[narrator] Tonight on Moonshiners...
We've moved to this new still site
'cause our other site was burned by the law.
Pretty little feller. I like it.
We've got to make sure we stay one step ahead of our pursuers.
-Boom. Damn. -That'll take your fingerprints off.
Now, you can't go to jail. They won't know who you are.
[Richard Landry] That's a fire, Dan.
This still site has two huge pot stills.
That's putting us 350 gallons a time that we can run.
Is it badass?
[Richard] Bad meaning good.
We're gonna splash the market up a little bit,
takeover right here in Tennessee.
-[whistles] -That's way up there.
[Huck] Condenser's gone, pot's gone, cap's gone.
[Mark Rogers] All this hard work done there, man, look at it.
[Amanda Bryant] Oh, boy.
[Tim Smith] This is how we make the moonshine!
[Digger] Down we go.
It's gonna be slick here in a minute.
[narrator] After a local police captain
busted their backwoods water source,
the Tennessee two retreated to Digger's family farm
in search of a more secure place to make liquor.
Well, today, you know, we brought a few things
out to the new still site, here at Digger's farm.
You happen to see what our water situation looks like?
We've moved to this new still site
because our other site was burned by the law.
[Digger] We got water.
[Mark Ramsey] One thing's always been the same
for hundreds of years.
Moonshining is a cat and mouse game with the law.
We're the mouse, and the law is the cats,
and the mouse is on the run right now.
[Digger] Boy, that mud's slick, ain't it?
[Mark Ramsey] Let's just distill that water
that we're gonna make that scotch mash with.
See if that won't clear it u
[Digger] I got my pap's old spring dug out.
It's not clear yet,
but you have to bear in mind, it rained hard last night.
[Mark Ramsey] This the part I always hate.
This source is a great spring for limestone water,
and once this clay settles out of here a little bit mor
it's gonna be just fine for a Tennessee whiskey.
Just like Popcorn did.
I swear it's a pretty little feller, I like it.
This little piss pot was built off of Popcorn Sutton's
patterns that he had.
We thought it would just be an ultimate kinda
knock in the face to run a run of scotch
on one of Popcorn's stills
because he didn't like scotch.
Oh, look at that.
We are gonna use distilled water
to make this run of scotch.
When we do this process,
even though this water's going in this still cloudy
and a little bit muddy-looking,
what comes out'll be crystal clear.
[Digger] There we go.
The distilled water process is the same as distilling liquor,
except you just have to raise the temperature.
Water boils at a higher temperature than alcohol,
so we don't have to worry about running it low and slow.
We can boil it and push it out as fast as we want to.
[Mark Ramsey] Look yonder.
[Digger] After simmering it down right quick,
see if we got 100% clean water here.
We go from cloudy, muddy water to clear as a bell.
[Mark Ramsey] Oh, yeah.
[Digger] Taste like nothing.
Taste just exactly...
-Taste like water. -[Mark Ramsey] ...like it did before.
[Digger] Don't matter if water runs back on the ground, does it?
No.
[Digger] We have got our distilled water.
We've got about 30 gallons of it,
which is way more than we need.
There you go.
[Mark Ramsey] Yeah, that's plenty.
[Digger] That's a plenty to make a mash out of.
The next step is hydroponically
malting grains and smoking them.
All right, let's go get the rest of our materials
that we need to mash in scotch,
AKA smoked barley.
Smoked barley.
[Mark Rogers] Well, let's go check him out.
[Amanda] Moment of truth, right?
We headed back to our site.
We got a lot of work to do.
We're really looking forward to getting started.
Me and Huck, we've talked it over.
We decided to bring Amanda back this season.
-[Amanda] Want me to pick up that side? -[Mark Rogers] Nah.
She's a good hard worker.
She's really proved herself as part of the team.
[groaning] Lordy.
Old Ugly's gone.
When I got into the still site,
I was hoping everything would be just like we left it.
But it wasn't.
[Huck] Condenser's gone.
Pot's gone. Cap's gone.
Tore the camp all to pieces.
They stole our pot. That's the main thing, you know.
[Amanda] Oh, boy.
[Huck] That's just hard, ain't it?
[Mark Rogers] All this hard work done there, man.
Look, they tore it all to pieces.
I thought we was far enough back with this still site
where anybody wouldn't find it.
Uh, it looks like we was wrong.
[Amanda] You think they took it for scrap?
[Huck] Yep.
Hard to leave anything laying around nowadays.
People need money more than usual,
and I guess they thought they about to get the copper and stuff and resell it.
Get that ol' Big Mama,
set it up, don't you think, Huck?
[Huck] Yeah, all we can do.
I know Old Ugly, but what is Big Mama?
That man, Huck's, got an old big still.
Uh, been a while since we run on it, but...
It's big enough to... You can get down in and clean it.
Oh, perfect. [laughs]
Yeah, you can fit right down in there.
Big Mama.
Uh, it's a biggun,
especially for the woods.
Do you have any ideas of somewhere else we could go?
