Beaz, I got liquor.
[narrator] On this episode of Moonshiners...
This order has got to be delivered tomorrow
to Willie Nelson's granddaughter, Raelyn.
Ah, I'm on solid ground.
This is a big pay day.
We don't do this, we've lost $15,000.
Whoo!
I can't help but jump when that fires up.
-You don't wanna burn off your mustache, right? -[Mark] No.
[Amanda] I don't know what you'd look like without a mustache.
Me neither.
[fire marshal] Josh, he was just the last person on the lease.
So, we're just trying to get to the bottom of it.
[Henry] Fire marshal called me again.
He's got to talk to you to close this whole thing out.
[man] This is how we make the moonshine!
[Henry] I don't like this at all.
I'm telling you.
I hate the thought of going and talking to this fire marshal.
I mean, he's already been on here a couple times,
what does he want to see me about now?
[narrator] In Franklin County, Virginia,
eight months after a suspicious fire
forced Henry's partner, Josh, into hiding,
the local fire marshal still has questions about the case.
[Josh] Henry, the house is on fire!
The house is on fire.
What do I do?
[Henry]
[Josh] I'm up [bleep] creek, my ass is going to jail.
[Henry] I got another call from the fire marshal.
Wants me to meet him back down at the brick house.
We didn't make an insurance claim or anything.
I would think by now, everything would just be blown over.
[fire marshal] Mr. Law, how are you?
[Henry] What can I do for you today, man?
Well, you know, we're just trying to get ahold of Mr. Owens.
You know, close out the case. It's mainly just paperwork,
nothing too fancy, just trying to close it out.
Hell, I didn't even know it was a case.
Yeah, you know, Josh, he was just the last person on the lease.
So, we're just trying to get to the bottom of it
and just get a couple statements, and we'll roll on.
He's hard to catch up with, man.
-Yeah. -He's real hard to catch up with.
Well, I mean, as long as we can kinda just chat with him,
just 'cause he was the last one on the lease.
I thought everything was over.
There's no insurance, I didn't claim, make any insurance claim.
Nothing was really... Any valuables were burnt.
[fire marshal] Yeah.
It was a fire, you know what I mean,
so it's nothing, it's nothing too extreme,
we just, kinda wanna just chit chat with him
just so, just so my boss he'll get off my back,
and get all this paperwork stuff done.
I mean, that's really the, the jist of it.
Just, just get it all done and close this case out.
But he's not in any trouble.
You sure about that?
-A hundred percent. -You know...
I tell you what, he has a lot of bad luck, that boy.
I'll see if I can get in touch with him
-and get it closed out. -Closed out.
-You'll never see me again. -You don't have to come out anymore.
-No, done with. -Done with.
-Take it easy, have a good day. -Sounds like a plan.
-Thanks, man, appreciate it. -Yeah.
[Henry] Josh is due back in from Brazil in a couple days.
I hate to tell him, we've got some bad news to hand him right now.
I don't know about all this.
I mean, the guy seems to be trustworthy.
He said, pretty much gave me his word...
...that Josh had nothing to worry about.
We can't have the fire marshal running down here every two weeks,
checking everything out.
We gotta get this taken care of.
If I can get in touch with Josh, he's gotta see the man.
That's just it, bottom line.
He's got to talk to the man.
Whatever happens happens.
If they lock him up, we'll go get him out of jail.
Hopefully they won't, but we've got to end this.
We've got to get this taken care of.
Ah, let's see what y'all did while I was gone, Beaz.
Yeah, I wanna see that myself.
-[Digger] We got a water reservoir. -[Beaz] Yup.
It's these damn big veins of rocks that's our problem.
[Beaz] I've landed a deal out of Nashville.
The order is for 250 quarts of rye whiskey.
We've got to book.
We have so much work to do,
and a short, short period to do it.
We've got a lot of things to address here.
When water builds up a column,
it puts back pressure on the mouth of that spring,
and that's what stops the flow.
The reason this hole won't fill up
and then get high enough to go over,
is the pressure coming downstream
is not sufficient to counter
what pressure's put on it by the level of the water.
-Okay. -We've gotta keep a constant flow going in.
[Beaz] We've gotta move that water so more will flow in.
We'll have to use a sump pump to move this water.
I've got an old sump pump.
The way it operates, it's got a float.
Well, when the float goes down, it pulls the switch off.
As that level goes up slowly,
we can fill these totes up with water.
And then that gives the spring time to replenish that pool.
How 'bout these yellowjackets?
Are you saying you're afraid of these yellowjackets?
No, I'm not saying it.
Are you afraid of these bees, Beaz?
That's my people.
Then why were you hiding over there?
I, uh, I don't like my people.
As Killer Beaz, I do not feel a kindred spirit with the yellowjackets.
Now, what we have to do, Beaz, is we gonna bring...
