[jeremy] this time on moonshiners.
[digger] we've got all this liquor bottled up,
200 gallons' worth.
Oh, no.
God almighty.
[oscar] so, mezcal de pechuga has a turkey breast.
[tim] they're gonna put raw turkey meat into mescal
And they're gonna distill it
I never heard of anyone putting meat in moonshine.
What if we used our old infusion chamber that we made
And we try to rapid age it?
[huck] you know what we've been through to get to this point?
[mark] I hate to mess up a good thing.
Oh, [bleep]. Something's on fire.
Don't kill me.
[jeremy] this is how we make the moonshine.
[tim] what are you doing?
Loading up bottles, baby man, we got a big ass sale.
You remember
That man that we sold, the tennessee whiskey too.
-[mark] the c, yeah, -the c, yeah.
-They never would tell us who they were? -[digger] no.
-It was a protected secret or something. -Right?
Well, the record label, they want 200 gallons of this stuff.
-200 gallons? -Yeah.
-Bottled. -[mark] bottled.
For the same price, we sold the other for?
It's real, man. I'll take it.
The 200 gallon order at 200 bucks a gallon!
That don't take a genius,
200 times 200 is $40,000.
For two old guys like us
That's a hell of a sale, and it's a hell of a payday.
The ghost town stuff.
It should be done, shouldn't it?
It should be. If it ain't, it's not our fault.
The sea aged whiskey worked so well
When it was on the shrimp boat.
We came up with a design
To do the same aging proces on dry land.
That's a plenty, that's all we got to do right there.
Oh, it's gotta move right there.
They've been rocking in the mountains in ghost town for months.
There's no reason for it not to be top shelf,
But we haven't tasted it to see.
We gotta get the liquor brought to us.
So, if daniel will go get it for us,
'cause we got to go get more bottles.
Well, I'll call up daniel and see if he can get up and do it.
[line ringing]
[daniel] go ahead, brother.
Hey, we're up a stunt, brother.
[daniel] okay.
We need somebody to run over the mountain
And pick up for them barrels and bring them back over to us.
[daniel] well, that won't b no problem.
Meet us at red barn up on cosby. It'll be well worth his time.
This brings me to another question now that you're getting
The liquor over the mountain to us.
After we get this bottled up, it's gotta be took to nashville to deliver it.
How do you feel about having the night on the town in nashville on us?
[daniel] hell, yeah.
That'd be a trip worthwhile right there.
-That sounds like a plan. -[daniel] a-ha! Let's see.
Thank you, brother.
All right, here we go.
There's still a lot of moving parts
And a lot of hoops to jump through here.
In this business you never count your chicken before they hatch,
Till we put the whiskey in the people's possession and they give us the money,
We don't have anything.
200 gallons at the standard price.
Man, that's insane.
We're gonna go up here and tap some maple trees
To get us a little bit of sugar water.
[tickle] I've never heard of a maple moonshine before,
But, you know, maple syrup goes good on everything.
-Hey, henry. Welcome. -Chris, what's up, buddy?
-Good to see you. -You as well.
-How's the drive? -Beautiful place up here?
[henry] maple trees, huh?
Yeah. Got about 600 here.
Another 250 up there on that ridge.
Yeah, I've only heard of maple syrup and stuff coming from up north.
We got the climate, we got the right forest.
[tickle] this is a very special place
It's one of the southernmost places in the country
That you can make maple syrup because of the temperatures.
-We better tap some trees. -Yeah. Let's get at it.
But there's a very short window of time
When these trees are giving the sap
That will make really good maple syrup.
We've got to tap these trees and get what we're gonna get right now
Because here in just a little bit,
We're not gonna be able to get any more.
[henry] and that's more than a couple of the maples right there, chris.
[chris] oh, you know, that's a black maple, sweeter than a sugar maple.
So, how many different maples can you tap?
You can tap, sugar maple, red maple, silver maple, boxelder.
Everything in the maple family you can tap.
And it's not just the maples, you can tap walnut, sycamore, birch.
The list goes on and on.
-I had no idea you could have ever done all that. -[tickle] I didn't, either.
[chris] this is a sterile drill bit,
Made, especially for tapping maple trees.