-Yeah. -[Amanda] Somewhere a little...
We can find another location, it's just
trouble getting everything moved and getting it there.
We start raw hiding this stuff out of here
and get what we can...
...go from there.
We sure don't want to try to build back there.
They're liable to come in on us again, you know.
So the first thing we gotta do is find us a new location.
Over the years, there some good locations
you want to go back to, but sometimes it's better
to take a hard place than it is an easy place
to keep from getting caught.
Little bit of a thicket.
Yeah, we'll, uh...
...go look around a little bit.
See if we can find a spot before we pull it all the way in there.
See what you think about it.
This site here, I've hunted this country all my life.
I ain't never made no liquor out of here,
but I ain't never seen a person in here my whole life
So that makes me feel pretty safe right there.
We need us a good level place, you know?
It's a pretty good place, there's nothing behind us
for miles and miles and miles,
except rough country, I mean rough.
[Mark Rogers] What do you think about setting our pot up here
and running everything that way.
[Huck] It'll work.
We can run our overflow back to the branch right there.
You think that's level enoug
[Huck] Yeah.
Plenty of cover over us right there.
You bet it.
This still site, it's a whole lot further back in the woods.
I think we'll be better off here.
Nothing we haven't done before, right?
Done it all my life.
I believe we can handle it one more time.
-Don't you? -[Amanda] Yes.
[Daniel Maner] What do you think, buddy?
[Richard] I think we need to start unloading this still right now.
[Daniel] You know, it's a blessing Mark and Digger
were generous enough to loan Richard and I
another still to run.
Now, instead of running a three barrel pot,
we'll be running a three barrel pot and a four barrel pot.
All right, so you're thinking about putting it on this side too, right?
[Daniel] That's a good idea.
The more alcohol that we're able to produce,
the more money we're gonna make.
[Richard] This is a big advantage to us right here.
Plus Mark and Digger gave us some corn and some sugar.
We have everything we need to start a first run.
We're gonna splash the market up a little bit.
take over right here in Tennessee.
This is beautiful right here, Dan.
-You think it'll work? -[Richard] Yes, sir.
I'mma let some water run in a couple of these things,
just so we got a little weight in them.
[Daniel] We'll fill it about half full,
then we'll top it off with warm water
and then put our corn in.
We're gonna mash in a corn mash.
Fire up the still
and start warming water up.
[Richard] Right here, we'll set the condenser.
We've got plenty enough room, man.
We're not crowding each other.
I really, really want to make a name for myself out here.
That's how I see it, and that's how it has to be.
We've got the still roughly.
We've got a set. Let's start mashing in.
Our biggest competitors in this area are Mike and Jerry.
-[Daniel] Is that warm, Richard? -[Richard] Yeah.
They're trying to sell to the same people that we're trying to sell to.
So we gotta stay on top of these guys.
Let's put a half a bag in each barrel.
I mean, really get it going.
I don't like to use a whole lot of yeast.
That malt has its own dadgum yeast and enzymes.
I think that that's a good adequate amount.
We can cover her up now, and we'll wait seven days.
We'll come back and check it in five.
Having these two stills out here, man, this is nice.
It is.
We went from having $3,000 out here...
[chuckles] To having...
-...to having $6,000. -...$6,000 worth of copper out here.
How are we gonna keep these things secure, man?
I've got the cure for that over there in my truck.
I've got two of the most modern
-game cameras that they make. -Mmm-hmm.
They actually send pictures to my phone.
If somebody walks in, it'll bing.
I can flip down and look at it,
and I can see what it is.
Where they at? I'll go get them.
[Daniel] Pull that good and tight. You got it?
All right.
If we put it on this sucker right here,
and get it facing both stills,
we'll knock two birds out with one stone.
I think that'll see everything we need to see right there.
[Daniel] We've got our corn mashed in,
and hopefully have alcohol
within five to seven days.
We got everything done. We got everything set up.
I think we're good to go, Dan.
[Daniel] I think you're righ
This thing ain't light.
Let's see if me and you can malt a run without screwing it up.
We need malted barley in order to make scotch.
So my friend is kind enough to let me use
his malting table and drying rack
for as long as I want to.
-Damn it! -What'd you do, hit your toe?
No, my damn knee.
What did you do, kick the door?
No, I hit it with my knee.
No, with my knee.
-[both laughing] -No, with my knee.
My damn crazy bone.
No, that's when you know you did justice to it.
[laughing]
All right, we ready to dump that bag of grain?
[Mark Ramsey] I don't see why not.
Got this grain from a local farmer
that had a bumper crop this year
and had no more room left in his grain bin,
so we got a bargain.
All right, here we go.
We got this grain for 80 cents a pound.
That's a 10% to 12% savings
That's money we gotta pass on to our customers.
We want everybody to still enjoy the same drin
Everything else is going up high,
we don't want to go high.
Here we go, first bucket.
[Mark Ramsey] This process is not complicated at all.
Spread the grain out on this table,
cover it in water, soak, drain.