...the pump water into this first one, down through an elbow.
Let it run in, down through the T, into that cap.
Then we run the overflow right down through here,
and we'll put it in the plastic pipe
and run it back into our reservoir.
The clock's ticking on this order you've got.
We've got a week on hand to get this rye whiskey
to Nashville, Tennessee
to Willie Nelson's granddaughter, Raelyn.
That's country music royalty right there.
This right here, just hammer it right down in there.
That oughtta do it.
Our next step, we're gonna go green.
We're gonna set up a solar panel
with an inverter and a car battery that'll be recharged.
That oughtta give us the juice we need to run that little old pump.
This is a thousand-micron carbon filter.
Let's see if it'll work.
[Beaz] Should be on its way.
All right.
[Beaz] Oh, listen.
That's pressure.
[Beaz] Wow.
God, it's filling up. Now, here's gonna be...
...the moment of truth.
Let me get up there and take this rascal loose...
...to see what we're looking at.
Oh, look.
That looks like total different water.
It's clear, look at it running down through it.
It looks like a creek.
As soon as we started pushing the water through that filter,
it turned out crystal clear. It was exactly what we need.
That was a lot to get water.
[Digger] It was, but you know, it was worth it.
I can't tell you how great it is to have this spring rolling back again.
That's a lesson in don't give up.
When we fill these up, we'll be ready to build some mash.
-Yeah, yeah. -Boom.
Boom, good job, brother.
[Digger] Moving on to another tasks.
You know, it's gonna take a little time to fill these totes up.
How do you feel about getting the hell out of here?
[Beaz] A capital idea.
[Digger] We're gonna call it a night.
We'll come back in here fresh in the morning,
ferment our mash in the pots the old-timey way like we used to.
We gotta get that squared away.
[Huck] Want me to sharpen yours?
I'm not gonna say no.
[Amanda] I don't let nobody sharpen that knife unless it's you, Huck.
[Huck] I hear Mark coming.
I don't know what he's up to.
Well, howdy, Mark.
Hello, folk, how you doing today?
Hi there, Marky.
[Mark] I've got us a big order there.
Yeah, I talked to a fellow, uh, it's a new customer.
He's wanting 25 gallon of real good whiskey.
25 gallon of whiskey.
A hundred dollars a gallon.
Pretty good, ain't it?
We gotta get this right.
We could sure use the money, you know,
$2,500 is a lot of money right now.
We need to really try to make some of the best we've ever made,
and try to please him to where we can get some more orders.
-If we can make this turn out good... -[Amanda] Mmm-hmm.
-...he'd be a good customer for a long time. -[Amanda] Yeah.
Well, how picky is he about his whiskey?
In order for it to be a true whiskey,
by definition, we can't use any sugar.
It's gotta be all grains.
Sometimes those whiskey guys can be whiskey snobs.
You know what I mean?
Someone who really drinks whiskey
is gonna know the difference if it's all grain
and if there's a sugar in it.
I got a really good recipe for a corn whiskey.
But you don't use any sugar.
Put a little rye and wheat in there to give it, like, a really...
...full-bodied whiskey flavor.
I make really good whiskey, all-grain whiskey.
And I know I can knock his socks off.
Yeah, a lot of people really like the rye.
-[Amanda] Mmm-hmm. -I don't like rye.
I just never could drink rye whiskey too good.
I never did like it too good.
[Amanda] I use a danko rye. So, it's a Polish baking rye.
It's really sweet, and it tastes like buttered bread.
-And. boy, is it good. -Mmm-hmm.
A corn recipe, everybody likes it,
and I ain't never had no trouble making it.
It's always pleased everybody.
We'll come out with one batch of really good whiskey.
I can promise you that.
What do you think?
Well, we can see how it turns out.
Yeah, that sounds good.
So, when's he wanting this by?
Quick as we can get it.
Okay, probably just go pick up a few ingredients.
Yeah, I like to, you know, stick with what I know, something that'll work.
Let's get out of here and get started.
[Mark] She can make good whiskey, I know that.
But it's always something with her.
It don't matter what it is,
uh, she'll make it complicated.
We better get busy.
[Mike] This whole damn feud with Richard and Craig
is really getting to me.
I've been wracking my dadgum brain, and I've been up all night
trying to figure out what in the world we can do
that people will start buying our alcohol back again.
You know, Richard and Craig, they've been pretty much
outselling me and Jerry here in Maggie Valley.
Me and Jerry can't sit here and spin our wheels.
We've got to put our thinking hats on and do something.
[Jerry] Sup, man?
Well, you know what's up.
I'm sick and tired of Richard and Craig
stepping on our damn toes.
I am too, man.
We've gotta get more competitive, we've gotta do something
-to up our game. -They don't make the best damn liquor.
How we gonna... You got any ideas on how we gonna get more competitive?
