power is coming from the house which is in his name, going to the 'still site.
There's no defense against that.
If the law comes, old josh is going to jail.
I ain't too worried about it, I mean,
a place to hunt, a place to fish,
a place to piss off my back porch
who can't nobody say nothing about it,
this is a good 'still site right here.
-Beautiful, isn't it? I like it. -Yes.
-[henry] let's roll with it. -[josh] let's roll with it.
[tim] whoo! Lot of action going on over here.
[carlos] so the agave has arrived
and these guys are getting to work.
[narrator] in jalisco, mexico,
after seeing a booming market
for agave-based spirits in the us,
tim is getting hands-on experience
in how his neighbors to the south
make the original moonshine of mexico.
[carlos] the first step we do by receiving the agave here
is cut it in halves--
I come along way just to get to the distillery,
getting to see carlos camarena.
I want to see every step how they make tequila.
I wanna know the history, I wanna know the process,
I wanna know how they distill it.
I wanna get the big picture.
And, and as you can see, everything is very manual.
-Oh, yeah, yeah. -Everything is done by hand, the harvesting,
the cutting the agave, loading the ovens.
And how many... How many agave go in here?
[carlos] about 45 tons.
That will be enough to produce about 5,000 liters of tequila.
So that's about 5,000 liters per oven.
[tim] so what's next after this, it goes in here and loads up?
We keep them cooking for up to 48 hours,
then we will open the doors of the oven,
uh, to start cooling it down in order to have the extraction of the juice.
I was thinking to just take it from the field and...
I don't know, just squish it, cook it, and that's it.
I see that there's a lot more process involved.
Oh, it has a lot of process but,
I tell you making tequila, it only consists of five steps.
First step in tequila production is agave.
If you don't have agave, forget about the rest of the steps.
You cannot produce tequila.
Second one is convert starch into sugar.
So you can use a conventional oven like we do,
or you can use a big pressure cooker.
And finally, distillation.
What comes out of that fifth step, it is already tequila.
But how did you deal with all of them,
you can make from a very small to a huge difference.
And that's why there's no two tequilas that will taste the same.
The moonshine, I'd say, is exactly the same.
-Where you grow the, the corn, -the corn.
What kind of 'still you process it,
how you handle it all the way to the bottle,
makes a difference in what it tastes.
That's what makes a difference.
[tim] you know whether it was, uh, moonshining,
or making tequila, uh,
we're a lot closer than we thought.
Even though we're from two nationalities,
it's a lot of appreciation I think is going hand in hand here.
[carlos] we come from different parts of the world,
working with different raw materials,
-yup. -But doing the same thing.
-Exactly. -And doing it with hearts.
-That is important. -That's what counts, is here.
-That's what counts, is right here. Yes. -Yes.
So what's the deal with the sweet corn?
Well, the lady, she wants some good sweet corn squeezing's.
-Are you serious? -I'm serious.
I mean she was pretty damn specific on what she wanted.
[narrator] it's sevier county, tennessee.
Mike and jerry are on the hunt for the fresh sweet corn they need
to close a late season deal with a discerning buyer.
Now, she didn't specifically say what type of sweet corn,
-so that makes it easier on us, you know? -Yeah.
[mike] you know, a few weeks ago
me and jerry, we got a special order from one of our main customers.
But you know, with jerry being sick and my wedding...
We ain't got nothing started yet.
It's a total different flavor between
say, sweet corn right off the cob and out of the field,
as there is field corn that's ground into a meal
that we're used to making corn liquor out of.
Oh, wait a minute.
So you don't want to do this as a regular like, dried corn like we normally do.
We're going to directly scrape it off the cob into the barrel.
We're gonna scrape it off the cob into the barrel.
We're just gonna get a good, full, rich,
sweet corn flavor out of it.
Well, we got to make some mashed taters and gravy to go with it.
[laughs] which is fine if we have to do it, brother.
This should be pretty simple to, uh, create,
we just gotta get the sweet corn.
Let's get in here and get us some doggone sweet corn and go mash it in.
I got this friend that owns the farm,
I'm going there to get what's fresh,
get it back here in the woods and get it mashed in.
-[mike] hardly at it, or... -[dennis] hard at it all the time.
-How's it going, tricky? -Ah, just peddling a little.
Good, good to you.
-That's jerry. Jerry, dennis. -How are you?