Third or fourth day, we should be starting to see sprouts.
Let it stand like this for about 12 hours.
Then do it again, clean water.
[Mark Ramsey] Yeah, couple of times.
We'll know when it started,
-it'll have little... -[Digger] Little shoots going out.
Little baby sprouts on it.
There's something about that just really calming, ain't it?
It's kinda like one of them little Zen gardens.
Yeah. Ooh, soft.
Soft.
[Digger] Namaste.
[laughing]
[Digger] Once w sprout this grain
then we'll dry it out.
And while this is sprouting,
I'm gonna get to thinking about how we're gonna
build the smoker for our Irish peat.
That's what they use to make the grain
to make the best scotch in the world.
Now, we gotta think about a smoker.
[Mark Ramsey] Yeah, that.
[Digger] I'll figure it out.
[Mark Ramsey] All right, Puss, let's run up there to the garage
and check on that barley and see if it's sprouting good enough,
-we'll get it on the drying rack. -[Digger] Uh-huh.
We get it dried,
I'll call Jeff.
I think he needs to get out and kind put his ear to the ground,
see if he can hear anything about anybody talking about
folks making liquor.
More especially, the law.
My family farm, it's outside of Cocke County,
couple of counties over.
[Mark Ramsey] Well, we don't know any law enforcement
over there in the new county where your farms at.
[Digger] Got no clue.
My buddy over there, Jeff,
that's got a farm that neighbors mine,
he knows a lot of people.
He's got his fingers on the pulse about anything going on.
-[Jeff over phone] Hello? -What you doing there, big daddy?
[Jeff] I'm here on the job right now.
Well, I hate to bother you, but we kinda need you
to keep your ear to the ground up there.
You know, just listen, see if you hear anybody
talking about, you know, them looking for people making liquor
and new faces being in town and being suspicious.
[Jeff] No problem, I'll kee my ear to the ground,
but I'm out here every day looking around and...
[Digger] Oh, yeah.
[Mark Ramsey] Well, you know everybody in the community.
You know who's supposed to be there and who ain't.
Law enforcement is more inclined right now
to be looking for liquor,
so keep your eyes peeled and reach back out
and let us know, okay?
[Jeff] No problem, I'll take care of it.
[Digger] All right, brother, I do appreciate you.
-[Mark Ramsey] Thank you, Jeff. -[Jeff] Okay.
[Digger] See you, bye.
[Mark Ramsey] All right, I'm glad we talked to him.
You'll scout around, he'll listen...
-[Digger] Mmm-hmm. -...and that's good enough for me.
He'll call us back, he'll get out.
[Mark Ramsey] We'll see where we're at in a day or so, I guess.
Yes, sir.
[Digger] Now, we're gonna head off
and go check on our malted barley,
see how it's coming along,
see if we can't put it on the drying rack.
[Mark Ramsey] I've been maintaining this stuff, Puss.
I think we need to get it on the drying rack.
[Digger] Oh, it's looking fine from here.
Mark and myself are going in to check this grain.
What we're looking for specifically is all grain to be sprouted.
Well, I think it's just about right.
It's perfect, no green showing anywhere, just nice white sprouts.
Which way is it the narrowest?
[Digger] I guess like that.
Barley's cheap, but malted barley is expensive.
Now, the fact that we can malt our own barley
and smoke our own grain,
we're gonna save a ton of money.
[Digger] Now, we gotta build us a smoker,
-and then we'll smoke it. -[Mark Ramsey] Right.
We got our peat blocks.
But without a smoker,
they're useless as tits on a boar hog.
We just have to rig up a smoker that will work with this peat,
we're ready to start making it into liquor.
[Mark Ramsey] We'll get started on one.
[Digger] All right, let's go take care of this.
[Mark Rogers] Well, we made it.
[Amanda] Got enough stuff back there, Mark?
[Mark Rogers] I think I do.
Yeah, we're here today at the new still site.
I always dread setting up a new still site,
but the old one got robbed,
and that's all we can do.
I'm gonna try to find some good foundation rocks
to stick underneath the pot.
[Mark Rogers] Mmm-hmm. Be careful, watch for snakes.
[Amanda] What kinda snakes we have here?
[Mark Rogers] The deadly kind.
Today is not gonna be an easy day, for sure.
So I'm gonna look for any angular stones that I can carry.
They just stack better, and they build a better, more secure fit.
The point of this furnace is to insulate the still,
and it also allows us to distill with indirect heat.
Grab some different sizes, for the little spots.
Moving the flame away from the copper,
it's more efficient, heating it evenly
and distributing that heat evenly.
It makes a huge difference.
We're gonna use a little bit of red clay.
Easily dry out real good, seals stuff off.
It's free, don't cost nothing.
It's about as good as clay as you can use, this right here.
Yeah, that's about as level as we can get, don't you think?
-[Huck] Probably, that's close enough. -[Amanda] Okay.
[Amanda] So I put a lot of thought on this run.
