[tense instrumental music]
To be a moonshiner, you're risking time in jail
or, even worse, being hurt.
Don't try this at home.
[narrator] This time on the Moonshinersmid-season premiere...
[Tickle] Gosh, it's the wife.
[Carol on phone] Oh, my God, where are you?
Today is my grand opening of the Tickles Heartline Restaurant.
If you needed to get trained, you should've been here for training.
I've got more orders than I know what to do with.
That, right there, is how you make a scrambled egg.
[Carol] Oh, my God.
We wanna discuss hazelnut rum.
We wanna go from silver to gold.
What I'm expecting is nothing more than huge.
[Amanda] I like working with the nuts
because you gotta, like, do some work to get flavor out of these things.
But when you can do it right, it's something really special.
What? Last time we saw you, we had to pick you up and carry you.
[Josh] I'm getting there.
[Henry] You were not supposed to be walking for a year and a half or something.
The determination Josh has got, it's absolutely amazing.
This flatbed gives me an idea.
We get us an old junk car.
We can load this thing
and we can haul our shine right under the nose of the law.
You're talking about hundreds of gallons of liquor.
[Henry] Rock and roll, baby.
[man] This is how we make the moonshine!
[tense instrumental music]
[Digger] Look, he's getting out.
He's getting out of the vehicle, Beaz.
[Killer Beaz on radio]Let me know if he's coming in my direction.
[Mark] He is walking around to the passenger side towards your van.
He's checking it out.
[narrator] Westbound on I-40 in Tennessee,
after a thief stole $11,000 of moonshine
from their bootlegger, Killer Beaz...
-[Killer Beaz speaking] -Beaz.
[narrator] ...Mark and Digger are tailing their next shipment
to stop any more of their liquor from being stolen.
[Mark] I promise you, we're not gonna have
another $11,000 worth of liquor stolen from us.
Hey, Beaz, he's coming inside.
[Killer Beaz] Okay, I'm going out this back door.
[Digger] No, no, just wait around in there. Be looking at brochures.
[Mark] Hang around in there and keep an eye on him, see what he does.
[Killer Beaz] He is going into the men's room here.
[Digger] This is the time for us to make our move.
We decided this may be our opportunity to disable this vehicle
and keep him from following Beaz anymore.
I'm gonna move quick,
you let me know if he comes out of the bathroom.
[Killer Beaz] Okay, you got it, man.
I got you, I'm gonna stick you in my pocket.
[Digger] And I'm keeping an eye on the doors.
[suspenseful music]
You know, everybody around here keeps a valve stem remover
and extra valve cores in their vehicle.
[air hissing]
If we flatten a couple of this guy's tires,
he won't be following Beaz any more tonight.
-[Digger] Did you get him? -[door closes]
I've given him something to think about.
-Hey, Beaz. -[Killer Beaz] Yeah, man?
[Digger] He won't be going anywhere soon.
You cut a chug and get the hell out of here.
I can't be 100% sure that this guy was our liquor thief,
but either way, he's not getting a load of liquor tonight.
[Killer Beaz] Oh, I see the tires.
It's gonna be sad if it's an innocent feller,
but he shouldn't arouse so much suspicion.
[Killer Beaz] Yeah, we're innocent fellers, too, though, so...
Right. Well, the thing about this, our liquor's on the way. It's on the road.
Get your butt to Memphis and be safe.
All right. Back on the Interstate.
You know, Beaz, he's on his way to deliver his load of liquor,
and if he gets down there and has the luck that I think he will,
they made need another 48 cases next week.
So, there's no rest for the weary.
[Killer Beaz] All right, thank you, guys.
[upbeat instrumental music]
[instrumental rock music]
[Josh] I can't wait to get Henry and Kenny and Tickle.
Wait till they check out my new toy.
[narrator] In Franklin County, Virginia,
just six months after losing the use of his legs
in a devastating motorcycle wreck...
I broke my neck, broke my back.
[narrator] ...moonshiner Josh Owens is hell-bent
on getting back to making money by any means possible.
Because of my accident, I ain't been able to get out
and make the money for making moonshine.
But my cousin was awesome enough to give me a job
driving a rollback and still be able to make some money.
I have to make some money.
[horn blaring]
I'm back to work!
-[horn honks] -[chuckles]
[Henry] Wow, what a nice rig.
Ain't this a nice rollback?
-It is a nice rollback. -Hell, yeah.
I mean, what are you doing driving it?
This is what I do now. When I ain't making liquor,
I'm gonna be driving a rollback.
[Henry] How do you get up in there?
[Josh] It ain't easy.
[Tickle] What, somebody had to throw you up in there?
[Josh] I got this, though.
[Tickle] Damn, Josh, I'll be jogged.
What?
[Josh] I tell you now, I can't hop.
Look, the last time we saw you, we had to pick you up and carry you.
[Henry] You were not supposed to be walking for a year and a half or something.
I gotta have a little help to hold on to, but I'm getting there.
Man! Can't believe it.
He's coming along darn well.
The determination that Josh has got
to get himself from where he was a few months ago
to where he's at, actually being able to stand up
and walk around today, it's absolutely amazing.
Damn right!
Yeah. You're actually up right now.