Well dennis, you know what we do.
We just want to do a sweet corn run, you know,
fresh off the cob.
I'll tell you you're about two weeks late, I guess.
You're welcome to look at it, see what you can do with it.
All righty. Well, that'll work, I appreciate it, buddy.
Hey, any time, mike.
You know, he just tells us to go look, see what he's got.
[mike] let's go out and see what we can find.
It's any good, we can have what we need.
-[mike] it ain't looking good, is it? -No, it sure ain't.
[mike] I can tell you right now this ain't worth anything.
This is drier than paper... Look at this [bleep]. We can't even rehydrate that.
[mike] that's like it. That's all by god like it.
[jerry benson] I bet we couldn't make a bag of usable corn here at all.
Ugh.
You know, some farmers do a late crop of sweet corn,
you know, I grew up planting it like that.
And I know there's somebody 'round here
that's got to have a late crop of corn.
[jerry] I'll tell you what, I know a guy that's got a big ol' field.
This field is full of corn.
[mike] well, let's go see him.
You know, I pass this field all the time.
I know there's plenty of corn in the field. It's nice and tall.
Beautiful corn.
[jerry] check it out, see what it looks like.
Well, I can by god tell what it looks like from 'round here, jerry.
What the hell have you brought me to?
It's a corn field here all right, a big damn corn field.
But it ain't sweet corn.
This is roasting ear corn.
This is field corn. This ain't sweet corn.
This is to make feed and fuel out of.
I thought you knew what we was talking about, jerry.
-You walk around in them overalls every day. -So what does that mean?
Well, it means that everybody that wears overalls is not no farmer.
I mentioned I'm not a farmer.
You know, you'd think for a feller that walks around
in them overalls all the time would know a little bit about corn.
-We gotta find something else. -Usual as the last few, I guess.
[mike] you know, our buyer knows a lot of people.
If me and jerry can't deliver on this sweet corn-shine,
she'll find somebody that will.
And if we can't, we're out.
[mike] we'll just leave the nature up to me, how about that?
-[josh] man, I'm excited to get this done. -[henry] I am, too.
I'm glad we got paige with us.
Henry's boy paige is a awful lot of help,
especially for the newer generation of kids.
[henry] here's what planning on working on, paige, right here.
It'll come straight off of it.
Send the wood about 8 feet.
We can straighten that tin up, just slide out under it.
[paige law] go right on with it.
[josh] we got a new 'still site
and we're gonna run our 'still site from up here at the house.
First up is extending this little building out.
It's just too small for what we need to do.
We need a place to put our proofing barrels
'cause we're gonna pump the liquor back up to the top of the hill.
Seven-and-a-half would be right there.
There's gonna be a lot of work to do, and I mean a lot of work.
We're gonna build his roof out off of what's existing there.
Hopefully we'll be able to tear that whole front wall half off
where the window's at, and just move it back
about 8 feet and put it right back on,
and frickin' be ready to go.
[henry] so, paige, what you got to keep in mind,
a moonshiner has to know how to do all this stuff.
You got to do a little comms work,
plumbing work, electrical work. Evading the law.
I want to start teaching my son the way my dad did me.
When I put him with kenny law, josh owens, and tickle,
that's the best of the best.
My son's gonna learn from the best of the best.
Remember, as a big denizen and a distiller of the moonshine,
they don't know half the stuff of what we're teaching you.
Normally tickle's our lead carpenter,
but he's not here today.
But old kenny, he ain't no slouch, either.
Kenny's ran some big roofing companies
and done tons of carpenter work and he's pretty damn good at it.
You gotta push the button on the side.
[henry] I'm like "kenny,cut it closer."
he don't have as much to live for as I do.
Kenny's single, his children are grown and gone.
[kenny] no, I ain't got nothing to live for. I know what henry said.
[henry] that button goes pushed in, pull the trigger.
[kenny] it ain't going in, though.
-You gotta push it-- there we go. -[chainsaw buzzing]
see. I'm telling you, it's dangerous.
[chainsaw buzzing]
[josh] that looks perfect, ain't it, kenny?
[kenny] all right.
Now that we got the roof built...
This time we take the front wall off and move it out.
Aw, sheesh, man.
[josh] we're able to get that wall out all in one piece,
which is pretty awesome
because now we're gonna be able to just shift it on out there
and make that our exterior wall.
Pretty cool.