I've been trying to think of every way I could,
how we can get the grains in the pot,
Because I always wanted to try distilling on the grains.
Distilling on the grain, it just gives you a ton of extra flavor
and you can smell the corn. You can smell those grains.
And you can taste them much more predominantly than a standard moonshine.
It's just much more robust.
I've been trying to figure out how I can do it at home,
but I can't do it at home.
Because the direct heat, it will scorch.
-But you can scorch it here, too, if you ain't careful. -[Huck] Mmm-hmm.
I mean, it ain't hard to scorch.
Amanda wants to stay along the grains, you know,
put her grains in the pot.
You let one grain get in there
and let it scorch,
it'll change the taste of the liquor.
Better off to keep it clean.
But you have to really sit there, stir it constantly,
-Right. -till it gets to boiling.
So what I started doing at home was,
I take glass marbles
and I put them at the bottom of the pot.
The marbles work as an agitator.
It reduces any risk of scorching through your whole run.
[Mark Rogers] I don't know anywhere to get any marbles
I ain't played with marbles since I was in school.
And I wasn't in school much.
We can just put some of those grains from that mash in there somehow.
It'll help us improve the flavor and the smell.
But the trick is, how do we get them out?
I never have figured out a way to put a door
on one of these furnaces where we could...
-Open it up? -[Mark Roger laughs] ...take it out.
First I'm concerned,
the only thing that's gonna go in that big pot is liquid.
-The best way is to put it in your thumper. -[Huck] Mmm-hmm.
I've tasted moonshine that's been distilled on the grain.
And there's really nothing like it.
I'm not gonna completely give up on this idea.
It's just time to go back to the drawing board
and figure out a solution to the problem.
[Huck] Hey, you-uns ready for the fire box? I got it for you-uns.
-[Mark Rogers] Yeah. -[Amanda] Yeah, perfect timing.
[Mark Rogers] It takes more out than you think,
uh, to build this furnace,
it's a bigger furnace than you think.
It's gonna be a lot of heat, you know.
When you fire that furnace up, it gets hot.
It runs at 173 or something, you know,
that's about what you want to keep it at.
Any thieves want to get our copper, they'll earn it, won't they?
-They're gonna have to do some work, that's for sure. -[Mark Rogers] Mmm.
We've done good on this furnace, uh, we worked hard on it,
and we've just about got it.
Let's get outta here.
[Daniel] What do you think, Richard?
[Richard] I think I don't have to go to the gym...
...being a moonshiner.
Today we're gonna get to run seven barrels of corn mash.
This is our first really big run.
[Daniel] See that?
-[Richard] Oh, yeah. -The caps fail,
that's what you all see.
[Daniel] If we get the flavo out of this corn
that I think we're gonna get
this is gonna be some top-shelf corn liquor.
We'll get it out here on the market
and put some funds back in our pocket.
-You ready? -Yeah.
[Richard] That's a fire, Dan
This is what I love. Firing this pot up,
starting to get it working, because then we know that things are happening.
That's a scary time in life for a moonshiner, because now you're dedicated.
Before, you just had mash and a proposition
of going into a illegal activity,
but now we are fully in the pool.
Oh, yeah, Dan. Ooh.
Dan, we about to be running.
[Daniel] Let's go.
-[Richard] Oh, yeah, Dan. -We have liquor now, buddy.
-[Daniel] Look at that stream. -That's liquor, that's corn liquor.
Well, Richard, right there's our heads.
We'll get us another good, clean bucket,
we'll swap a bucket out in the heads.
[Richard] Great minds think alike,
-I was already waiting. -Yup.
-[Richard] What's that, you ready? -Yes, sir.
-It's way up there. -Is it bad-ass?
[Richard] Yeah, that's way up there.
Bad, meaning good.
-That's way up there. -[whistles]
[Richard] We got liquor. I love seeing the first thing.
I love seeing liquor come out for the first time,
I know that's really, really high-proof.
-[Richard] Ninety, ninety-five. -That's dad...
That's dad, by God being 90, looks to me like.
[Richard] Throw out the head and we get to the high shots
I mean, we get to the hearts of this run.
And we can really start to taste things here.
This is where everything blends in real well.
See what that tastes like.
[exhales] This tastes really good.
Look, Superman!
When we get this liquor made off...
...and it makes a good yield
I have a lady, a friend of mine
that wants 20 gallon, just as soon as I get it made.
[Richard] This is 40 gallons of liquor, man.
[Daniel] I know, you're right.
That's eight five-gallon buckets of product.
And Daniel had this liquor sold
before it came out of the worm.
This is awesome. This is a beautiful sight.
[Richard] Had us a pretty good run right here, Dan.
[Daniel] I think we done a pretty good job.
-[Richard] When we gonna sell it? -Tonight.
[Daniel] Right now, order of business,
I've gotta get a hold of the buyer
and, uh, tell her that I've got it and got it ready
If she wants it, and she tries it and likes it,
she's gonna get it.
-[Richard] Let's go get a steak. -We can do that.