Man, I can't believe it. Damn!
It ain't been that long.
They said that I would be in a wheelchair for a year.
But, hell, it ain't been nowhere near that.
Damn, man, it's unbelievable.
[Josh] I'm ready to roll.
[Henry] We're ready to roll, too, aren't we, Tickle?
We got that liquor up on our mountain.
We're ready to do some distributing.
[Tickle] We've got a whole lot of liquor we've gotta get shipped out to customers.
But we really gotta have a safe way to transport our moonshine
to our bootleggers and our customers.
But, you know what, this flatbed gives me an idea.
How often is one of these ever pulled over?
Never.
This tow truck, this just might be the ticket we need.
If we had an old wrecked car we could put on the back of that,
we could fill it full of liquor and transport it.
The odds of you getting checked or pulled over or busted
in this thing are freaking damn, like, a million to one.
Even if you do, they're not gonna look at that car on the back.
[Henry] No, I don't think so.
Even if you get pulled over and get a ticket, they ain't gonna go search it.
Well, even if they do and find the moonshine,
what you tell 'em is, "Look, man,
I just got paid to take this. I picked it up in the field
and I'm taking it to a junkyard.
It's an emergency vehicle.
Have you ever seen one pulled over in your entire life?
That means that we're safe to haul large amounts of moonshine on the highway.
That gives us freedom to get where we need to go.
I'm down with it. We ain't gonna get pulled over, no way.
-[Henry] Right. -[Tickle] Nope.
-You know any places around to get a junk car out here? -That oughta be easy.
We get us an old junk car,
maybe darken the windows in on it with some spray paint,
take the seats out, we can load this thing all the way completely full.
Well, hellfire. Let's damn do this! I'm ready to go.
[upbeat instrumental music]
[Mike] Well?
[Jerry] Tell you what, guys, his name's Jeff.
His daughter will be getting married here in couple of weeks,
and he wants some shine to give to everybody.
It could make a very good potential for us to make a lot of money.
[narrator] In Haywood County, North Carolina,
after a fight over the selling price of their melon shine...
My two idiot partners sold it for nothing, basically.
[narrator] ...Mike, Jerry, and Richard are seeking common ground
on their next sale.
[Jerry] Very high-end customer,
he has got his daughter's wedding coming up
and he wants something really special.
Basically, a four-berry shine for, like, a gift at the wedding.
There's gonna be a lot of people,
so we can potentially have a lot of customers,
even more money to make after the fact.
On this deal, I'm gonna do the negotiation.
-You gonna haggle with him? -I'm gonna show you how it's done, Richard Landry.
-[Richard] All right, let's do it. -[Jerry] All right.
Mike's still bitter about the $75 we took for the watermelon shine.
So, we're gonna let him take the lead on this.
It's beautiful in here. Look at this.
-It's a pretty place, ain't it? -Yeah.
-How you doing, man? Good to see ya. -Doing pretty good.
This is Mike and Richard.
-Hey, man. How's it going? -Nice to meet you guys.
Nice to meet you, too.
-We hear you got a daughter getting married. -I sure is, absolutely.
-Congratulations, man. She marrying a good fella? -[Jeff] Absolutely.
-[all laughing] -Looking good.
Need a little something for the wedding?
Yeah. I'm looking for some... About 20 gallons.
And if I can get berry, it would be awesome.
We could do that, couldn't we?
Maybe get some of that.
If it's not fruity, she's not gonna like it, for sure.
Well, I tell you what, it's gonna cost you $160 a gallon.
[Jeff] Oo-wee.
That's way, way, way too high.
Special occasion and everything.
This guy has spent a lot of money
to rent this place out for his daughter's wedding.
He's already got deep pockets.
I'm sure we can make the price right.
What do you guys thing?
[Mike] I tell you what, let's you and me walk over here
and negotiate a deal. We'll leave these guys here.
We'll make a deal.
If I continue to let Jerry talk and negotiate,
we're gonna end up selling this alcohol for $75 a gallon.
I'm not standing for it.
Anyway, man, I need $160 a gallon.
We work hard at what we do. We stand behind our alcohol.
That's a specialty thing, man. I gotta have $160 a gallon.
[Jeff] Well, if you look around here, I've had to pay for all this.
-$100 is all I can I do. -[Mike] A hundred what?
-[Jeff] $100 a gallon. -[Mike] $100?
You are a long way from $160 a gallon.
[Jeff] $100's the best I can do.
All right, there's no way I can possibly do $100 a gallon.
-$100? -[Jeff] That's all I can do, $100.
We can't make a deal, buddy.
You have a nice day, and I'm sorry we couldn't come together and make a deal.
-Hope your daughter's wedding turns out great. -[Jeff] You have a good day.
Yes, sir.
Come on, guys, get out of here.
That was some good negotiating skills, Mike.
We in the truck without the sale.
Did I not push the whole thing of, like, we were gonna have some high-end people here?
You did. You did.
-So, we got good potential of making money down the road. -Trust me.
Stand strong in what you believe in and don't back down.
I believe we're gonna be broke 'cause we just missed this sale.
-We in negotiation class, Jerry. -[chuckles]
We're learning how to negotiate.