-[josh] all right, that's it, laws. -[henry] looks good, josh.
Just turn it back in front here,
put the door in, and we're done.
[henry] so when we're done with this build,
that's just the beginning.
We've got a lot of work to do.
We've got to lay pipe. We've got to lay oil lines.
We've got to run electric lines.
We've got a lot of work ahead of us.
-[henry] that's closed in, baby. -[josh] we're good.
[carlos] this oven is completely cooked already,
we will open the door so it starts cooling down.
When I first met carlos, he took me around his distillery,
gave me a little short tour.
Ohhh.
But now I'm really get into how do you make tequila out of blue agave.
[carlos] you will notice how good smell it is, the sweet smell.
[tim] now we got the magic.
-[carlos] and the smell. -Yeah, I can smell it.
[carlos] now look at the honey bees, that they are coming here.
-Yeah. They're coming, trying to get-- -that sweet smell.
And they are coming here to feed.
[tim] well, I know automatically it's ready when I see those bees.
Working in the woods, that's what we look for, too.
When the mash is ready, it's full of bees.
-So now this is ready to go to squeezing. -That is correct.
-[carlos] why don't we go and let's go check it out? -Let's go check it out.
[carlos] we bring it into this area to start squeezing the yeast,
cut it in small pieces using that machine right there and then when it comes here,
we add water, extract the juice,
then we add water again and suck the juice again.
So when the agave is cooked in the oven,
we can have up to 30 percent sugar content.
30 percent is too much for the yeast to perform.
That is why we are adding water,
to reduce the sugar content from 30 to 10.
With 10 percent sugar content, then we can ferment.
[tim] that's a little different you know, making moonshine,
uh, we get the corn, we grind it, we mash in,
and we actually add sugar to it
to bring that, you know, sugar content up.
And here they're diluting it to bring it down.
So, carlos, you know, I have an engineering background.
So I'm looking at how this machine is working,
but is it really engineered for this
or was it something else?
It was engineered for the sugarcane.
-Sugarcane. -It is a modified sugar mill.
[tim] this was for sugarcane in the beginning
and you just added a chopper to the end.
It was a sugarcane squeezer.
That's a lot of mechanics and engineering that went into this to build it.
I grew up making molasses myself.
So, it's the same concept.
We're trying to squeeze that juice out, so we can ferment it.
Making moonshine, it's all the same.
[carlos] here's our fermentation area.
-[carlos] can you smell that agave? -[tim] oh, I can smell it.
As we use only wild juice and the juice is already branded in the wood.
And therefore, it will start naturally fermenting again.
So, we don't need to add any commercial juice.
Nothing. It's just allowing mother nature to do its job.
[tim] what you got floating on top here?
[carlos] these are bags with agave pulp and fiber
-in order to add some sweetness to our tequila. -[tim] uh-huh.
And also those bags will go into first distillation.
[tim] these bags are gonna kind of soak and submerge
into the fermentation tanks.
And they have that pod to add a little bit extra character to it.
[carlos] how do we know it is finish?
Because of this white layer which is a sign
that the alcoholic fermentation is over
and we are beginning to have a little malolactic fermentation,
meaning a little bit of burr scotch and cheese elements.
If we allowed it to go further
than we will have kind of like a blue cheese.
And you don't want blue cheese on your spirit.
Every distiller I've met whether it was in, uh,
you know, ireland, poland, mexico,
there's just one little tweak, whether it's the way
they set up their 'still, the way they mashed in,
you know, all of this makes a difference in that product.
So if I can just get one little thing
from this one or that one and the other one,
I'm adding up a lot of information there.
[carlos] so now it comes the moment of truth.
It's the moment to taste some tequila
-and see what you think about it. -[tim] all right.
[tim] I can't wait to taste it.
[carlos] let's go drink some tequila.
-[henry] take the turn in here. Now we talking. -[tickle] hot dog.
-[tickle] what's up, buddy? -[josh] tickle, what's up, brother?
All right, fellas. How is it going?
I see y'all don't need me to build nothing.
[josh] we don't fool around the house you know that.
Yeah. Y'all gonna build josh's his little house right here already.
-Yeah. -Are you gonna live in that?
I've been gone for a few days
and they built an addition onto this house.
And, uh, they've actually did a very good job on this.
Don't look like y'all did too bad.
[henry] we got the extension finished on the house.