[Richard] And then by that time it'll be dark. We can go make the sale.
[Mark Ramsey] This shouldn't take too long, 'cause...
[Digger] No.
[Mark Ramsey] 'Course, you know anything we start, we don't think.
[Digger] It turns into a fiasco, most every time.
With our grain done, it's malted, dried out,
but in the meantime, it has to be smoked to make scotch with.
We gotta build us some sort of little smoker.
This is our Irish peat.
It's what you smoke your grain with for the scotch.
And it's what we're gonna smoke ours with.
[narrator] Peat forms in bogs and swamps
across the northern hemisphe
when decaying fallen plant matter
gathers in layers over thousands of years.
The resulting highly-compact carbon-rich material
has been harvested and used as heating fuel for centurie
Peat's earthy and woody arom
endeared it to scotch makers
who use it at distilleries to dry and smoke their grain
[Mark Ramsey] Will this right here work to set that trash can on?
[Digger] I believe it will, and if it needed to go up even higher,
-we can put it on a block. -Yes, sir.
Due to what we're facing right now
with supply chain issues,
times like this is when you got to make use of what you got
and not waste any money.
Cut a hole, put that right up in there.
-Yeah. -And then put another hole over right there.
[Digger] We've got metal trash cans,
Mark's got a feed bucket to keep the stock in.
Little bit of vent pipe, which Mark used building his new garage,
so we're going to make it into something we can use.
Water it out a little bit, water it out.
A smoker has a fire box
where your wood smolders and gives off a little heat.
Oh, look at that.
Then it just goes through a pipe
and in the smoking chamber.
We wanna run it through that pipe,
so it gives it time for any heat to dissipate,
'cause we don't heat that grain up over 100, 105 degrees.
That's optimum for cold smoking some grain.
Vent it at the top, build three racks,
and we'll just do it in three-rack runs
and dump it in a pan and move on.
[Mark Ramsey] Ah, one more, and, Digger,
we built a grain smoker. I think it'll work good.
We've got the smoker built, racks built,
now what we gotta do is get the grain in it, smoke it,
get it ground, and we're one step closer to making scotch.
Hold this up, then we'll drain it,
and head to the farm,
get smoked and mashed in for scotch.
[Digger] Damn right.
[Mark Rogers] There's some hog signs, Huck.
-[Huck] Hogs? -[Mark Rogers] He's been here.
Well, speaking of the hogs,
and any possible other intruders to our 'still site,
I picked up some toys I wanna show you.
Basically, it's like a perimeter alarm.
And we'll put a little shell in here
and then tie it to a tripwire.
So there's no projectile in this, it's just black powder.
It's gonna let off a loud bang.
I like stuff that blows up.
And, uh, whoever comes up with that idea is pretty smart.
All right. Going hot.
-[loud pop] -[Mark Rogers] Whoa!
That is loud, ain't it?
If somebody coming up through there,
you know, that goes off,
you'd probably think you were getting shot at. I would.
That's pretty slick.
It'll work, but I guarantee if you set them around here,
me and Mark won't be into 'em without knowing about it.
I won't put them anywhere you go
to the bathroom breaks at. How about that?
-Deal? [chuckles] -[Huck] That'll work.
[Amanda] I'll get to work setting these,
-and you guys can carry on what you're doing. -[Mark Rogers] Gotcha.
-[Mark Rogers] Back at her, Huck. -[Huck] Looking good.
Now, finishing the furnace ain't the end of the work.
We still gotta set her thumper up,
so we can flavor our liquor with something.
-[Mark Rogers] Doesn't wanna walk too good, does it? -[Huck] Uh-huh.
We got this oak barrel, you know, for a thumper.
-[Huck] Then we can just pick it up. -[Mark Rogers] Yeah.
[Huck] And we're gonna build us a square box
that'll slide down in there, you can sell it off.
You put fruit in that thumper, it's hard to clean it out.
We just put it all in that cellar and then
take that and dump it out and clean it, you know?
-It's a lot easier. -A lot easier.
[Amanda] Putting the grains into the thumper
will help us give that flavor.
But I'd really like to find some way
to get them into the pots.
So I'm just gonna try to really figure out a way that we can compromise,
and still get those grains into the pot.
The reason I wanted to just incorporate
the cooking on the grains was it'll taste a lot better.
We're just trying to make it easier and faster.
I know she's smart, she showed me things.
And I'm willing to listen.
But it's more trouble than it's worth,
and you scorch your liquor if you don't watch it.
So I put a lot of thought into this, and I got a basket,
similar to the exact same thing you're doing.
It's like a filter basket, basically.
So, it's so small that no grains will come out of it.
And then no particulates, no little bits of the mash
will go into the bottom of the pot at all.
I mean, that's the reason we built this,
to eliminate this.
[Huck] It's so hard to get ingredients,
be a lot of money if something happens.
[Amanda] There is a chance that we could mess this up,
but I feel pretty confident that it's worth the risk.