What'd I tell you guys? There he comes.
He's coming out here for a damn reason, too.
Well, did you change your mind on me?
[Jeff] I tell you what,
this being such a special occasion, I can do $130.
There's a couple of stipulations on that.
$130 ain't gonna cut it, man.
And, listen, I ain't trying to sell my alcohol at too high of a price.
I know what our alcohol's worth. We're in the business.
It's a lot of hard work.
I tell you what I'm gonna do,
I'll come to $140 a gallon.
That is final, or I drive away.
[Jeff] Tell you what, I'll do that one for you.
Only, it has to be bottled up separate.
-[Mike] What do you mean, like quart jars? -Quart jars.
-Two weeks. -[Jerry] Two weeks.
You know what? I love a good challenge. You're on.
-[Jeff] All right, well, see ya. -[Mike] See ya.
-[Jeff] Thank you. -[Mike] Appreciate ya.
-[Jerry] I'll be damned. -[laughs]
Who negotiated what, now? Huh?
We ain't never gonna hear the end of this one.
[Jerry] Oh, look at his head, it's already swelling.
His hat ain't gonna fit in, like, ten minutes.
What Jeff, nor Richard or Jerry knows,
I had $140 in my mind the whole time.
Can we have a "Congratulations, partner Mike"?
-[Jerry] Good job, Mike. -[Richard] Good job, Mike.
[Jerry] I'm tickled to death we got a good order.
Now comes the stressful part.
We've only got two weeks, so we gotta get our butts in gear.
[Richard] I didn't think this one was gonna happen.
[Mike] Y'all recognize me for a minute.
[instrumental guitar music]
[Digger] What do you wanna drink, Hattie?
-[Mark] I don't care. -[Digger] How about a little Angel Wings?
We just have enough to ward off evil spirits.
I don't need to get too deep in the bottle today.
[Mark] You know, that's really good,
but it ain't no better than some of ours that we've done.
Yeah.
You know, after I got this diagnosis,
I've put a sense of urgency on everything.
I've wanted to go from one end of this state to the other for liquor.
I've got a better diagnosis now that they've dove in a little deeper.
Things aren't as urgent as they were initially,
but that's not gonna make me stop doing what we're doing.
We're not looking towards the end of this year now,
we're looking on down the next ten years.
So, at the end of the day, you know, it's not just about building an empire,
we want to make things bigger and better.
-[Digger] And up jumped the devil. -[Mark] There they are.
-Gentlemen! -[Mark] Hello, Joe, Amanda.
Oh, well, here we go.
Y'all gonna drink what we drink, just so you know.
We're not getting too deep, we got a lot of work to do today.
This is just to warm your heart up a little bit.
Well, guys, I'm gonna tell you what,
you're looking at two fellers who couldn't be happier
with what y'all are turning out.
-I mean, you are at the head of your game right now. -[exhales] Okay.
That better than I thought it was gonna be.
Yeah, you did so many pours of your drink to break up with you...
pouring your drink for celebration.
Really and truly, I mean, we're talking exceptional work.
[Mark] We're gonna put you two in charge of research and development
-on potential new flavors, new recipes. -[Digger] Yeah.
40, 50 years ago, corn liquor was all you needed.
-It ain't that way now. -[Digger] It ain't your papaw's game anymore.
Well, guys, on that note, we wanna discuss hazelnut rum.
That's my ballpark.
It's never been a secret that one of our most popular recipes is the hazelnut rum.
But the only thing that stays the same
are the facts that things change.
There may be a whole new field of clients out there
that want something different than the same old same old.
Mark and Digger may be ready for a different hazelnut rum.
[Digger] Just because something's great don't mean it can't be better.
We're talking going from, like, silver to gold.
We wanna go to platinum.
We want a high-end...
We want a high-end that we can hawk as high-end.
Well, I do have the perfect still for it, pretty much.
It's got two thumpers, infusion chambers,
and it's big enough to do a decent sized run on.
The only problem is it's back home in Pennsylvania.
[Mark] Hmm. Kinda hadn't went that far in my thinking.
No, but liquor still don't know it's not in Tennessee.
We can meet up up in PA and run some research and development.
At the end of the day, what I'm expecting out of Joe and Amanda
is nothing more than huge.
-Well, looks like we got a drive ahead of us. -Yes, we do.
It's gonna be astronomical, what they're gonna do when they pair off.
[Joe] Cheers. To moving forward.
[instrumental guitar music]
[Richard] Four berries and one mash.
That's right.
[Jerry] We gotta get to work on this, son.
I happened to lock in a big order for a guy's daughter's wedding,
a four-berry shine.
Me and this guy negotiated $140 per gallon.
That's $2,800 total for the 20 gallons that he's buying.
That's a good profit.
[Jerry] Let's get these caps cut off these strawberries.
Rest of it, we'll just throw on the ground and grind up.
But he needs it in time for his daughter's wedding.
That's the deadline,
and that's the pressure that's gonna be on me, Jerry, and Richard.
You know what, you guys got $75 for the last batch on the gallon.
I got almost double for this run.
Well, how y'all like me now?
-Huh? -You done good, Mike.
Oh, yes! Can I hear you say it?