You know, Jerry, people was buying
fruity flavors, they want something good tasting,
they can sit around and drink and have a good time with, and...
...that's not here right now.
Yeah, pretty much everything's about gone around here now.
[Mike] Well, what I'm here to tell you,
we got to think outside the damn box,
even it means travelling.
Summer's over.
It's pretty much fall. You know, here in the mountains,
we're pretty much running out of ingredients at this time of the year.
But down where I'm from, in Mississippi,
stuff's still growing great.
So, with that being said, I'm going my ass down south.
I'm going down there to pick some satsumas.
What the hell's a satsuma?
It's like a tangerine,
but a lot bigger, a lot sweeter, a lot juicier.
-It is sweet? -Yeah, buddy.
And there ain't.none of these mountain folks
never had nothing like that.
Hell, I been here all my life, I ain't never had nothing like that.
I can get satsumas for free.
'Cause they, they grow on my property down in Mississippi.
My grandpa, he cultivated and grafted a lot of satsuma trees,
and I'm gonna go down there and bring 'em back.
I, I've always wanted to make a satsuma run.
It's time to do it again and introduce it
to the people in the mountains.
We can be bringing something really good
and tasty back to the market,
and me and Jerry can get our reputation back.
Mike and Jerry makes the best liquor.
You know that's right.
-[Mike] And we gonna keep it that damn way. -Sure.
[Mike] Going down there where the sun shines, man.
[Henry] We got some bad news.
What do you mean, bad news?
Fire marshal, man, he's... he's on us again.
I'm just here to check off a couple boxes,
talk to you a little bit about your side of the story on this fire.
[Beaz] All right, this is when the fun starts.
[Digger] I wasn't thinking, I probably should have backed in, but...
[Beaz] Well...
[Digger] It'll be all right.
We need the cardio.
After all the work and all the worrying,
finally getting some water flowing back in this spring.
Now me and Beaz can get down to business.
We're off to the races, making single-malt rye.
[Beaz] And we're gonna be around the clock on this one.
We're making 500 gallons of mash today
in two stills, Big Sloppy, and one of the twins.
We'll get the water pumping.
Get Sloppy filled up.
You know, when we got this order,
we had two weeks to deliver it.
But now with all the setbacks,
we got six days to get this order together.
At this point, we're down to zero days that we can spare.
Every day has got to count, and it's gotta be efficient.
Beaz is fixin' to turn our pump on.
We'll see what that filter actually did to this water.
We're coming straight out of her totes.
That's not gin clear...
...but it's pretty dadgam close.
[cell phone ringing]
Oh, hey, Digger, come here, man.
Hello?
[Raelyn] Hey, Beaz, it's Raelyn Nelson here.
How are you?
Good, good, uh,
I'm out here working on your order
right now as a matter of fact.
[Raelyn] Yeah, I was just making sure
that we would have it before the show.
[Beaz] Oh, you will.
We are right on track with it, right on schedule.
[Raelyn] Okay, and, and so it'll be there day of show?
-Yes. -[Raelyn] 4 o'clock?
Shoot, yeah.
[Raelyn] All right, thanks, Beaz.
I'll, I'll talk to you soon then?
Yeah, yeah, I'll holler back at you right away.
-[Raelyn] Okay. -All right.
-We're right on time. -[sighs]
My theory is don't let the customer know
the trials and tribulations.
Just tell 'em, "It's great, it's rosy."
[Digger] We got water boiling now.
We got no time to spare.
So, we gotta get this completed,
we gotta get this liquor to Nashville, and make our sale.
All right, should we go check the twin?
[Beaz] Yupper.
[Digger] Mash number 2.
To have a safety belt, we've got to produce
over 60 gallons of liquor.
I'm gonna be happier close to 70,
but that being said,
anything under that jeopardizes this order.
You know, it's for 250 jars,
not 249 jars.
That's the limestone water, feel how cold it is.
-Dang. -That's what we needed.
We get 'em all down to temperature
by adding a little more cold water.
We have to help it come down to temperature
where it's safe to pitch your yeast and it doesn't kill it.
We've got water established.
We've got mash made.
Times two.
We've got both these stills sweetened in and ready to ferment.
And if everything goes good,
in about five days we'll be running this liquor.
And we can't afford for anything else
to get in our way on this.
Fall's a coming, and we know it.
A 50-degree night could slow us down tremendously.
I am glad to get this done. Good job, buddy.
[Digger] Beaz, we've knocked this day out.
[Mike] We're headed toward Kiln, Mississippi.
This is a 12-mile road, straight as a gun barrel.
As I'm driving down this way,
you know, the plants are getting greener.
There's no fall leaves in sight right now.
It's hot weather, and stuff's still growing.
It feels good to be back home for a little while.
I needed this trip.