If anything goes wrong, then I'll replace the mash
and I'll climb in there and scrub it out.
-[Mark Rogers] All right, we'll try it. -[Amanda] All right.
That sound good to you, Mark?
I'll hold you by the ankles.
-[Amanda laughs] -Hold you by the ankles.
Everybody's got new ways, everybody can learn, you know?
If she can come up with an idea
that works better than mine, we'll go for it.
I've never seen nothing fitting any better than that.
I'm happy with the way that this 'still's starting to come together.
All we gotta do is get some grain
mash it in, and then it'll be good to go.
I don't think I ever saw a 'still look this good, though.
Feel like I'm in a fairytale.
Man, women gonna come back here in the middle of nowhere like this?
Oh, yeah. This is, this is where they wanna be.
-They wanna meet here? -Yeah, they said back of the woods,
out of the way from everything.
The buyer's on her way,
we got her 20 gallons of fresh corn shine rot
straight off the worm.
All right. Let's get out and see these ladies.
[Richard] I ain't got no problem seeing a lady, man.
[woman 1] Daniel, Daniel, long time no see.
[Daniel] Hey, how you doing there? [chuckles]
-[woman 1] Doing good, how are you? -[woman 2] Hey.
[Daniel] Well, there it is.
Taste it and see what you think.
-[woman 1] Pretty good. -[Daniel] Think that'll do?
-[woman 1] I think it'll do. I think we'll take her. -[woman 2] Yeah, buddy.
-[woman 2] I'm the banker, so here you are, sir. -[woman 1] Here's the banker.
[Daniel] It's top-shelf corn liquor.
It's not gonna take long to get rid of all that.
We'll get you loaded up and get you out of here.
[Richard] I hope you all enjoyed that.
[woman 1] Have any more?
[Daniel] Well, if you're up for 20 more,
-we can make it happen. -[woman 2] Sounds good.
[Daniel] Give us 20, 25 minutes, we'll be back with it.
[woman 1] I'll be waiting.
You know, this is a dang good start to the season.
[Daniel] She must like that stuff.
[Richard] She must've really liked them.
[Daniel chuckles]
Richard and I have got four more buckets stashed away,
we wanna hurry back to the 'still site and get it ready to go.
[Richard] I ain't ever came back here in the dark.
[Daniel] It's a little different-looking, ain't it?
Let's go get the... get it to her.
You gotta be [bleep] me.
Was there not four buckets sitting here?
[Richard] That ain't good. Somebody's walking around the 'still site.
Some damn body come in here and got this bucket.
[Richard] 'Still site looks good, Dan.
[Daniel] Let's see the footage.
Here's us driving off, now.
And this right here is out of frame.
[Richard] They could've come up around the back of here or somewhere.
[Daniel] They had to come out from this way,
if not, they'd have got caught on that camera right there.
We stashed the buckets of liquor where the camera couldn't see it.
Richard, this 'still site's burnt.
We need to get the hell out of here.
The bottom line is, this 'still site is done.
[Daniel] Let's make it sell,
and then first day light, as the sun's daylight breaks,
we need to be in here tearing 'stills out.
[Richard] Let's get the hell on out of here.
That first daybreak, in the morning,
we gotta be in here tearing this 'still site down
and getting this [bleep] gone outta here.
[Richard] Man, I just come off a high
-and I'm going right back down under. -[Daniel sighs]
[Huck] That there's about the way they say it.
[Mark Rogers] We might have to tweak it a little bit to get it set up.
We gotta fix a little more stuff,
gotta fix the flake stand, get it set up.
And, uh, get our water coming in, we gonna build us a good trough,
so we'll have no trouble having water.
Other than that, we're gonna get started on the mash.
[Amanda] So, I'm gonna make a corn-based mash.
Gonna start with the malted corn in each barrel.
Since Mark gave me creative freedom with this mash,
my idea is to incorporate some other grains
and use a four-grain whiskey recipe.
I picked up some malted whea
and some oats and a little bit of malted barley.
Oats have a really dominant flavor,
so you don't need a lot of oats.
And because they're rolled,
a lot of the sugars have already been pressed out of them.
They're steamed and dried, so I don't even have to grind these.
It's gonna help me to have solid grains
to put into the 'still later when we run the mash.
And last but not least, malted wheat.
Another one of my favorite grains.
And then I need a little bit of sugar
to kick off my fermentation
and make sure we make as much alcohol as possible
Mark and Huck taught me I don't need to put yeast.
I'll have natural wild yeasts in that malted grain.
It's all I need for fermentation.
-[Mark Rogers] How you doing? -[Amanda] Good, good. You guys got good timing.
[Amanda] Got it all mashed in.
Think we just gotta cover it up now and let it go to work.
Definitely gonna need a few more days to leave this mash to work off,
and I wanna make sure I get as much alcohol
out of these grains as possible.
This is the first run of the season and it's all on me,
so I have to make sure that it's a good run.
I'm gonna get a lot of liquor from all the work that we've done.