Sterile. Has it gotta be sterile?
Yeah, and you want as clean as it can be
'cause you don't introduce any bacteria into that hole.
That'll close the hole right up.
-Mother nature, man. -Let me drill right here.
[henry] as deep as you got.
That's it. About an inch and a half.
So, this is called the tap spout.
This is basically, what's gonna go inside the tree
And allow the sap to flow out into our buckets.
All right. You keep an eye on me.
Insert your spout right in there.
-[henry] tap her here? -[chris] that's right.
-[henry] tell me when. -[chris] a little more. A little. More.
I listen to the tap. That's how I figure out when it's ready.
That sounds right.
So, then we hang the bucket right on that spout.
Before long, we're gonna start to see sap coming out of there.
Look, I see it.
Oh. There it went. There it went.
Boy. That was actually pretty quick.
Pretty quick, wasn't it?
It's not as strong as I thought it would be.
[chris] that's about 95% water.
A lot of people think there's syrup that comes out of trees, but it's sugar water.
And then you gotta boil it down and turn it into syrup.
[henry] wow. Looks good, man.
Yeah. You saw it's one drip at a time, though,
So it's gonna take a few more trees to fill up those buckets.
[kenny] got that right.
[tickle] in order for us to get enough sap
And the amount of time that we've got,
Me and josh is gonna have to take off
And start tapping a whole lot of trees.
Josh, you had to pick the tree
At the top of the darn mountain.
I don't do anything, the easy way.
I see that.
All right.
Those little drips eventually do add up when you start tapping.
Well...
A whole ass load of trees.
Well, nobody ever said moonshining was easy.
Maple ain't easy, either. 3,000 more to go.
[amanda] have you checked it yet this morning, huck?
I ain't checked, it yet.
-[huck] I'd tell you it's done. -It feels pretty dry.
This corn is historically known as the trail of tears corn.
[mark] there's your first batch of molded corn
This is the rarest corn, I've ever used.
Obviously, it's really important for m
To do right for the history of the grain
And the story of what the cherokee people went through on their journey.
[mark] now, fun part.
-Now we're gonna grind it up. -We're gonna grind it up.
Well, here's what we got. Herb handle.
[amanda] yeah, this looks like a meat grinder.
[huck] that's what it is.
[amanda] all right. Ready to go? Yep.
[huck] working this route, eh?
-[amanda] perfect amount of coarseness. -Slow going. It'll do the job.
[amanda] I love that we're grinding I all ourselves.
And we can make sure everything's done the right way
And give the grain the respect it deserves.
Most people today, they would probably just go and buy an electric grinder.
But these old tools, they're just reliable. And you can't beat them.
-[huck] you're done. -Oh, yeah.
Did it? That's perfect, I'd say.
That's nice.
After days of malting this corn
Drying our malt and then grinding it,
It's been a really long process.
There's the dry corn meal.
It's pretty exciting to be able to have
All the ingredients finally ready to mash it in.
-Can I put the sugar in next? -[mark] no, no, no, no,
-No? -No. We put the sugar in when we put it in the barrel.
All we want to do is cook the mash in...
-Okay -...Right now.
-I'll go get the water going. -Yep.
Yeah, we cook our mash in
A lot of people don't think it makes any difference, but it does.
Cut him off.
You gotta cook your corn to make it taste right.
-You ready to light her up now? -Yeah.
It's really important to put the time and care into this grain
And incorporate it into this mash,
With as much respect as we can.
And I know that
Mark and huck were the best people to bring this corn to.
[mark] you gotta be careful. You don't want it to shake or scorch.
[huck] well, you scorch it, it's ruined.
And if you overcook it, it won't ferment.
-You got to know when to stop. -Yeah.
If you scorch it, burnt, throw it away gotta start over.
We can't start over with it 'cause we have no more of this corn.
Outta check this.
Put a little bite in your mouth
And stick your teeth together, it's hard to pull it apart.
-[amanda] yeah. -That's about what you want it.
Yeah. This is exactly why I come here to work with you guys.
To learn all these little gems.
-Is that right? -Yeah. Feel it stickin'.
The mescal for a mash is 15 pounds of the ground corn,
15 pounds of the malted corn, and 30 pounds of sugar.