We're keep each and every one of these berries separate in these mash piles.
When they blend together is when they go over into our four-chamber pot,
ready for distillation.
[Jerry] You know, our berries are very sweet. They got lots of sugar in 'em.
And they're almost overripe at this point.
-[Richard] Let's do some blackberry right here. -[Jerry] All right.
We're right here in the very end of the berry season.
If we mess this up, we're liable not to get no more berries of any kind.
-Last but not least... -[Richard] This is our raspberry right here.
[Mike] Stir it in.
You know, berries has got sugar.
They'll make alcohol by their selves.
But we gotta add additional sugar to up the alcohol content,
so we'll have enough alcohol to go around.
[Jerry] This water's good and cold.
[Mike] Luckily, we got some of the best water a man can ask for
right here at the still side.
Now, all we gotta do is pitch the yeast and we're outta here.
[Jerry] So, we'll give this stuff about a week.
Fellas, I think that's a job well done on this four-berry mash.
[Mike] Cap 'em off and get the heck out of Dodge.
It oughta be a damn good payday coming.
You got that right.
You know, finally, we're gonna make a huge profit,
everybody's gonna be happy,
and we all get to go out with a bang on this one.
[instrumental rock music]
[Tickle] We can go out there and scout, see what we can find,
and then, just let you know where you needed to go.
All right.
We're out here trying to find the right car for us to be hauling this liquor on.
Henry's got this mechanic buddy
that he's got some parts from before,
and he's got all kinds of junk cars around his property.
What do you think about this one?
That's the last thing Josh Owens needs.
Well, I mean, it ain't got no motor in it, it's perfect for him.
[Henry] He'd put a motor in it. You know him.
[Tickle] Hey, look, he can haul lot of liquor in a school bus.
-[Henry] Yeah. It's too big. -[Tickle] What are you thinking about that? Too big?
Yeah.
[Henry] I can put you in that barrel right there, too,
-and let you go over Niagara Falls. -[both laugh]
The car's gotta look like a junk car.
It's gotta look like something that needs to be towed,
probably to a scrapyard.
Something nobody's gonna take a second look at.
[Henry] Oh, hold up here.
-[Tickle] Look, boy, the trunk on this thing, too. -[Henry] Oh, yeah.
[Tickle] You can fit all kinds of moonshine up in that.
[Henry] You know what, we can take out the back seat out, maybe,
and take the front seat out, too.
We can have the whole thing.
-All the way through it? -All the way through it.
And if we're gonna have it on that car haul...
[Tickle] Nobody'll ever see it.
...you ain't gonna be able to see it. Exactly.
We'll still put a blanket over it.
We found this old Malibu,
and I tell you, I think it is perfect for our purposes.
[Henry] We found a nice one.
-Take me in there. -[Tickle] All right, follow us on in.
We're gonna take this junk car and we're gonna bring it to my shop
which is loaded with liquor.
Now, that shop is attached to the restaurant that me and my wife are opening soon.
This shop is big enough to pull any vehicle in.
We're gonna take this junk car,
then we're gonna load it full of shine.
Josh can come in with his tow truck, pull the car out,
and head right down the road with it.
All right, we're ready.
[Josh] This car's gonna make us a lot of money
'cause this son of a bitch is huge
and nobody's ever gonna think to look at it.
We got it now, boys.
Just gotta lock it up in place and we're good.
Now that we've got this car, our next step is getting it full of shine,
and getting it to our buyers.
[Henry] This is a job well done, boys.
[instrumental guitar music]
[Joe] I found the only flat spot in Western Pennsylvania.
-Let's do it. -[Amanda] Yeah.
Of course, I landed in a dang bramble thicket over here.
JJ and I drove up to Pittsburgh to run the rum on my still.
We're both originally from PA, and Joe knows a great spot
about 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, deep in the woods.
It's gonna be the perfect place to run our liquor.
[Joe] I'm not a stickler for accuracy, but...
Not a stickler, but you brought a measuring tape...
-[Joe laughing] -...to the woods.
-Listen, I brought one, too. It's all good. -[both laugh]
I'm really excited to do this with JJ.
[Joe] My chiropractor's gonna be mad at me after this.
Well, just don't tell him.
We both have a little bit of a different background
in what we're bringing to the spirit.
[Joe exhales] I wanna incorporate our traditional Jamaican-style rum.
[Amanda] I love that.
[Joe] All right.
I have Polish roots with my recipe,
he has a really nice Caribbean rum.
So, bring that together and I think it's gonna make something pretty awesome.
[Joe] She's got all the brains and all the brawn.
[Amanda laughs]
-Copper, copper. -[Joe laughs]
[Joe] All the bronze. "It's copper!"
When Digger suggested that JJ and I should work together to make a rum,
my first thought was, "I have to use my still."
[Joe] All right, so you school me up on how all of this goes together.
All right, man.
See, I got her seasoned in with rum.
I literally designed this still with rum in mind.
Wiggle it just a little bit and, then, they all fit.
I have a double retort, which is a two-thumper system.
I have two-inch piping that runs all the way through.
It's built for flow, it's built for flavor.
I have a 100-gallon pot that goes to a 30-gallon thumper
into a 20-gallon thumper.