So, we'll take the turning plow.
We're gonna dig this, the trench all the way down to 'still site.
We'll have our one line down there. We'll have electric line.
-[josh] fuel line. -Fuel line. All in the same ditch.
-[henry] that's 300 or 400 feet we gotta dig. -Yeah.
-Well, hell, let's get to it. -Come all the ways down there then.
[narrator] to tap into the pure well water at the house
and hide all signs of traffic in and out of the 'still site,
tickle, josh, henry and kenny will lay a series of pipes in a 2-foot deep trench,
that will run from the house to the 'still site.
Separate pipes will supply water and mash for the pots,
fuel for the burners and electricity
to pump the finish shine back up to the house for bottling.
[henry] you know this site here is different from most sites we set up.
There's a lot of preparation just to get it to where we can make liquor.
We could have ran that pipe down the hill
and just let them top the ground.
But you taking chance of getting caught.
If you get everything laid in the way it's supposed to be done,
it will stay there a lot longer.
[tickle] we'll be able to just push that dirt right back over it.
[henry] right back over it.
That as far as we gonna get with your tractor, ain't it, henry?
[henry] yes, it is.
Getting time to get something in this thing now, ain't it?
Let's get them out. Let's do it.
[tickle] you got your big line, right yonder.
[josh] that's what I'm talking about.
All right.
I'm gonna start digging this trench out.
We've done dug all that out down through there with the tractor,
but we're gonna do this last little part by hand.
We're gonna do it by hand because we don't know
if there's any underground pipes setting to take lines
or any electrical lines around here we don't know about.
[tickle] don't you think that's gonna work out good like that?
[josh] it's gonna work real good.
-Well, just kind of flop it back. -You gonna fold it on back.
-You know what I'm saying? -Yes, that's where you're doing good, man.
[tickle] let's get this thing over in there.
[josh] that's gonna be beautiful.
[tickle] there we go. All right.
In this trench we dug, we're putting in an inch and a quarter line,
electric line and fuel line in it, and we're gonna cover it up.
All we gotta do is just flip all the grass back over
and it's like it never even happened.
That looks all right, right, doesn't it?
[henry] I don't care who you are, this damn looks good.
[tickle] yeah, it does.
Now that we've got our lines run,
next part is bring the stills in.
Get them set up and get them rolling.
There's only one more guy I meant to call.
[jerry] he's got lots of fields of stuff.
And I can find out if he's got sweet corn
and see what he's got, you know.
Well, I don't have any more damn option so...
I'm gonna give him a call here then.
But it seems like we're kind of reaching
the end of the rope here, you know.
I've got one more guy up my sleeve
that I kind of saving for the last option.
You know, this guy, he's a heck of a business man.
If he's does have what we need,
it's gonna be a negotiation like none other.
Hey, man, what's going on?
Yeah, busy time of the season, huh.
But we need some good sweet corn, still like in the field.
-Fresh. -[jerry] yeah, fresh.
You got a... One field.
You planted it late?
Well, that sounds good, man.
-He's got a field. -Let's go look at it.
You sure it's sweet corn?
All right, buddy. I appreciate it.
I'm gonna tell you what. He's a business man.
This may not be something that comes cheap.
[mike] don't worry about it. We gotta make this run happen.
-What's going on, jerry? -What's going on, man?
-You doing all right? -Long time no see.
Hey, man, curly. This is mike. This is curly.
-How you doing, sir? -How has it been?
-All right. -I've heard a lot about you.
[jerry] staying, staying busy, huh?
Wide open right now.
I guess the big question is...
Do you have any sweet corn left over?
I got plenty. There's a acre left.
Probably the last sweet corn in north carolina.
How much you're looking for?
Well, we just, we just looking for enough to do what we gotta do with it.
We just need enough to make a couple rounds of whiz and...
I can part with a little, if you only,
if you can get by with two sacks.
I mean, that's about all we'll need, right?
What would you take for it? I mean, what would you had to have?
I'll tell you what I'd like to have.
Some of that liquor.
I'd rather have that than money.
How much you get out of brewing?
[jerry] I use around four, five gallons.
Um, you ain't trying telling somebody
how much liquor we yield, are you?
I'd do it for, uh, two.
-That's a lot of money -a deal is what it is.
[mike exclaims] I don't know, jerry.