-[amanda] now it's time for the sugar. -[mark] sugar time.
It's really rewarding to see all of these ingredients come together.
You know, we're finally getting to the point
Where we're starting to make alcohol.
-That'll be fine, right? -That's gonna be good.
-I promise. -Okay.
Yeah. We being careful, can this corn, she's just got a little bit of it.
Ain't a whole of it.
We sure, don't wanna mess it up.
Put that little cap on, man. Let it do its thing.
All right.
Now it's just a waiting game.
In about five to seven days, we should be ready to run the alcohol.
All right. Good luck, little girl.
You're very lucky
Because you're here in oaxaca
During the biggest holiday
That we have, which is "dia de las muertos."
And here in oaxaca
We do mezcal de pechuga, for very special occasions.
What you do is that you
Bring on the best of the fruits of the altar, and you put it in the mezcal
For a second distillation or third distillation,
-And then you hang in the still-- -the cap.
-The still, yeah. -Turkey breast.
They're gonna put raw turkey meat in the mescal
And they're gonna distill it.
I never heard of anyone putting meat in moonshine.
[oscar] the breast is the most special part of the turkey.
Today, we're gonna make mezcal de pachuga for the day of the dead.
You're actually adding a meat that's gonna be hanged
Inside of the cap or the still.
You're actually sacrificing that part.
It's gonna bring its spirit into our mezcal.
Okay. Myself, I wouldn't put a turkey breast in it.
But I'm in his country, so I'm following his lead.
[speaking in foreign language]
-Apples, oranges. -Coffee.
-Coffee? -Coffee from oaxaca?
-Yeah. Chocolate. -Chocolate.
I've never seen all these different flavors with the same drink.
-And the chocolates. Okay. -Yeah.
I have no idea what it's gonna taste like,
But, you know, oscar has generations behind him
That was illegally making a mezcal.
[speaking foreign language]
So, oscar is making mezcal de pachuga off of his family heritage.
If oscar says put coffee beans in
Then we're gonna put some coffee beans in.
[speaking spanish]
Oh, he's got some wood.
-Yeah, yeah, he's gonna start still. -Start the fire.
Exactly.
[oscar] to seal we use corn.
-[tim] it's corn meal. -Yeah.
[speaking in foreign language]
[oscar] can you bring the turkey?
So, we're gonna put it over here
And then the cord, it has to go over here.
They're gonna put raw turkey meat into the mezcal to distill.
I've never heard of anything like this before
But in rome, we'll do as the romans do.
Well, you know, this still it's been in the family for hundreds of years,
But it's just similar to what I do, too.
It's a copper still with the elephant trunk
Design that goes way up in the air,
And then it turns back down to the condenser.
So, there's no doubler or thumper in place.
Making mezcal, or making moonshine in the woods, same thing.
The mezcal de pachuga, it's starting to come out.
[tim] we start to get us a sample of this,
So we can proof it.
And that's a real important task for a master distiller.
[man speaking in foreign language]
-How big and how many stay? -Stay.
-Yeah. -That's how you figure out.
Alcohol proof.
So, it's like 70%.
-You wanna-- -I got this.
-Right, let's see. -Yeah, please.
[tim] that way, they proof it.
They have bamboo stalk
And they, kind of, siphon it up into it.
Same thing.
Watching the beads hit.
How long it stays there when it pops.
I grew up the same thing with a mason jar.
You shake it, you look at it how long does it stay there
What's the size? What's the texture? What they look like?
And we're both right on the money.
It's the same science, just a different method.
Sixty-eight. Si?
Maybe 69.
[speaking in foreign language]
[digger] I hear him coming.
We've got an order for 200 gallons of our aged tennessee whiskey.
Let's do it, boss.
And they want it in bottles.
Easy. I ain't no possession.
Whoa. Watch you tailgate?
Hey, let her rest and we'll pump her dry.
We've not sampled any of this we put on top of the mountain.
We worked our tails off, getting it up there.
It better taste good.
Or we've wasted a lot of damn work for nothing.
It's going to take a while, ain't it?
Even with the high tech [bleep] here.
-Are we ready? -Yeah.
-Are you gonna help us? -Yeah. Hell yeah.