It's already been seasoned with blackstrap molasses runs very many times.
So, it has that good rum seasoning, that flavor in the copper already.
Those big thumpers are gonna pick up a ton of flavor
from incorporating the hazelnuts in there.
There's nothing else that I could even think that would make better rum
than this pot still.
[Joe] That's awesome.
If Popcorn Sutton walked gingerly up into this site right now,
he'd be like, "Oh, what is this steampunk,
newfangled still doing out here?"
Would he even know what steampunk is?
-[both laughing] -Probably not.
I've been making hazelnut rum for, I mean, years now.
I love the recipe, but incorporating the flavor of nuts onto a spirit
is kinda hard to do.
They don't really have a lot of flavor,
but you wanna taste that in your spirit at the end.
All right, let me fire this puppy up.
[car starts]
-Oh. We got water, and some good pressure, too. -[Joe laughing]
If it's a challenge, I'm all for it.
And it just became a recipe I adopted.
[Joe] Let's get this puppy lit.
Hazelnut rum is one of my favorite spirits to make.
I think I'm pretty good at it.
We'll get our water heated up
-so that we can melt down that molasses. -Mmm-hmm.
-Get it dumped into those barrels. -[Amanda] Yeah.
-And then, pour the hot water over it. -Okay.
And what I've been cultivating recently, is a muck pit.
So, when you're talking about muck pits,
there's a couple of different names for 'em. Muck pit, dunder pit.
I've heard some even more disgusting names for them.
We're gonna put it in the ground, so that it's temperature-controlled.
The bottom line is it's backset from a previous rum run
that you let get taken over by other bacteria.
What that bacteria does is, when it's introduced with the acids in the muck pit,
it creates a certain amount of esterification,
which is where you get all of your banana flavor, your pineapple.
All the fruity flavors that you expect in a traditional island rum.
We are going to add the muck to the pot on our first run.
-[Amanda] During the run? -[Joe] During the run.
I see some steam. Oh, yeah, she's getting hot.
We gotta crush up the hazelnuts.
I wanna cook them up as much as possible.
[Joe] Oh, yeah! That's to get them oils out of 'em.
Yeah. I mean, the more you cook 'em,
the more you're extracting the flavors from them and...
-Nice! -[Amanda] Then, I roasted these.
-And then, I got vanilla bean. -[Joe] Nice.
So, we're gonna go with, like, a traditional hazelnut liqueur kind of a recipe.
What I do when I make hazelnut rum is I try to incorporate the hazelnuts
into, like, every step of the process that I can.
-[Joe] They crush pretty easy. -[Amanda] Yeah, they become super-brittle.
It goes in the mash.
And we're gonna mash in this molasses and get these hazelnuts in here.
And then, we're gonna put them in the thumper when we run it.
Anywhere we can squeeze a hazelnut in to get out more flavor,
that's what we're gonna do.
-To hazelnut rum. -To hazelnut rum.
[mooing]
Right on around to the back, boss.
We've got us a good gameplan.
I'm trying to open a restaurant up with my wife.
But this restaurant also, it used to be an old truck stop.
[truck beeping]
So, not only does it have a restaurant,
it has a huge shop on one side of it.
[Henry] Nice and pretty.
It's the perfect stash site.
We'll pull a vehicle in here, load it down with shine,
and nobody's none the wiser.
Shoot, they fit right in there, don't they?
[upbeat instrumental music]
We've got 250 gallons of liquor.
That's 40 gallons in the trunk.
We're gonna fill this thing, start shipping out big time.
-[Josh] Try that, see if it moves. -[Tickle] All right.
Dope.
All right.
We're gonna paint these windows on the inside of this car,
so the paint inside just blocks anybody from being able to see in.
[Henry] I think this is gonna do it. Hell to the yeah.
You can't see crap in there. I mean, nothing.
[grunts] Yeah.
We can stack this car with moonshine all the way to the roof...
that we can haul at one shot.
Now that our car's loaded, Josh, Henry, and Paige
are gonna deliver this shine to our bootleggers.
-[cell phone ringing] -Gosh, it's the wife.
-Hello? -[Carol on phone] Oh, my God, where are you?
I just got a few things I'm finishing up over here in the shop, honey.
[Carol] We've got a huge list of stuff to do before we open.
I know, honey. I'm just finishing up a couple of things
and I'll be right in.
[Carol] Get over here. I need this restaurant to be more of a priority, honey.
[Tickle] I would really like to go
and see how our new method of delivering moonshine is working out,
but I've gotta stick back here at this restaurant
because our grand opening is right around the corner.
We're gonna drop this bitch off.
Henry's got this bootlegger guy
that's wanting a big load of moonshine. He's gonna be our first customer.
If we haul two or three different vehicles,
you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of gallons of liquor.
[Henry] Rock and roll, baby.
[Josh] This could be really huge.
We could be dropping off multiple junk cars full of jugs
to multiple people at the same time.
This is gonna be epic.
[soft instrumental music]
So, Digger, this old feller is named Steve. He's got himself this vineyard
that he can't take care of.
He's got some heart issues going on.
[Digger] I can relate to that.
[Kelly] He said this property is overdrawn.