Couple sets of corn cost us way damn less than a few gallons of liquor,
but we gotta have this corn and I don't wanna leave here without it.
We might as well take it.
So, you just run off and bottle it up.
It'll be here for your tasting.
-I've known jerry a long time. -You know, man, I'll take care of you.
I ain't worried about that.
-[jerry] thank you, brother. We appreciate it. -Appreciate it, man.
-Thank you. -All right. Y'all have a good one.
-Bye-bye. Be good, be safe. -All right. Thank you.
Told you, a ruthless business man.
I'm gonna have to get on birth control and wear a chastity belt.
[jerry] I got us a green field of corn, ain't it?
-You see how little bitty and short them stalks are? -Yeah.
It's still at that stage to where it can be used.
-Look at that juice coming out of there. -That got good juice on it.
How does it taste?
Sweet damn corn.
It is some kind of good corn.
It's sweet enough.
It's real milky and creamy and sticky, so to speak.
It's got a lot of sugar in it.
So this is what we're looking for.
[mike] I've always wanted to do this, man.
[jerry] we're doing now.
[mike] I've never paid this much for corn a day in my life,
but sometimes, a man's gotta do what he's gotta do
to get the job done.
[heaves] all right!
[grunts] ah!
[mike] our customer specifically requested sweet corn.
You know this lady is always looking
for some good, small-batch premium liquor.
We got corn in the truck, man.
We got corn, bo.
And ultimately, that's where me and jerry needed to be.
High-dollar, small-batch, premium liquor.
[mike] another three days that corn wouldn't be good enough to pick either.
[jerry] hell no.
[henry] don't look down here, innit?
[josh] it's a good thing there's plenty of cover.
Now that we've got everything run from the house
down to the 'still site that we need,
it's time to get this 'still site built.
-[henry] we're gonna do a double worm-up with josh. -[josh] yeah.
-A double-branch worm? -[henry] yes, sir.
That's right. A double-branch worm.
Oh, I ain't never seen a double-branch worm.
Hell, the only one I've ever seen is the single one we did.
That was hard enough.
I reckon if anybody can do it, it'll be us, right?
-We can do it. -[tickle] I'm all for that.
[tickle] normally we would just get gravity water.
Flow it right over into our worm
and cool it that way.
But we'd had to go about a half mile up the creek
and dam it up up there.
So, we're gonna use a branch worm on this 'still site.
We just dig a hole in the creek.
Put this branch worm in it
and let the natural flow of the water slowly cool this liquor.
And it's gonna make some darn good stuff.
[tickle] where you wanna set these pots at?
Across here.
That way we can put the thumper maybe right along here.
It gonna about me like this right here.
-All right. -Gonna fire from one end.
We're gonna need one burner, two caps.
Bring them both at the same time
-into this one thumper. -All right.
[tickle] well, gotta do what we gotta do.
This thing is not gonna be laid out like any other 'still site
we've ever done.
We're using an old burner.
So, we're gonna make one long furnace.
Think we're just gonna fire one burner down through it.
Run both of them at one time.
That means we're using the same amount of fuel
that we would to heat one pot.
But we're heating two with it.
That flue look good, don't it?
-[tickle] I tell you what, it does look real good. -Right now, it looks good.
[tickle] so a little more work to the furnace
and I can definitely see the advantage of this.
Ready?
-[henry] come on. -All right.
[tickle] all right.
Damn thing is heavy, ain't it?
We're gonna take this rock right out of this creek.
And we're gonna build our furnace with that.
When these rock heats up, they're gonna hold a lot more heat
than what a normal brick would.
All right.
There we go.
[henry] we got to brunt this in.
We gotta get this completely airtight
for those old burners to work properly.
Leave any kind of gap at all,
it'll cause almost a misfire like a smoke,
and you won't get efficiency.
[tickle] well, fellas.
That looks like a furnace to me!
-[henry] it's looking good. -[tickle] yes, sir.
There you go.
-Heat will come off of two these. -[josh] right.
Where we've got this coming in here, we got 3-inch long pipes
and we run them into one thumper.
We didn't have a one branch-worm, so we're doubling that.
That's what josh is working on now.
It'll condense it a whole lot better
and make the liquor a whole lot cooler.
Won't put any back pressure on his stills.
That's the plan.
We gotta support these wires.
-[tickle] looks good, man. -[henry] they actually look good, yeah.
[tickle] let's just set this one.