Oh, my, I couldn't be happier with that color.
That looks good.
Hopefully, that amusement ride did its best.
Oh, look, I'm telling you,
That looks just fine as that sea aged liquor ever did.
[digger] it sure does.
I'll fill this up, and then we'll get us a little tasty.
All right.
Damn if it don't smell primo.
That's as good as that other one sure enough.
It is. It's every bit as good.
Looking at it, smelling of I it's wonderful on the nose.
But once you put your tongue to it,
It's just like heaven on earth.
This proves that the ghost town, mountain aging, is a success.
And the fact that we got 200 damn gallons of it, sold.
-That's-- -that's payday for us so...
Let's get the cork in the filling.
You know, you can have children you're proud of.
You have a dog that you're proud of.
[digger] barrel number two's up.
This is mine and digger's baby.
We're very proud of it.
-Every five of them. How much, mark? -A gallon.
$200.
-$200. -Or $40 a piece.
You go in liquor store and you see bottles of liquor this size,
-It's way more than $40. -Oh, yeah.
You know, maybe we should price it a little higher,
But we want folks to taste this liquor.
We like to get it out there to 'em.
Boys, this is the last barrel.
The people that are getting this whiskey
Is getting the best whiskey in the world.
That stuff right there is what dreams is made of.
And headaches.
And nightmares if you get caught with it.
Yeah.
Now, daniel, when you get down there,
You've got the address.
I've got it programmed in my gps.
It's just a little old, small warehouse.
It just got one little loading dock.
Yep.
[digger] you just back up there and just sit and wait.
They'll get to you.
[daniel] we'll make it work. It ain't my first rodeo.
[digger] it's a chore getting all these bottles filled up.
We've done a day's work already.
That's gonna draw all attention at the toll.
Long bearded, redneck
And a four-wheel drive ford truck.
Everybody's got one 'em.
Let's check out this mash, guys.
-Oh, yeah. -Yeah, it's dropped.
It's sour. So, that means some alcohol.
This jerky corn. It's worked off good and we're gonna run it.
I've got a 30 gallon copper pot.
You need to do something on the inside in the wintertime.
It's perfect.
Go ahead and cap it off. There we go.
Yeah. Turn her wide open.
[amanda] I can't wait to get this going
And see what it smells and taste like.
I'm very excited to see what comes out of here.
I normally try to be a pretty patient person,
But this is, kind of, hard, starting to get warm.
We'll know very soon, I think.
I just can't wait to smell and taste this liquor.
Put me a little stick of wood in here.
[amanda] why don't you use a coon pecker?
I use a pecker for two things, and this ain't one of them.
[huck] it's running, pretty little stream coming out there.
When that liquor started running,
I almost could not wait to throw the heads away.
I just wanted to get down to the part
Where I could really taste the alcohol that we've made.
This is the moment of truth, guys.
It's really good. That's delicious.
It was amazing to finally taste this.
It has a very different flavor profile from a regular white corn.
Well, it's got the corn in it.
It tastes like a strong corn flavor
And a little bit of earthiness.
[mark] smell corn, tastes corn, it's good.
And it finishes off with sweetness in the end.
It's pretty smooth. I mean, for as high proof as it is,
It tastes really good.
I don't know if it's the history behind it
All the hard work that we've put into it and others have.
There's just something really special about this corn liquor.
I think this tastes amazing, but maybe we could find a way to make it even better.
A lot of distilleries, they'll take a really good corn whiskey
And they barrel age it.
What if we use our old infusion chamber that we made
And we oaked this and we try to rapid age it.
If we could give it a beautiful color
And those beautiful flavors that come from the oak wood.
I think it would make it even more special.
I hate to mess up a good thing
You know what we've been through to getting to this point.
What if we just oak some of it?
It's your liquor, you do what you want to.
I never could out argue a woman anyway, could you?
I ain't gonna try it.
My idea is to use our pressurization chamber
And the beer making keg that we built.
We're going to take our charred oak,
Take our spirit, incorporate those into the barrel together.
We're gonna charge it with carbon dioxide
And then essentially pressurize that.
I've used woodchip. I ain't never done it in a rig like it.
You got to do it the old way.
You know, you gotta put in barrels.