If it's what he says, it'll be really really good for us.
[narrator] In Cocke County, Tennessee,
master dealmaker Kelly is taking Digger to a local farm
where a variety of grapes are grown, including muscadines,
a species native to Appalachia.
Well, you know Kelly, he's always got something up his sleeve.
He's found a vineyard and they have a bounty of unripened raisins.
Grapes.
You haven't obligated to nothing yet, have you?
No, I didn't promise him nothing except that we'd come and look at it.
Me and Mark, we've got several teams in place right now.
We've got Joe and Amanda on the hazelnut rum.
They're the new dream team, in my opinion.
Then, we've got Beaz that's taking all the liquor he can
and getting it out to these deep-pocketed buyers.
We're right where we need to be.
[Kelly] Maybe he'll just let us have a heck of a deal.
[Digger] Good deals increase your bottom line. That's what I'm after.
[Kelly] How you doin', Steve?
[Steve] Doing fine. How y'all doing?
[Kelly] We're doing great.
There's a lot of grapes here, but about a month or so ago,
I had some health issues come up and I haven't been able to keep up with it.
[Digger] Anything that'll make a little alcohol, we're all about it.
Last year, we got, like, 30,000 pounds off of this field.
I mean, you can see there's nice clusters here.
Yeah, the vineyard's a little overgrown
but these grapes are in fantastic shape.
Now, this vine got so heavy, it fell off.
There's a lot of weeds and stuff here competing with the grapes,
so they're fighting for sunshine and water
and everything that a grape needs.
Steve, I see a lot of your leaves here eaten plumb up. What--
[Steve] That's the damn Japanese beetles.
The leaves are real important, that's why we gotta hurry up and get this under control.
There's gotta be something done with these Japanese beetles
or there won't be any grapes here left.
[Digger] Steve, let me ask you this, you're kinda up a stump here.
How many pounds do you usually yield per row of these vines?
[Steve] Well, 600 to 1,000 pounds per row.
If we get in here and get this cleaned up for you,
would you obligate two rows of your harvest to us?
[tense instrumental music]
Yes, yes, yes. Most definitely.
I think this is a good plan, Steve. We sure do appreciate it.
You know, ultimately, this is gonna be a whole lot of work.
It's a big ol' task to take on.
But I'm willing to do it, just so we can get the grapes and help a neighbor out.
We may end up with more liquor than we know what to do with.
-I ain't never been in that predicament. -[laughing]
And when you get the liquor done, I want a jar.
-We can certainly do that. -For sure.
[dramatic instrumental music]
If it's worked off, we'll get to running this puppy.
So, we're back at the still site to make a hazelnut rum.
The next step is to check on that mash to make sure it's worked off.
-Oh, my God. -Oh, yeah.
-Oh, yeah! -Look at that oil.
[Joe] It's crazy how it pulls those oils.
Like with, you know...
Oh, my God, taste that.
Tastes like roasted hazelnuts, right?
That's fire.
[Amanda] Obviously, we'll strain the mash, throw it in the pot.
We have good alcohol content in our mash.
A ton of hazelnut oil come out through the fermentation.
I think it's gonna make some excellent rum.
-[mimicking Mark] There's some alcohol in there, Puss. -[chuckles]
[Joe] I'm really excited to work with Amanda.
She's a great distiller.
She has a super-refined palate.
I mean, she knows a lot of different scientific stuff that I couldn't even imagine.
-Hell of a pour, Amanda. -This is a messy job.
Moonshining ain't easy.
Well, speaking about a miss...
-What the muck you got going on in there? -[laughs]
-What the muck? -[Amanda] I wanna see it.
Come on, baby.
We got 100 gallons of mash in that pot.
-[exhales sharply] -That's a little funky.
She grew a little something on top.
All that's left is for us to incorporate the muck.
Usually, it should be about one gallon per 20 gallons of mash.
So I figure, if we get at least five gallons into this run,
-I think we're gonna be good to go. -[Amanda] Mmm-hmm.
Give it a smell.
Do you smell how acidic it is? It's kind of got a vinegar smell to it.
Oh, yeah, it does.
-That's just all of the acids that's been produced. -Yeah.
Smells pretty interesting.
Not as bad as I thought it was gonna smell.
It's kinda fruity, it's definitely a little funky.
[straining] And here we go with the muck, baby.
[Amanda] That's precious stuff right there.
This is the first time I'm working with a muck pit in this style.
[burner ignites]
So, I'm really excited to see what kind of flavors it's gonna bring to our rum.
While that's heating up, I think we should take all those hazelnuts
-and put them in the thumpers. -Yeah.
The plan is, pick up as much hazelnut flavor as we can
through the distillation process.
I like working with the nuts because they are a challenge.
It's not like brandy, you can put fruit in there and get a lot of flavor.
-Yeah. -[Amanda] You gotta, like, do some work
to get flavor out of these things.
But when you can do it right, it's something really special.
I can kinda smell it, smell the liquor.
It's wafting, like, right over at us.
Holy...
Do you see that?
-[Amanda] We got drips? -[Joe] It's dripping!
Think we're about to start making some liquor.
We freaking did it. That's what I'm talkin' about!