I'm headed to my grandpa's property,
where he cultivated and grafted a lot of satsuma trees.
My uncle, he told me I could borrow his flat bottom boat.
I'm gonna jump in it, hit the river, go on up,
and see what I can find.
This is where I call home right here.
I get stressed out pretty easy,
and I get worked up about a lot of stuff,
especially what's going on now in Maggie Valley.
But coming back here to Mississippi,
you know, I believe it just help me rest my mind.
Sometimes you just gotta go back home
and do some thinking and just regroup.
Boy, it feels good to be down here on the water for a change.
We on the Jourdan River.
It don't get no more Mississippi than this right here,
cruising around in an old green flat bottom boat up the river.
You know, a lot of people don't think of Mississippi
being a moonshine state.
But I have to beg to differ.
This is the river that all the alcohol travelled up and down
from Kiln, Mississippi for sale all over the damn country.
We are approaching Distiller's Bend right now.
And this is where everybody docked their boats.
And loaded up alcohol to ship up north.
The area that we're in right now
was once a moonshine capital of the world.
Al Capone ordered more damn alcohol
from this place than anywhere else in the damn country.
You can almost close your eyes and go back to that time
and just imagine them old boats is coming up through here
unloading alcohol every night.
All that up there on the bank, used to be an old wood yard.
A cover up for what was really going on.
And obviously, the law put a stop to it
and took a lot of damn people to jail right in here.
This place right here, Distiller's Bend,
it helped carve America.
You know, sometimes I can't help but think
that I was born in the wrong era, you know?
My mom always called me a damn old soul in a young man's body.
I feel a hundred percent connected to the moonshine heritage here in Mississippi.
And not too far from here right now
is where I cut my teeth on running liquor.
And I'm proud to be a part of American Mississippi damn history.
Time to get some satsumas now, baby.
Headed over now to pick up Josh at the airport.
That fire marshal, he's been riding us pretty heavy.
Just needs a few questions answered,
and we'll be able to wrap all this up and get back to work.
So, I've got to convince Josh to just go on and talk to the guy.
Let's be done with this.
[Josh] See you pulled in.
-What's up, man? -[Henry] Man, oh, man, am I glad to see you.
Man, it's good to see you.
Please get me home.
Pulled up and saw my buddy standing there.
It was a sight for sore eyes.
We've been missing him, been missing him a lot.
I'm really glad he's home.
I figured they'd been holding you hostage or something in Brazil.
[Josh] They have been holding me hostage.
You know, the minute you go through TSA,
you are prisoner of the frickin' airline system.
It's good to finally be back from Brazil.
Didn't really wanna come home,
but it's good to finally be off the plane.
It's even good to see Henry's old codger ass.
You don't know how good it's felt to not really be on the run, though.
On the run, well, your running's over.
What do you mean, my running's over?
Uh, the fire marshal, man, he's...
He's on us again.
You know, we figured if you took off a while
then all this would just blow over, but it didn't.
The fire marshal called me again.
I had to meet him back at the house.
And the bottom line is...
...he's got to talk to you to close this whole thing out.
Now, before you get too excited here.
Now, I don't know how much we can believe it,
but he promised me that there was nothing to it.
He just needed to ask you a couple questions
about where the fire started.
He's the fire marshal. He can't tell where the fire started?
[Henry] He wants to hear it from you.
That's the way I took it.
But I mean, I looked him in the eye,
he said, "I just need to check a few boxes."
And it'll be over, it'll be closed, it'll be done.
And that's what we gotta do.
We can't keep on fooling with this guy,
and him coming around when we least expect it looking for you.
I'm so sick and tired of thinking about this,
worrying about this, I don't even want to talk about it no more.
I just want to put it to bed.
Okay, good.
I wanna get a good meal, I wanna go to bed,
and I'll figure it out tomorrow.
I'll deal with it.
[Digger] All right, Beaz.
Let's hope this worked out, 'cause if it ain't...
...your order is toast.
-Oh, yeah. -Oh, look at that.
That is...primo.
This order has got to be delivered by 4 p.m. tomorrow.
We'll light this then we go check that one.
If everything goes as planned, we may pull this off.
Finished.
Every step in the process from now on
has to work without any snafus.
Go over and get yours ready.
Yeah.
We have a chance to run this mash,
jar it up, put our chips in there
to start the aging process.
It's gonna be hard, but I think we can pull it off.
Hey, I'm gonna go ahead and cap this off.
I don't think there's gonna be any heads left now.
[Digger] Go ahead, I dang got mine capped.
We have zero minutes to waste,
and it's stressing the hell outta me.
When I came up and saw that, uh, the spring was about dry,
I was just about to say no to this.
But this is a big pay day.
We don't do this, we've lost $15,000.
She sure is making a show for herself right now.
But she ain't making a racket, she ain't making heat.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm running.