Might come back up here and stir it, you know,
that's about be all you need to do.
We about ready to roll. Let's get out of here.
[Amanda] All right. I'm good.
Good work today, guys, we got a lot done.
[Digger] This is all-new to us.
[Mark Ramsey] We have never, ever smoked any grain.
[Digger] No. We had no reason to.
This little smoker, you know, we're at the jumping-off spot.
We gotta put the grain in it, and fire it up for real,
and see what happens.
Let it rip.
Let that start burning,
and commence putting our grain in there
-while that's getting hot. -I guess we ought to.
Look at this.
[Mark Ramsey] I mean, it's dry as a popcorn fart.
Oh, yeah.
That's ready to rock.
[Mark Ramsey] You think that'll be enough?
[Digger] Oh, yeah. That's plenty.
[Mark Ramsey] Well, look at that.
[Digger] Yep. That's peat smoke.
[Mark Ramsey] Is that peat?
[Digger] That will smell like smoke,
you know, from a campfire.
Oh, yeah. Lookee yonder.
[Mark Ramsey] What about that!
-Damned if it don't draw good, don't it? -[Digger] Yep.
All three of those racks
will smoke for probably a couple hours,
and two runs of that, we'll know if we made
scotch grain, or if we just ruined some grain.
Puss, it's gotta be smoked all it's gonna get by now.
Yeah, that smoke's slowed down a lot.
[Mark Ramsey] Let me get over here in the clean air.
Oh, yeah.
[Digger] It's got a good, smoky smell and taste to it.
Let's get that out of there, and load that back up,
and we'll get to grinding.
All right.
[Mark Ramsey] Here, let's get us
another run on there.
Scotch uses zero sugar in the fermentation process,
so it just relies strictly on the grain.
We're gonna assume
that we need to use the whole 50 pounds
on one mash-in, in order to do
a 20, 25 gallon mash.
We'll go ahead and get started to grinding this.
[Digger] We might as well.
Now, some people say
you have to make it powder-fine.
You do not.
You just bust it up
where you can cook all the starches
out of that grain, and convert it
to fermentable sugars.
Well, there we go.
Well, now that we've got
these 50 pounds of barley ground up,
we're gonna head to the still site,
and make us a little mash.
Here we go.
Let's get this out there, and mash in.
We got our barley malted,
we've got our barley smoked
and we have our barley groun
Easy, now.
It's just a matter, now, of mashing it in,
and see if we have any luck coming up with a scotch.
You get to stirring that,
and I'll worry about our still water.
[Digger] We don't need no clumps.
Got her, boy.
[Mark Ramsey] I never thought what I'd ever see the day that
me and you would be making damn scotch.
And yet, here we are.
Here we are.
[Digger] It's about ready for yeast.
This mash-in is pretty much complete.
Digger's pitched the yeast.
We'll come back in seven or eight days,
and see if we've made scotch,
or crap.
I believe we're good.
[Daniel] You hungry?
This is a big old grub.
That's a huge grub. I've never seen that.
-They're tiny in Louisiana, little, small things. -[Daniel] You know,
them grubs, they get in here on these old tree limbs and stuff,
and they eat them, and they get pretty big.
Man, that's nothing but protein right there, huh?
I don't believe I'd eat him,
unless I was starving to death,
but if you was starving to death,
you could eat him, couldn't you?
If I had to, I'd put him in a gumbo.
I think some of these fast-food restaurants
probably got stuff that's worse than this.
[Richard] I'm more than sure, yeah.
[Mark Rogers] You think she's ready, Amanda?
[Amanda] I sure hope so.
It looked good a couple days ago
when I was here, and I stirred her up a bit.
So, today is the day
we finally come back to the still site.
All that's left is to start running some liquor.
-[Mark Rogers] Sugar's out of it. -Yep.
[Amanda] It's sour.
I'm checking the mash, the mash looks good.
The caps have fallen, and I taste nice, sour beer.
-You want to see the basket that I brought? -Mmm-hmm.
It's like a birdcage.
[Amanda] So, it's a hops basket.
It's all stainless steel,
and none of the grains are gonna come out of this.
-Uh-huh. -We can pump our mash right through there,
and make sure no solids get in the pot, at all,
so no chance of scorching.
We'll let Amanda do the ciphering on this.
I figured you'd say that.
Yeah, she's got it in her head that she wants
to make this run on the grain,
If some of that grain, you know,
falls out of that basket,
it could ruin every bit of the liquor,
and the pot, too.
[Amanda] All right.
Yeah, right there.
[Huck] I seen that!
[all laugh]
You get a big mouthful of it?
[Amanda] Oh, God.
It almost came out my nose.
[all laughing]
Y'all let me know when you got enough in there,
and I'll go ahead and start the fire.
You could start it now. We got a good amount in the bottom.
Amanda?
-Yeah? -[Huck] I'm getting ready to swap barrels.
Okay. I got it sealed off.
Once we get the mash into the pot,
I'm gonna scoop the grains u
and fill up this basket with all the good grains
that have all the flavor and alcohol within them.