I mean, running your hands like this, stick your finger in,
and if you're about a knuckle deep, you got enough heads.
I'm gonna toss these heads. Get ready with that other bucket.
-[Amanda] Do it. -[Joe] All right.
It's flowing good, I'll tell you that much.
-What are you thinking? Are you ready to taste it? -I'm ready to taste it.
Here's the true test.
I'll let you go first.
[Amanda] Why, thank you. What a gentleman.
I like to be a gentleman.
[Amanda] God, this smells really really good.
I'm getting the molasses, I'm getting the hazelnuts.
I'm getting, like, vanilla.
[suspenseful instrumental music]
Is that good?
Ah!
-That's freaking delicious. -I'm gonna have to get in there and live in it.
This is like liquid gold right here.
We really made something special here.
It is buttery, and fruity, and hazelnut-y.
This is the best hazelnut rum I've ever made.
Mark and Digger bringing us together to make hazelnut rum,
I think they knew...
-Yeah, we're not gonna make their... -This is our hazelnut rum.
So, right now, I have to get back to Tennessee,
drop this rum off to Mark and Digger,
and get back to work on another project with Kelly.
[Joe laughing]
[instrumental country music]
[Mike] Well, reckon the old berry shine's ready to rock and roll?
-[Jerry] I'm ready too. Let's go. -Heck, yeah.
[Mike] We are heading into the woods today to run our four-berry shine.
The mash oughta be ready.
Tell you what, this is a high-end order. We gotta get this done.
Our deadline's coming up here pretty soon.
This dude ain't gonna pay us if we don't get her done on time.
Yeah.
So, this is for a big shot guy here in Maggie Valley for his daughter's wedding.
Do we get to go to the wedding?
This four-berry shine's gonna be a gift for the wedding guests.
That's gonna be potential buyers. I mean, it's a win-win.
We're getting paid for this run,
and we're gonna get paid later on.
Whoa, buck. [exhales sharply]
God.
So, we checked the mash, it's ready to go.
-Let's do it. -Check the water meter. Might just have pumped over.
We've got one week to get the alcohol to the customer.
That's plenty of time, man, for us to jar it up,
put all the nice, pretty little bows on it.
Let her fly, Jerry.
-[Richard] Hey, guy. -Yo!
[Richard] Well, we got a problem.
-What's up? -[Richard] Y'all gotta come and see this.
Oh, hell. Let's get up and see what he's got going on.
[Jerry] Just get the water started.
[Mike and Jerry grumbling indistinctly]
[Richard] Welcome to our worst nightmare.
We ain't got no water in here.
[Mike] This ain't looking good, is it?
[Richard] We ain't got enough water in here to put out a camp fire.
What the hell are we gonna do now?
What can we do? We're stuck!
-[doorbell dings] -Y'all, come check this out.
Tickles Heartline Restaurant! Me and my wife did all of the work ourselves.
-Hey, Carol. How you doing, honey? -Hi, honey.
A lot of hard work has gone into this.
We're going for, like, the 1950s diner thing.
-[smacks] -Did y'all get that on there?
[Carol] No!
-Boy! -[laughs]
-You go ahead. -Did y'all get that on there? [giggles]
[Tickle] This right here will be our breakfast grill.
You know how I know that?
Because it has eggs and cheese beside it.
They'll be calling out orders, they'll be coming out of that machine,
they'll be putting 'em up here.
They'll be reading 'em, they'll be flipping 'em.
I think this is for cleaning, but I don't know.
All right. So scrambled, it is.
I like my eggs scrambled better anyway.
When you get good with this, you can do tricks with 'em.
You know?
Oh, I know what this is for now.
So, that right there is how you make a scrambled egg
at the Tickles Heartline Restaurant.
[Carol] Oh, my God.
It's dry as a damn powder house, nearly.
[Richard] I ain't never ran out of water.
We walk up, no water to be found.
In order to run this liquor out,
we need cold water to run our condenser.
How in the heck are we gonna run alcohol without cold water, though?
-[Jerry] We can't. -That's virtually impossible.
We're on a deadline. We gotta get this stuff done
or we're gonna be out a [bleep] ton of money.
This is definitely a wet weather spring.
Basically, that means, in the spring, the water's just flowing perfectly.
And then, as the summer goes on,
the heat will actually dry up some of these creeks.
Jerry, we've got to come up with something, brother.
We got mash ready to run right now.
[Richard] We can't up and move the still site.
[Jerry] We've gotta cool a condenser.
Water is the number one way, of course.
Basically, we gotta figure out a way to make a run without water.
Without water.
[Jerry] I think I've got an idea that might just work.
I don't know that it'll work,
but in my mind, it'll work perfect.
You know, there's lots of ways of dissipating heat.
You know, water's only one of them.
Tell you what, if we got a pipe a mile long,
you've got a steam running through it,
-what's cooling it? -Air.
So, let's use air.
[Richard] How are we gonna use the air? How are we gonna cool it down?
[Richard] I gotta think about it a little more to kinda really refine it.
I'll put it on paper, but I think it might work.
Well, we can't be standing here and do nothing. We gotta try something.
You know, Jerry, he's always been good
about coming up with cool ideas, you know?