-Hey Digger, I'm running, buddy. -[Digger] Good.
-All right. -[Digger] It's what we need.
This is what we've worked so hard for.
-Oh yeah. We're hot to right here. -[pipes whistling]
We'll be hotted up and ready to go in no time.
[Beaz] That's beautiful.
-[Digger] Beaz, I got liquor. -[Beaz] Nice.
You know, back in the day, we would make
maybe one run and get six or eight cases of rye whiskey.
Nobody wanted it except for very few people.
Now when it comes to what's happening in today's market,
it's on the upswing.
Everybody's coming in. They're wanting different types of ryes.
Catch you a little dose.
Right off the worm.
Nose it.
[Beaz] That's amazing.
[Digger] That's as good a rye whiskey as you'll ever taste.
[exhales] Wow.
It's got to be there before 4 o'clock on Saturday.
And we've got to jar up 250 jars.
We've got to put the toasted chips in each bag and then in every jar.
Then, make the three and a half hour drive to Nashville.
[Digger] Beaz, 72 gallons.
That should finish us up. Latch that one up.
From this point on, everything's got to work perfectly
or the sale is done.
[Beaz] Let's go tell our wives how hard we worked and stuff like that.
[Digger] Let's go tell 'em how much more we're going to work.
Tonight's chip night.
[rustic country music playing]
[Mike] Been a long time since I've been up in here.
I'm getting pretty close to where I need to be to slip through the woods
and make my way up through the briar thickets
and get up over to my grandpa's property.
Got a nice little down walk to go.
I see elephant ears still grow around here.
You don't see them in the mountains that far.
There's the old creek
where a lot of damn liquor's been made.
Just like I remembered it.
Pure sand bottom.
Liquor that was made right here on this creek ended up in distiller's bin
because this is a natural spring creek.
It's 100% sand filtered.
Makes some of the best liquor in the world.
Here's my granddad's old cabin.
I was raised pretty much by him.
Don't really look the same. It's all growed up.
Grandpa's old shack house here he was born in.
This is where he used to sit and open oysters up.
Right here, homemade oyster opener.
Everything's just frozen in time.
You know, left behind.
I could just picture my grandpa out here with his vegetables
and he just loved to grow everything.
All that's left is these trees
'cause they come back every year to produce fruit.
Oh hell yeah, buddy. This one right here is loaded now.
[whoops] The more the merrier for this run here.
The more flavor I can get into this pot, the more I want it.
Look how juicy.
Liquor coming out of a jar tasting like these is gonna blow people
out of the damn water up in the mountains.
Some of the satsumas are bright yellow.
Some of them's got a lot of green on 'em.
That's just strictly from the sun.
Every one of them is good for the picking.
If I can just stay out of 'em and not eat 'em. [laughs]
See, if you clip them off like that right there
and not tear into the hull of this,
it keeps for a lot longer time.
They'll go to rotting on you if you tear that top out.
That's gonna make some fine liquor right there, buddy.
I've got a long damn trip ahead of me
to get back to the mountains of North Carolina
to make some damn good satsuma shine.
[Mark] I'm gonna go ahead and fire him up.
-Whoo. I can't help but jump when that fires up. -[Amanda chuckles]
Well, you don't want to burn off
-your mustache, right? -[Mark] No.
I don't know what you'd look like without a mustache.
-Me neither. -[laughs]
So I told that we need to make good whiskey.
So I got some really good ingredients.
I'll give them a little education
on the different kinds of grain we're gonna use
and how we're gonna do this.
So for my malt, instead of how you guys have the malted corn,
I got a honey malted barley or a honey malt.
It's kind of sweet.
-Mmm boy, it's got a good taste. -[Amanda] Mmm-hmm.
And this is a special rye that I like to use.
So that's a malted rye. So it'll give it a little bit of like a sweeter flavor.
And the fact that it's a danko.
It's the sweetest kind of rye that I could get for you guys.
Yeah, rye is as good a side if you like it.
But if you don't like it, you don't want it.
You don't like rye either, Huck?
Well, to me it just kind of leaves
a little spicy peppery taste in my mouth.
I didn't realize that Mark and Huck were so anti-rye.
Well, I'm balancing it out with the wheat and the corn.
-So it's not gonna overwhelm. -I mean, somebody else might just, you know,
be crazy about it, but...
I'm gonna try to show them that incorporating a little bit of rye
into my whiskey is a good thing.
But I just went with like, a really traditional whiskey recipe.
To replace the sugar, I'm using roughly three pounds per gallon of grains,
three times as much grains as we would normally use.
But this is the way traditionally farm distillers
and Scots-Irish people would make whiskey.
-It was all grains. -[Mark] Mmm-hmm.
You know, I think if they had a little sugar, they might have used it.
-[Amanda] If they had it. -[laughing] Oh buddy.