That's set for months and years.
I know there's probably nothing better than really giving it time,
But this is something I always wanted to try to do with this infusion technique.
There is a chance that we could mess this up,
But I feel pretty confident that it's worth the risk.
-What you want to do about half of it? -Yeah, about half.
What we decided is we would keep some of it unaged
And we would age the rest of it.
That way we can preserve some of the clear, beautiful corn on its own
And let it stand alone and speak for itself.
That should be good.
Close tie. Rest up to you.
Right. Close her up.
[huck] here we go.
-All right. -[huck] looks like a bomb to me.
Ain't gonna blow up or nothin', is it?
Here it is.
[mark] that makes me nervous.
I like to keep you guys on your toes.
Yeah, we put this co2 in it you know, and it's a lot of pressure.
Pushes the liquor through the wood and back and forth.
I think it'll be okay. I think it's going to be good.
When this is all said and done,
It should have a beautiful color, a beautiful taste,
And it should have smoothed the alcohol a little bit.
Now you're going to leave it in there overnight, right?
Yeah. I think the longer we leave it under the pressure,
The more extraction we're gonna get out of it.
-[mark] let her set overnight. -[amanda] sounds good.
[indistinct speaking]
[man speaking]
Hands on the hood.
God almighty. Dang.
Something's on fire. Something's on fire.
[tickle] so, how far you reckon we've gotta cook this stuff down, henry?
[henry] I don't know. It's all gonna be experimental, you know?
Cook it just a little bit, and then we'll try that
If that's not what we're looking for just keep cooking it down.
[tickle] keep going till we get it right. Right
We've got 40 gallons of maple sap
And a lot of jugs of moonshine.
Now comes the tricky part.
-[henry] take 45 minutes. -Yeah.
Then we'll fuse it, and then we'll do a taste test.
We've got to figure out what consistency to boil this stuff down to,
So we can infuse our shine properly.
There we go.
[henry] I turn it on right here.
[indistinct chattering]
Whoa! Is my beard still there?
[indistinct chatting]
I told you to watch them damn boys.
They don't know how to handle the propane like we do.
[tickle] this stuff has a lot of water in it.
We've got to figure out exactly how long to boil this,
To get the right consistency, to get the right maple flavor and not lower our proof.
Tickle, how long has it been?
It's 15 minutes.
People might say. Why not just go out and buy a bottle of maple syrup?
I want to be able to look at my customer say,
"listen, son, I went and tapped the tree myself and this is what you got."
It's coming straight out of the farm.
-I got a good name for this stuff. -What!
Sweet, syrupy goodness.
Able maple.
-Able maple. -Able maple.
You drank too much of it, you won't able-- -
[henry] you won't be able to say it.
-We've gotta give it a man's name. -[tickle] man name.
Hair the dog.
I ain't naming our liquor no syrup
-And all of that stuff -henry, I agree with hair the dog
Because this is the liquor you drink in the morning to get over a hangover.
Everybody knows you eat maple syrup on your pancakes at breakfast.
So, we're gonna call this "hair the dog."
It's the drink the next morning
Get you over the party the night before.
-Forty-five minutes. We need to cut that one. -You cut 'em off.
We've been boiling this sap down for a long time,
And it's still very thin and very watery.
But, I can't wait to try it
Shake it up a little bit.
-Shake it. Don't bake it. -All right.
All right, let's see what you got.
-All right. -Oh, [bleep]. Don't be spilling it, josh.
Smells real good.
It don't got enough maple flavor in there.
It's got a very light taste. But I think you're right.
You can taste a tiny, tiny hint of maple
But there was too much water in this.
We're on the right track.
It's condensing down, we can see where the flavor is concentrating,
But it's taking a lot longer than we thought it was gonna take.
Y'all just go into the damn house and I work on it this evening.
Sounds good to me. All I can say is it's cold out here.
-I'm heading to the house. -Yeah, it's lot cold here.
[josh] these guys are ready to go home.
I'm going to stay here and I'm going figure it out.
Have no fear. Josh is here. Y'all go home.
-Probably gonna take a minute. -I live here.
Sounds good to me.
-Yeah. -Y'all be careful.
All right.
[amanda] let's see what we've made, guys.