Get it like we want it.
-And then we can just strap the other right to it. -[josh] all right.
[tickle] all right.
[henry] all right, we need sandbags in here now.
[tickle] all right.
[josh] let's see what we can get out of that.
Pack it in there.
This branch worm you gotta be very careful with it.
That's gonna be too high, ain't it?
-That's too high. -[josh] let me see. We'll see.
No, it's actually just right.
It's got to drop ever so slightly the entire way.
[josh] it's damn near level.
Now all we gotta do is lay the other one on the end.
[tickle] lay the other one on top of it.
[josh] they now both be right.
If it drops too quick, your liquor will run through it too fast,
won't cool properly and you'll get harsh liquor.
If it doesn't drop enough, your liquor will pool up right there
and then you're back pressuring the still.
So, it's very important to get this thing placed just right.
I say it's basically ready, isn't it?
I think it about ready to mash.
[henry] I think we're ready to roll with it, too.
This is gonna be off the chain.
[carlos] now when it comes the moment,
-that if we need to taste some, some tequila. -To taste.
-It look like you got it set up. -Have a seat.
[carlos] let me get some tequila.
One characteristic of tequila ocho,
it is the fact that every batch produced comes from a different field.
We will try two blancos to see if they taste the same or different
because the process is exactly the same.
The difference is the origin, the source of the agave.
And then we will taste reposado and anejo.
All of them comes from a different field.
Well, in the beginning, uh, carlos brings out the blanco, this is the base product.
Just like when I'm making my moonshine, that is my base product.
[carlos] we will start with the 2019 la coruna field.
It has a lot of fruit trees surrounding this field.
The second bottle of blanco is a 2021 harvest from el pastizal field.
-What do you think? They smell the same? -No.
First one it has, uh, a little bit stronger on your nose.
Uh, more, uh, earth.
Getting a little bit more peppery.
-Mmm-hmm. -The second one is more,
uh, lighter on your nose agave.
From smell, it's got a smell like it's smoother,
on the second one.
The smell is lighter and bold,
-more gentle. -[tim] yeah, it is.
It's a little bit gentle where this one's a little bit tangy.
Let's see if what the... The nose was promising becomes reality on the palate.
To me, the first one, I'm still getting that dryness.
-Yes. -I'm going back to the earthy, rocky, mineral salty taste.
Whenever I taste a tequila that has these elements, I think highlands.
And then now let's see the second one
and take this into consideration,
they are less than a mile apart.
Different altitudes and different growing condition
for the agave.
It's smoother.
It's almost like my moonshine. It has such a rich, deep flavor.
You can almost taste the agave, like a fruit.
-Yes. -Like I'm eating it almost.
-[carlos] exactly. Sweet. -It's like I just took a bite of it.
Now the first one, uh, I feel like it was kind of strong on the nose.
A little peppery.
And more of what I would think tequila should taste like.
But when I went to number two,
a little bit bolder, uh, smoother, uh, taste profile.
[carlos] and now we will taste reposado and anejo.
Very floral, I would think on this one.
-It's so, so smooth and you wanna taste it again. -Yes.
It's like I couldn't get enough.
People think it's something to take a shot of it, you hold your breath
and, uh, you shoot it down.
If you haven't had good tequila,
you don't know what good tequila tastes like.
[tim] mmm.
Same as moonshine.
A lot of times people get a bad taste in their mouth upfront.
They have a bad experience.
And they think, well, moonshine is not for me.
If you don't know what a good moonshine tastes like,
then you don't know what it tastes like.
Here in mexico, the one who sells the most is reposado
and then blanco.
So, it even depends on which country are you selling to?
-I gotta understand the region... -They have a different...
...And what they doing with it.
If they're making a margarita out of it,
then I would just want the blanco.
-Yes. -'cause you don't want any other taste...
Taste profile in that to influence
what you're trying to make in that cocktail.
-Yes. -[tim] if this one gets better,
I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Let's try it and let's see.
This really strong.
When we got to the last one, the anejo,
which is a little bit older in a oak...
I'm getting a little pepper.
This still is just as smooth as a reposado.
This the perfect balance because I'm still getting a little bit of the tequila
and then a little bit of vanilla flavor from the oak.
Very smooth but usually, at the end of the day,
I will always want to come back to this.
I think at the end of all of this,
I'm gonna go sit down somewhere.