The first distillers of whiskey didn't have cane sugar available to them.
I'm gonna get the corn in here.
So they would make all-grain whiskeys predominately
out of the grains that they had access to.
So this is that rye that you're not too fond of
that I'm gonna change your minds about.
So what I want to do is I want to cook the grains and break down the starches.
Hot stuff.
You can overcook that corn,
but just boil your water and pour it in there. It'll fix it just about right.
Amanda's saying that, you know, we can't use sugar
if we're going to make real whiskey.
What she's done we've tried that years ago.
It just takes a lot more stuff to do it.
You don't get as much alcohol.
I did bring a thermometer today, guys.
I know we normally don't use a thermometer in the woods.
-Use your finger? -Can't use my finger this time.
I got to wait for it to get below 150.
And I don't want to keep sticking your finger in there
'cause you won't be able to tell and you'll just get burnt.
I don't want to introduce the malt or the amylase enzyme
to that hot temperature 'cause it will kill the enzymes.
-She's part scientist. You know that. -Yeah, I know that.
[Amanda] You guys know I overcomplicate things, but in the end, it's worth it.
She's setting in, has to wait until it cools
and taking temperature readings.
150. Now I'm gonna put in the honey and malt.
I never did like to wait too long on nothing, you know.
I get in a hurry about things.
[Amanda] I'm also gonna add amylase.
Just seemed like a whole lot of extra work.
And anything that the honey malt doesn't convert,
the amylase will take care of.
Now the amylase enzyme is breaking down
the complex sugars in the grains to fermentable sugars.
So that the yeast can eat the sugar and make alcohol.
I'm gonna use a blend of bread yeast and distillers yeast.
Distillers yeast gives you like a little bit more alcohol.
The bread yeast gives you a really good flavor.
-Pretty sweet now, right? -Mmm-hmm.
Something like a bottle of syrup or something, ain't it?
Yeah, if I'd get a whiskey that tastes just as good or better,
why'd I need to do all this extra work?
But it may come out with some of the best liquor I've ever drunk.
Really all we can do is just wait and see.
-[Huck] That's a lot of work, ain't it? -[Mark] Yeah.
Her meet-and-greet starts at 4 o'clock.
What time does the GPS say we can get there in this traffic?
-4:15. -[sighs]
-[Digger] Beaz? -[Beaz] Yeah, man.
[Digger] I can't stress to you enough.
-Time is of the essence. -[Beaz] Oh, I know.
Right now we're tempering this liquor,
getting it in the jars, stuffing these little bags of toasted oak chips in there.
We're going to finish the job, get it loaded up,
and heading towards Nashville with not a minute to spare.
Well didn't she say she wanted 100 proof
-on the money? -Yep.
Right. Well, I'm gonna bring the money.
You know, this is a madhouse.
I'm tempering liquor and jarring it up,
and Beaz is making the little aging bombs.
Come on, Beaz. You better step it up.
We ain't got a lot of minutes.
I mean, it's just an assembly line
with not enough assemblers.
[Beaz] Wow. They're already changing some color in there.
That's why they call it rapid aging, Beaz.
In about six months, it'll be deep dark.
In six more months, it'll be even darker.
I'd think people would love to see that stage of it.
Well, of course they would.
You put two in that one, dumbass.
[chuckling]
Well, I've always rapid aged liquor,
but I've done it in bigger vessels with chips.
Well, we'll just make a smaller little bag of chips and put one in each jar.
This is basically just a marketing ploy.
It's like a home beer kit.
It's involving them in the process.
Then they can wait to when they want to drink it.
All right, there's 20 cases.
Now we've got to get loaded up, Beaz.
The end is in sight.
[Digger] We're right now 30 minutes late.
We are fixing to head out on the road.
If we get there in time,
this will be an absolute touchdown for us.
And this makes 20.
[sighs] Let's get the tarp over it.
You know, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there is no traffic,
no construction between here and Nashville.
-Get locked up and get with it. -Okay.
[Digger] Because that can hold you up bare minimum of 30 minutes.
We don't have 30 minutes to spare,
so we're going to get in this van, we're going to put it in the wind.
-[Beaz] Tell me we do not need gas. -[Digger] Not at this point,
but we get this liquor delivered
and then we'll worry about gas.
[door closes]
[Amanda] Gonna check my mash and make sure it's done.
[Huck] Should be ready.
No cap, no bubbles.
Mmm, smells good.
-[Mark] It's ready, is it? -Yeah, she's worked off.
Checking on my mash today, I see the cap has fallen
and there's basically no activity.
Now my hard work begins in the straining process.
-[Mark] You brought a mop bucket. -[Amanda] Yes, sir. I did.
[Mark] What are you gonna do with a mop bucket?
I'm gonna strain the alcohol out of my grains.