[huck] moment of truth. We'll get out of your way.
[amanda] this corn liquor, it's good all on its own.
But I just really wanted to see
What this would taste like as an aged whiskey.
Let's see what we have here.
-Oh, well, it looks good. -[amanda] it does.
So, we pour it out. It's a beautiful color.
-And it smells good. -I love this.
[huck] I mean, it looks real good.
I mean, it's some of the prettiest whiskey you've ever laid your eyes on.
I just hope it tastes good.
I know. So obviously we got to filter this, right
Any time that we oak something,
We have to filter it in some way
Just to get the small sediments out from the oak chips.
It's just gonna give us a nice product with beautiful clarity.
-[amanda] wow! -[mark] it's pretty clean, eh?
[amanda] yeah.
I know. You had to get your liquor before we put the oak in it.
Let's see how it turned out now.
My goal here is to complement the corn flavor
With the subtleties of the oak.
You tell me what you think.
That's a good jar of liquor right there.
You can taste the white liqu easy though.
So we fixed it better than it was before.
Try that and see what you think.
Thankfully, you can still taste...
The essence of that corn and the alcohol,
But you get subtleties of vanilla
And sweetness and caramelization from the wood.
I'm really happy with the result.
This is even better than I hoped it was going to be.
I didn't expect it to come out this good.
This is really something special.
-Pulled off another science project for me? -No,
That's all the science project for me today, I promise.
[mark] he's still back of our cadillac and right behind us, ain't he?
Yeah, he's coming on with it.
$40,000 sale at one lick?
-Popcorn would do damn somersaults, wouldn't he? -He would.
[digger] we've got all this liquor bottled up.
200 gallons worth.
And that's time to send daniel on to nashville.
He said, "it's a big deal for me."
He said, "I ain't never hauled this much liquor in my life at one time."
There ain't many people that has.
[digger] we're traveling into town.
We'll gas him up, and it's up to him
To get that to the destination.
We're going to take these barrels
And we're going to put more tennessee whiskey in 'em,
Get them back up on the mountain and get them swinging again.
-That's crazy. -One human being buying this much liquor.
Of course, you know, big wheels like that.
They probably know a lot of people
That they want to keep greased up in their direction.
You know, thing about it is you can get done with a jar of liquor
-Or what you can't get done without $100 bill. -Oh, yeah.
Uh-oh. Hattie boy.
I don't want you to panic.
But that black yukon that just passed us.
-He's pulled in behind daniel. -Yeah, he's behind daniel now.
This ain't no good, hattie boy.
[siren wails]
Oh, no.
No, no, no, no!
[mark] daniel is directly behind us
With $40,000 worth of untaxed liquor
And the police is right behind daniel.
This is when the bottom falls out of your tummy.
[bleep]
[digger] now he's pulling up at us hattie boy.
Get on up here and pull over.
[mark speaking]
Get your hands where they can see them, hattie.
Don't make them nervous.
How you fellows doing today?
Well, we're doing all right.
What you holdin' in your barrels back here?
[digger] there's nothing in them barrels.
They're just oak barrels we got off [bleep]
Ain't no kind of liquor or anything.
-No, sir. No, sir. -No, sir.
All right. Can I get you to step out here for a minute.
Okay. Me too sir?
Yeah, both of you come out here.
[cop] there's no liquor or nothing illegal in the truck?
No sir.
You're welcome to look.
Hang loose here just a sec. I have got another unit coming up here with me.
[indistinct speaking]
Come up to the car up there for me.
[police officer speaking]
Hands on the hood.
[police officer speaking]
No.
[police officer speaking]
All right.
You know, we're gonna smell like liquor.
[bleep] that's liquor in them.
[police officer speaking]
[mark] they'll smell like liquor the rest of their life.
Honestly, officer, if we thought that
Hauling around empty barrels would have been a problem,
I promise you, we wouldn't have done it.
Well, you know the first thing I think when I see them.
I know.
[police] just remember, you ain't going to get lucky every damn time.
I was gonna get lucky one time, boys.
Enjoy the rest of your... Back to work.
Thank you.
I got my eye on you, boys.
Oh, damn. That makes you feel
Like you've been kicked in the nuts, don't it?