I'm excited with these oats,
and this malted wheat in here.
I can just smell that it's gonna be awesome.
There's legs on the bottom of this basket,
so Mark and I just lower it down,
and set it on the bottom of the still.
It's easing down in there.
It's just gonna sit right on the bottom,
and close,
and incorporate that flavor safely.
It feels good to finally see it
all coming together, though.
-[Mark Rogers] Yep. -[Amanda] I'll tell you what.
If it's in that worm, it's getting hot.
It'll be coming up that money spout there
in a few minutes.
It won't take it long. You'll probably smell it.
[sniffs]
It's a good smell.
After a long bit of work.
Oh!
-We got liquor. -[Mark Rogers] We got liquor?
[Amanda] Yes, sir.
Ooh! We really...
-Gonna be a start, ain't it? -[Amanda chuckles]
Yeah.
It's not scorched.
It doesn't smell scorched.
It smells like a lot of good grains
are in this liquor.
Now, we've just got to collect it,
and get it down to where it's drinkable,
because the next most important thing
is how does it taste?
All right, Mark.
Let me see that jar.
Get us a little drink, now.
Ooh!
It smells good.
This makes me shiver.
[chuckles]
You getting excited?
-Goosebumps on you? -Yep.
[Huck] You look like a mess.
Oh.
That'll clear out your sinuses.
[Mark Rogers chuckles]
[chuckling] But it tastes good.
After days of research, and nights of lost sleep,
if feels pretty good to get this liquor coming ou
It tastes good. It smells good.
This is all the stuff that I was trying
to incorporate into our product.
Well, it's got some flavor.
Hmm. [whistles]
-Feel a little warm. Ah! -[Amanda] Taste the goods in there?
Yeah.
Yeah, I ain't used to distilling on the grain
like the way she's a-doing it,
but it really turned out goo
I appreciate you trusting me,
and letting me have my freedom with the run.
It means a lot.
Yeah, I thought it was gonna be a disaster,
but Amanda, she stuck to her guns.
She's a whole lot younger than us,
and she never growed up here, but really, deep-down,
she's just one of us.
Let's get out of here.
We've done enough for today.
[Mark Ramsey] We're making a little scotch today, Puss.
[Digger] Today's the day that we run
the Popcorn Sutton
thumbing-our-nose-at-him run of scotch.
[Mark Ramsey] Let's see what we got.
All things being considered, it's probably
the most expensive practical joke
we've ever played.
Well, it's dead,
but that chaff ain't falling to the bottom.
This is a really simple recipe.
We smoked the malted barley.
It smells smoky, though.
[Digger] It's smoky, huh?
There's a lot of grain.
This one little barrel of mash has 50 pound of grain in it.
It got a different smell to it,
and there ain't no sugar in it, whatsoever.
But, see how mashy that is?
It did its job.
This is the first liquor run on this pot.
We distilled the water.
We've tested it, it works well,
and now we just gotta make some liquor out of it.
[Mark Ramsey] It's full up.
[Digger] All right.
[Mark Ramsey] I'm gonna get this still lit.
-Whoa. -[Digger] Hmm.
Smell that.
[Digger] It ain't bad.
Scotch is a very popular drink.
The smoky flavor, you know,
people that like it, they love it.
This could very well end up being
a very marketable product.
[Digger] Yeah, the top of that condenser's hot.
Whoa! Dang.
-Damn! -[Digger] That'll take your fingerprints off.
Now you can go to jail. They won't know who you are.
[Mark Ramsey chuckles]
[Digger] Uh-oh.
Yonder she comes.
[Mark Ramsey] Damn scotch.
[sniffs]
-[whistles] Boy, it's smoky, ain't it? -Yeah, it is.
[Mark Ramsey] Looks just like normal liquor, don't it?
Now, the scotch, when it comes off,
will be clear, like any other liquor.
Liquor does not come out red like an aged liquor.
It comes off clear, then it's up to you
to figure out what barrel, or what chips you're gonna use
to accentuate those flavors further.
Oh, hell, you're gonna like that.
[rain patters]
[smacks lips] Pretty damn good though, really.
I think it's good the way it is,
but we've got to have
aged liquor for it to be scotch.
Tasting on it, the smoky flavor in it
is not overwhelming.
[Digger] There's number four, you got.
We made a little less than a gallon.
I'm good with that.
I think this is a success.
I think the scotch is...
It ain't bad.
I think we proved our point here with the scotch.
Hey, Popcorn!
What do you think about this damn scotch liquor
on your little piss-pot?
Yeah, boy!
We think the big deal here is our ability to malt grains.
We need to skedaddle.
[Digger] Get the hell out of this rain.
[Mark Ramsey] This is gonna lead us in a new direction.
Imagine how good a three-grain,
completely malted-based grain liquor might taste.
I mean, who knows?
[Digger] I'm thinking legacy liquor 2.0.
[Mark Ramsey] I like the sound of that.