[Huck] And then you're gonna put it in there
like you would squeeze a mop out?
Yep, I'm gonna ring the grains out. It's called sparging.
I was wondering how she was gonna flavor that rye whiskey.
-[laughing] -[Amanda] You guys are funny.
That Amanda, she's got a whole truck load of stuff
that I ain't never seen at a still site before.
She's got mop buckets, pillow cases, you name it.
I've made liquor all my life.
First mop bucket I've ever seen at a still site.
[laughing]
Here's your liquid. No solids.
She's doing it right, you know. She's doing it good.
She swears it'll be worth it in the end. It may be.
But we'll just have to wait and see.
You can fire it up, Mark.
[flame whooshes]
[singing] Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, please don't let me down.
Double Jim Tom. Jim Tom loved rye whiskey.
Did you guys argue with Jim Tom that much when he made rye whiskey?
Well, that was Jim Tom.
[scoffing laugh]
Still at it, ain't you Amanda?
-[laughing] -[Amanda] Yeah, I'm almost done though.
I think it's too much work.
But you guys said you wanted a real whiskey.
Well yeah, I know, but...
[Amanda] This is how you do it.
Small batch, high end whiskey in the back woods.
Just a way to kill some time while you're waiting for the pot to heat up.
Yeah, we're definitely killing time.
[Amanda] Finally, everything is done being strained and sparged.
It's time to cap it off.
Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, right?
-[Mark] I don't know about that. -[Amanda chuckles]
I'm feeling pretty good at this moment.
And when that starts coming out of the worm,
you guys are gonna see what all that effort was for.
I am really excited to get this liquor coming out of the worm.
This whole pipe is hot.
It's like the moonshine limbo.
I just want them to taste it and see what I've been talking about this whole time.
We got whiskey, guys.
-Smells kind of like rubbing alcohol to me. -Mmm-hmm.
-Just messing with you. -Let me see that shovel, Mark.
-Just kidding. -[all chuckling]
I think I'm gonna throw out these heads.
-And start collecting. -[Mark] Real stuff's starting.
Well, let it run for a little while and we'll taste that rye.
The rye that's beautifully balanced with wheat and a honey malted barley?
I can taste it. It don't matter what you do to it.
-It's like I had a mouthful of black pepper. -You sound like a little kid
that doesn't want to eat vegetables.
You know that's what you sound like.
Go on. It's good. Just try it.
You guys ready for a little sample?
[both] Yeah.
[Mark] If we have to. [laughing]
I guess if we have to, we have to.
-Moment of truth. -It'll all be over, but the crime.
Mmm, I'm happy with that.
Tell me what you think, Mark.
I'm really satisfied with it.
I'm used to making these all grain whiskeys
and personally to my palette,
I like the way it tastes all grain.
Well, that is better than I thought it'd be.
Well, thank you. See?
Mark off the bat surprised me. He said it was really good.
[burps]
-But I still can taste the rye. -Mmm-hmm.
But then he burped and tasted rye.
-It's in there. You're gonna taste it. -[Mark] It's there.
That's a pretty good flavor there.
I thought she was doing really good,
but then there comes the rye.
But it's kind of balanced, right?
[Mark] You made this a little better than I would have made it.
-[Amanda] Well, thank you. -[Mark] That's pretty good liquor.
-Yeah, it's good. -[chuckles]
-[Mark] Want me to swap these buckets out? -[Amanda] Yes.
For me, I feel like this was a really good whiskey.
I'm keeping this for myself.
I think that's damn good.
-You still need 25 gallons. -Mmm-hmm.
So the buyer's gonna get a real good whiskey.
But we're gonna have to come back
to make another run to complete the order.
Let's get out of here. Then we'll get back and start again.
-We gotta get it to 'em. -Okey-dokey.
Well, Henry brought me back from the airport and said that
the fire marshal was still wanting to talk to me,
that he's been looking for me.
He just wants to close this case,
but he needs to see me to do that.
You can't trust the law. So I don't know what the hell they're gonna do. We'll see.
Oh, here he comes.
[exhales] Squash this damn [bleep]
-What's going on, man? -Oh, not much.
You know, I'm just here to check off a couple boxes,
get the boss man off my back.
And, you know, just talk to you a little bit
about your side of the story on this fire.
I really don't know what happened.
The only thing I can figure is the electrical back there caught on fire
because we did have a wire that was back there on the back wall.
And that's where the fire was on...
Started was on the back wall thinking uh...
-I don't know what happened. I really don't. -Yeah.
You can see that one real hot spot area,
but I couldn't really get any good pictures of what the structure used to be.
So that's one reason why we kind of just...
Are gonna just kind of write it down as a loss.
You didn't have any flammables
-or anything back there, did ya? -No, not really.
Here, let me show you something, Josh.
[car beeps]
I guess moonshining is paying off these days.