[carlos laughs]
meeting carlos and spending some time with him is really a honor,
to sit with someone like this with the experience that he has.
I know that you are traveling.
There's other regions in mexico who produces spirits
from agave.
-Agave spirits. -Tequila, mezcal, bacanora, sotol.
-It's all from the agave plant? -That is correct.
Everything I've learned about making tequila,
I'm gonna bring that back home to virginia.
I'm gonna try to incorporate that into my technique.
Well, I appreciate the opportunity to sit with you.
And I also appreciate you teaching me each region that these come from.
Cheers for that.
[tim] tequila is not the only thing you can make out of agave.
I'm going south. I'm going to mezcal country now.
-And thank you for being here, again, and again. -Yes, thank you.
-Thank you. -Gracias.
[mike] good old fresh, sweet corn.
[both grunt]
yeah, we finally found the sweet corn. We're ready to get this stuff mashed in.
[jerry] I love the sound of that waterfall.
[mike] it's nice, ain't it.
There we go.
Yeah, you know, we're not gonna grind this corn up.
We're just gonna take it and shuck it and get the kernels off the cob.
Then we can mash it all in the barrel, cobs, kernels and all.
It has a worm or two in it.
[jerry] don't leave them in there.
[mike] well that just goes to tell you,
there ain't been no poisons or nothing sprayed on this corn.
And I worked with it in this barrel, and it's sticky, damn it's sticky.
And it's sweet as sugar.
When we eventually run this through the 'still,
the flavor that I'm looking for
is the flavor that's going in to the mash barrel today.
You've got all your cream, your cob flavor,
everything going in to it.
My grandma wouldn't waste nothing.
So if she had make cream corn, she'd cream all these cobs
and she'd turn it and make corn cob jelly.
-Corn cob jelly? -Corn cob jelly.
Some of the best jelly you'll ever put in your mouth.
I ain't never heard of such.
I'll get my bride to make some corn cob jelly.
-[jerry] that'd be sweet. -It will be sweet. For sure.
-[mike] ready? -[jerry] here we go.
Easy does it. Yee-haw.
All right, all right, all right.
Get her back up and I'll pour a little sugar in here.
Hey, this stuff better damn work
'cause it's the last sweet corn I'm gonna find this year.
Just keep it simple, make it happen,
and supply our customers.
Lay the water to it.
By god, I just hit that right there
it ain't gonna know what to do with it.
Now that our barrel's full of good, fresh water,
and our good sugar and our good corn,
now all we got left to do is a pinch of yeast and let her sit.
All right, just pull down hard on that side over there.
All right, let me just find
just a little something to lay on top of it that--
look at you, jer.
Yeah! That'll work, won't it?
Now that we got our mash all in a barrel and ready to go,
it makes me feel good that we got our 'still site set up
and I'm really excited about it.
Got another one mashed in, ready to go.
We made it happen.
[jerry] well in 10 or 12 days, we'll be back in here
to get this run-off, make some good, fresh corn squeezing.
[mike] corn squeezing.
[tickle] you know, once I cut these soy beans,
you won't ever even know this ditch is here.
Look, we might be able to make some soy bean liqueur.
That's what he told me the other day,
make some soy bean liqueur.
It'd be good for you.
You know, it's more protein in there than it is anything.
[henry] y'all can do whatever you want with the soy bean.
They fed me enough of that stuff in prison.
-I don't want any part of it. -You want no part of it?
[henry] the soy bean burgers, soy bean hot dog,
soy bean everything, man.
[tickle] fine. We just sell this stuff
to people who ain't been to prison.
That's what I was gonna say. Ain't everybody been as much as we have.
Well, tickle, this'll be the last trip in ya, hoss.
[henry] there'll be no more driving a vehicle in here after this run.
Work everything from the house, huh?
Everything from the house.
[tickle] I can work with that.
We're gonna bring the grain in today,
mash in this still site, and get this truck out of here
and there will be no more vehicles coming down the hill.
None.
We gotta get all this hooked up.
No tire run running it down here.
You ain't kidding.
There you go.
Everything is coming together.
They'll be running water from the house,
coming down our pipes that we buried.
I'm really excited to get this mash build in
and show the guys that we gonna do a mash build
that hadn't been done in years and years and years.
All right, I better get the water on.
It's gonna be an amazing, amazing liqueur.