Now the deal is daniel.
Yeah, he went... He went on all right.
[mark] you know, he's letting us go
But that's not the main issue here.
I am ecstatic, the fact that daniel tweaked by.
I ain't gonna draw an easy breath now until daniel gets back.
No.
This is a tradition to honor all his family,
People that are not here with us.
Oscar invited me over to his mother's house,
You know, this is like a special time for them.
I mean, you know, day of the dead
When they're trying to remember those who have passed.
Is this pechuga we made?
-Pechuga, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. -We made?
I'm excited to taste this stuff.
They put this turkey, they put the chocolate,
They put fruits in it, you know...
I mean, it's gonna have a wild flavor.
[speaking foreign language]
I've never tasted anything like this,
The vegetables and the fruit
And it almost made it taste like a brandy.
And even the turkey breast there's flavor coming out in a distillation.
It's almost like you are eating and drinking at the same time.
It's almost like a soup.
[speaking foreign language]
This is about thousands of years
Of the living culture of mexico.
The spirit of the alcohol. The spirit of the turkey.
The spirit of the holiday, those spirits, they want those to live toda
And I really like to bring that back to the states.
[josh] well, right now
We've been out here for hour cooking this maple sap
To be able to get it to mix with the liquor and taste right.
That one right there, it's about two or three minutes shy.
I'll be going for one and a half hours.
Let's just turn it off and see what we got there
'cause that's how we're doing this.
God!
Sure boy!
It's definitely a little bit sweeter.
You know what? I've got to have something to eat.
We'll get some food. We're gonna come back.
We're gonna start back over.
Damn. I left the damn door wide open.
That's mashed potatoes and gravy.
Sprinkle corn with mozzarella cheese.
Let's see if this son of a bitch is any good.
Boy, I'll tell you what...
I don't think I gonna even try to attempt to eat this.
The chicken is like...
I can't even pick it up.
Like, it's like dough.
I think, I'm gonna have beer for dinner.
God almighty! Dang! Oh, [bleep]. Something's on fire.
I got to get my liquor out.
[bleep].
Don't kill me!
This well just ran out of water.
We got no damn water! [bleep].
Henry, the house is on fire. The house is on fire.
This might be the best biscuit you ever ate.
Anytime we can incorporate making something to eat
And making liquor, I'm all for it.
Well, that wasn't self-rising, was it?
I don't think so.
There won't be a bitter taste to 'em.
They ain't got no grease or nothing.
-No. -Watch this right here.
See how she does?
I bet she got some flavor now.
Henry. The house is on fire.
The house is on fire. What do I do?
[henry speaking]
Just leave. You want me to just leave?
[henry speaking]
[siren wailing]
My house is burning to the ground.
This place be crawling with damn cops.
I don't know what I was thinking, it's out on my name
On a piece of paper, put in the still site there.
And I guess I wasn't thinking about a fire.
The fire department's gonna find those pipes going down to the still site.
They're going to come looking for me.
I'm a [bleep]. My ass is going to jail.
[mark] get on in here, boon.
I mean, son, son.
Well, you know, daniel looks like he's gaine a little bit of weight.
His chest is a little bit bigger than it used to be.
He's either been working out,
Or he's got some money hid in there.
I've got... A hell of a gift right there, you know.
[digger] cheers to that.
Heck, I'm gonna get my drink up here,
See if I'm happy with it.
Oh, my. Lookie here.
Yeah, I'm happy with it.
-Boon, that's yours. -No kidding.
That right there, daniel, that's what
-[bleep] dreams is made of, ain't it? -Yep.
Boys, every one of us could have very easily went to jail yesterday.
Damn right.
You know something, we didn't. Let's have a drink.
Here's to freedom, boys.
Any time you got a little setback,
Something goes wrong, you use that as a learning experience.
You don't get angry. You don't try to fight back.
You learn from your mistakes. That's how you get better.
We're letting our guard down too much.
They're watching you guys a hell of a lot more than they used to.
You know, there's no doubt in our minds
That we've got a big target on our back.
We're gonna have to be a little bit more diligent and careful.
Let's talk about [bleep].
Let's unwrap that pool table over here
And let's see how bad I can whip you boys on the pool table.