Hey Beaz. Look here. It's a woolly caterpillar.
-They predict the winter. -Okay.
[Digger] I looked down and I see a woolly worm
and I thought, "Well, you know, I'll do like my Mama used to do
and let's do a little weather prediction."
If you look, he's got just a little bit of black on each end
-and a great big wide band of brown? -Yep.
[Digger] You know, the old timers used to say
that the wider that band of brown is,
the less harsh the winter's gonna be.
So, this little feller here shows me that we're gonna have a real mild winter.
Which you know what that means.
More time to make liquor.
This woolly worm, he looked like
he'd just been dipped a little bit in black paint.
So, I'm hoping it's a mild winter.
[Beaz] Well, I'm gonna call that a good omen then.
-So what do you think? -Uh, well...
I mean, it is what it is.
So you know, man, I'm not... I'm not out here to,
you know, bust your balls or anything like that.
I don't really care.
I'm just out here to maybe just
get a couple jars here and there from you.
[Josh exhales]
You mean to tell me this whole time
you've been trying to track me down
because you want to buy liquor from me?
Man, that stuff tasted awesome.
So what do you think?
Sounds to me like you just got some, Hoss.
I'm just gonna call you whenever I need some more.
Don't drink it all in one place.
-I may be down there in the creek if that happens. -[laughs]
-Take care, man. -Yep. Take it easy.
You know, you may think I'm one of the most unlucky people in the world,
but today I got lucky.
He really... He had me kind of dead to rights.
He had my liquor, he got it off the grounds,
he could have got me just for that.
I'm really just happy that this whole damn thing is over.
I can put this thing to bed
and me and the boys can go back to making liquor
and do what we do best.
[Beaz] Her meet and greet starts at 4 o'clock.
Yeah, and I mean, look right there.
What time does it tell us
the GPS says we can get there in this traffic?
4:15.
[sighs]
This is a VIP event that we're making this liquor for.
They're gonna have these swag bags ready to pass out
when these folks come through with Raelyn.
If she don't have these jars of liquor in the bags,
they ain't worth a damn to these folks and her either one.
And if we'd have finished this up yesterday,
-we'd have been more comfortable. -Oh, I know.
But Digger, we worked till we dropped, man.
Beaz? [chuckles] Look. Look what just happened.
-It took that-- -We went to Central Time!
-Oh, man. -We've got plenty of time.
Dang.
-[laughing] -I feel like a total dumbass.
-Golly. -[exhales]
We have just been strung out,
worrying about the logistics on getting this done.
We totally forgot that coming from the Smokey Mountains to Nashville
we gain a freaking hour.
I've never been so happier to be stupid.
-[chortles] -It has never worked out in my favor.
Digger, we made it here.
[Digger] Well, we haven't... We made it to Nashville.
We haven't made it to the venue yet. Give us a few minutes.
We're pulling in to the Nashville area
and it's like, Dorothy and them making it to Oz.
We see the finish line.
Close, close call. Tough fought battle.
But Digger and I have come out ahead again.
-Yeah. Hello -There you are.
-[Digger] We apologize for the late arrival. -Hey, buddy.
How you doing, man?
-JB. Nice to meet you, man. -Digger. Good to meet you.
[Beaz] Man, sorry we cut it so close, guys.
Hey, I mean, it's show business. Nothing ever starts on time.
-You know that. -[Beaz] I do know that.
-Well... -Train comes in anyway.
-Guys, this is outstanding. -Wait till you see what we got for you.
-Oh my God. -Look at it already.
We just... We just jarred this up
-five hours? Five, six hours ago. -Six hours. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that right there gives your people ownership in their liquor.
Mmm, it's beautiful.
-Shall we taste? -Yes.
[Digger] I highly encourage it.
[JB] Mmm.
-Mmm. -Is that crazy good or what?
-So good. -Crazy good.
It's been known to make child birth a pleasure and tooth aches go away.
-[laughing] -[JB] Our fans are gonna be ecstatic.
-Yes. -Well, I hope so.
It's the surprise part of the VIP package.
So I really appreciate you guys.
-Fellas, thank you so much for doing this. -Yeah, we're glad to do it.
-We certainly appreciate it. -Hey, we appreciate
the opportunity to make a little money.
I can't tell you how excited I am about this.
I mean, we've got this liquor in the Nelson family of Willie Nelson's hands.
And it's going to their fans.
Well, that's all they're going to be talking about.
Got the money. It's all there.
-[Beaz] Oh, thank you. -[Raelyn] Thank you guys so much.
[Beaz] Here, brother. Take that.
And, you know, there's a great big bonus at the end of this.
We got a pocket full of money to go back to East Tennessee with
and start making more aged dry whiskey
and triple grain whiskey.
-We did it, buddy. -[Beaz] Let's get out of here.
That was great.