[tickle] all right.
We've got the water turned on up at the house
and we're filling these stills up with nice, clean, well water.
There you go, kenny. We got enough in that one.
You know, this ground water is the best water you can have.
As soon as you get that thing hooked up,
we'll be back ready to go ahead and chuck in this stuff, hot.
Right now we gotta get the heat on these stills.
Get this water boiling so we can mash it.
I rigged up this thing here.
It's like an air hose from a burner.
You slide it on there.
So now all I gotta do is tie this end to the proper line.
I just leave it in there.
I'll run to the top of the hill
and turn the oil tank on.
Yeah, we ready to cooking some mash.
All right, now we're ready?
Let's see what we go.
I kneel down, I hook that baby up,
I slide that burner in there and I'm crossing my fingers.
Yeah, baby.
[kenny] heat both up at the same time.
[tickle] that's [bleep] sweet.
We've got our oil burner going, heating this water up.
It's one nice, long flame right underneath both stills.
Now you're catching the same amount of fuel,
-but you're heating two. -Heating two.
Man, and I... It just never crossed my mind to do it like this.
[henry] so what I want to do is bring it to a good boil,
then we throw that grain in there, let that baby cook for an hour.
And then that's when the magic happens.
This recipe that I'm doing here, it takes so much grain.
It is unbelievable.
It's a trick to it.
I'll set the burner down.
[henry] you gotta get your water exactly right,
you've got to add the grain at a certain time.
You've got to know when to cover it over at a certain time.
Then comes what we call sweetening it.
What we're doing right here, you see all this grain?
You see all that corn? That's just the beginning.
Once we get this cooked in, we will sweeten it
with a special malted barley blend.
That's what's going to end up some of the best liqueur
that you'll ever, ever stick your lips to.
My family's been doing it for generations.
This is carrying the heritage on.
It's not only an old family recipe,
but there's another part to this liqueur that really makes it so good.
[henry] this is corn meal, hoss.
-Okay, so it's a mixture. -Mixture.
It's the way that it's being made.
Each of these grains have got to be layered in one at a time
because this water will take on these flavors
differently depending on what we put in first, second, third, whatever.
[kenny] this is malted barley.
[henry] all right, here's the trick, you gotta put this just the right amount.
Yeah, stir it in real good, kenny.
All right, now. One more little magic trick.
-Ah! Oh, I see the secret ingredient. -Yeah.
-Wheat ranch. Hmm. -Ah! Don't say it too loud, man.
[tickle] well, uh, henry gets a little crazy when it comes time to pitch the yeast.
He says the mash goes to talking to him
and he can hear it and, uh...
Um, the only time it goes to talking to me
is after we're done and I'd drink about a half a quart.
Wait, what? What's that you're saying?
Wait, what it saying? "I'll be ready"?
No, she said, "henry, put a jacket on right now."
it's starting to get cold in the evenings now.
So, uh, we're covering it with insulation
and then throwing a layer of black paper over top of that.
This is the only way you can make liqueur
when your temperature starts getting down.
[henry] to do a mash build like this, kenny, after all these years?
[kenny] it's been a long time since you made anything like this at home.
[henry] oh, believe it.
It's been a great week, you know.
We took all this time to make sure we got everything built right,
bound to head on out, get a plan together.
We'll be back four or five days to run in vegas.
-[tickle] I think we're done here. -[henry] I think we're done.
[tickle] what do you think, henry?
-[henry] I think we're done, son. -[tickle] all right.
[tim] you can see those mountains over there.
Looks a little bit different than mountains of tennessee, I can tell you that.
You know, I've been a long ways all over mexico.
I've been to tequila. I went to arandas.
But right now, we're on our way to oaxaca, mexico.
The very well-known location where mezcal is made.
Oh, no. A distillery right there. How 'bout that?
Mezcal everywhere.
I'm getting ready to go down to see xaime niembro.
Xaime is part owner of the gracias a dios distillery.
Xaime is going to show me all about mezcal.
We're in mezcal country.
This is where 90 percent of mezcal is made in all of mexico.
There's another distillery.
There's another one there. Look at that.
I don't know a lot about mezcal,
you know, I've had it before.
I know it has a smoky taste.
I know it's made from a agave.
And um... You know, it's...
It's... It's like the roots of mexico, really, you know.
Everything you see here.
Mezcal, mezcal, mezcal.