I say, I'll play with one of my bad eyes shut.
Gosh.
Damn, what a fricking mess.
Yeah, it is a damn mess, isn't it?
Almost got the house, didn't it?
Did they come close to you?
You know, we did some wiring right here on the inside of this wall.
-Yeah? -Could have started right in there.
This looks where it's burnt there.
Right here on the corner. Right here on the corner right here.
Well, the fire department came, so you know what that means.
-Fire marshals. -Fire marshals is coming.
-Oh, yeah. -The damn investigators will be coming out.
If they find this damn plant and they follow it down to still site...
Josh's crew, his butt's on the line.
He signed that lease agreement. He's going to jail.
I say let's cut this damn line off.
Pull this line right here, out.
Go down and get the caps just in case they do find the damn thing.
If they do find it, he can't be charged for manufacturing.
Let me get that saw.
I'll run down here and get the catch.
We got to hurry up, brother, 'cause that fire marshal could be coming.
[tickle] we have got to cove our tracks right here.
Josh's name is on the lease of this house,
So, we've got to make sure that there's nothing illega right here
That could connect josh to any moonshine activity.
God, I wish I could get everything out of here
And just move it to another site.
Time is a luxury that we don't have.
As far as these totes and all.
You know, we've got cattle here, we've got crops here.
So that's not gonna put up a red flag.
The biggest thing is this pipe going down the hill.
We're going to get rid of that.
And hopefully, you know, they won't be indicting josh.
Oh, you go.
Whatever we're gonna do, we got to do it quick,
-'cause there's more-- -you don't never know when they're gonna come.
You heard anything from him, henry?
You know one thing about josh?
He's a runner. He gets on his butt. He's gone.
So, we may not see him for a while.
That looks pretty good, don't it?
Don't look bad.
-Damn that thing is heavy. It's heavy. -It is heavy.
We've cut off all of our lines that lead to this house.
So, there's no connection to josh.
He's going to be all right.
He's got plausible deniability.
-Help us roll. -Let's get the hell out of here.
You've made it.
Yeah. I made it, man.
What took you so long? Got held up at the border?
Yeah, that's a long way to oaxaca, mexico, man?
I called my buddy howard.
He's really excited about what happened in mexico, what did I see, what did I do,
And did I bring anything back to drink?
Well, this is mezcal.
You know, mezcal is a totally different thing than tequila.
How much you want? A whole lot?
Viva la mexico.
How about that? That's different.
-It's got a sweeter back end. -Yeah?
When it hits the belly though, boy, she lets you know she's there.
God almighty.
I mean, I could get down with this.
I can dance a jig to a bottle of this right here.
This is all hand labor cut, baked, distilled.
Wood fire, I mean, this is really, really old school.
-It brought you back to your roots. -Oh, it is old school, man.
I mean, everywhere I went in this town in oaxaca,
Everybody was making mezcal.
Each one of them's got their own little recipes,
But they really preserve it by telling the next generation.
So it's handed down from generation to generation.
It's handed down over and over.
The way they pass on the heritage
And the process of making alcohol and how they are proud of it
I think america should do the same thing.
You know, it's crazy over here, man.
-A lot of recipes are gone because... -Mm-hmm.
...People don't want to learn the tradition.
But it sounds like over there, these people embrace it
And it's culture. It's bred into them.
And that's how we were for so long.
But then somewhere along the road,
-We started losing all the-- -well, life got easy.
We need to find a way to preserve...
The history from around here before it's gone, because--
You're trying to get me to go do something else?
Well, tim, as you always say, life's an adventure.
-Yeah. -And I mean, you fell in love
With this whole idea and tradition.
There's traditions in the states here
That we don't have to go but so far to find.
We need to get out there on the road,
Put some wheels to the pavement,
And daggum start tracking down these recipes.
You think, we got to go dig up some old recipes somewhere?
You damn right. And we need to bring them back to life.
We've lost a whole lot of techniques,
A lot of recipes, and a lot of the process of producing alcohol in different ways.
You know, and I really think,
You know, now is the time that we need to try to
Reclaim some of those lost recipes.
Well. Let's pack that bottle of whiskey.
Let's hit the road, old buddy.
Here's to new adventures. And old recipes.