But condensing that amount of alcohol without water,
this is a new one on me.
We got less than a week to get this alcohol to our customer.
We gotta figure some way out of condensing alcohol.
[Kelly] Amanda, this vineyard, it's a beautiful place.
-We gotta do a little cleanup. -[Amanda] Right.
I'm back in Pennsylvania after making a special hazelnut rum
for Mark and Digger.
And now, it's on to my next big project with Kelly.
This is pretty cool.
If we can clean up this vineyard,
we have an opportunity to score a couple of rows of grapes.
-Buckets and buckets of grapes. -I wanna taste one.
I don't know how they'll taste yet. [chuckles]
-Sour. -[Kelly] I figured.
But they taste good.
Look at this, Kelly.
[Kelly] Oh, the Japanese beetles?
Look at how many are on this one leaf.
If we don't do something about these beetles,
we're gonna lose, like, the whole crop of grapes.
It's a mess, but I see the potential.
Well, let's get started.
The first thing we're gonna do is start mowing and getting these weeds out of here.
[instrumental country music]
I'm gonna drive the tractor here
and get all the stuff straightened out that we can.
Oh, this is really overgrown.
There's a huge group of these beetles here, and they're mating.
Oh, gosh.
If we don't get some good growth on these plants,
I'm afraid these grapes might not really develop
much more than where they're at.
Leave our grapes alone.
Oh, they're attacking me! [laughs]
What I'm gonna do is put down some milky spore.
It's like Ebola for Japanese beetles, right?
So, if they touch this stuff, it kills them.
So, the whole point is to keep them from repopulating
and spreading through our field.
You know, this is not a pesticide,
so it won't hurt the crop.
It's just a natural spore that kills these bugs.
This is a lot of work, but if we stick with it
and we really care for these grapes,
then we should have a huge harvest in a couple of weeks
to make a lot of liquor.
Give 'em the best life they can,
so they can make the most amount of sugar for us.
[train horn blowing]
[instrumental country music]
[indistinct chatter]
Can I get you some more coffee?
-[man] Yeah. -Yeah.
Today is my grand opening of the Tickles Heartline Restaurant.
It's going great!
The restaurant's booming. We got a packed house.
Just as soon as one customer leaves, another one's coming in.
Y'all follow me.
I'm really hoping everything goes great today,
because there's a lot of money been invested in this.
A lot of love. A lot of time.
[bell dings]
All right.
The restaurant being busy, on top of that,
I got my buddies out here in the shop.
[Henry] Let's get this liquor loaded up.
[Tickle] Our delivery with our junk car went so well
that we've decided to expand our operation.
Henry's found us another junk car that we can use.
We're gonna keep filling this shop up with shine
and emptying it out with these junk cars.
-I'm really happy about seeing it packed. -[Carol laughs]
-[Carol] I know. -[Tickle] How's it going, y'all? Keeping up?
All right.
It's breakfast all day long.
You can get burgers, you can get dogs, meatloafs, chicken.
You can get barbecue, which I actually make myself.
-[bell dings] -Order up.
-[cell phone beeps] -All right.
Lord, keeping me busy.
I'm constantly getting text messages, "Hey, Tickle, we need you."
[grunting]
[Henry] Damn fire. Where's Tickle?
Who had the country ham?
-Oh, shoot, that's right. -Oh!
-[Tickle] All right. -[cell phone beeps]
"Hey, Tickle, can you come look at this?"
"Hey, Tickle, look, this is what we got going on."
-All right. -Honey! Where are you going with that ticket?
No, no, no, no, no! That's not... No, no, no, honey!
That is not how you do it. You can't do it like that!
-What are you talking about? -You have to do it the same way
I've trained everybody else!
[Tickle] You didn't train me!
Well, if you needed to get trained, you should've been here for training.
You have to put it in the system.
Oh, my God.
Carol comes up and tells me, "Look, we're falling behind."
We're running as fast as we can,
but we got so many customers.
Right now, I've got more orders than I know what to do with.
Every booth, every table, the bar,
they have been constantly full.
Not only am I trying to get this restaurant running and keep it going,
what I'm also doing is trying to keep
this shine-moving business we got in the shop going.
Can I get you to put this order in?
I've got to get out to the shop.
-Honey, you gotta use the computer. -[Tickle] I know.
I've got to get out to the shop. I've got something going on, all right?
-[Carol] Are you serious? -[Tickle] Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you, dear.
I gotta keep up with both of these things.
You know what, at the end of the day,
I believe I might oughta save a jar for myself.
All right, fellers. What we got going on now?
Carol's gonna kill me, Henry.
[Henry] Josh will be here in a minute now.
Oh, well, he needs to hurry up, we done got this one full.
We're gonna be delivering over 500 gallons of moonshine in multiple junk cars.
[Henry on radio] The guy that we delivered to just contacted me
and said that there's no vehicles allowed.
You need to get over and get that vehicle.
[Josh] I see you, buddy.
Damn, good. I hope we good.
[man] Hey, man. What the hell's going on?
How the hell are we gonna condense alcohol without water?
[Jerry] As long as we can get enough surface area, make enough coils in it,
then the air can cool it enough.
-Oh, crap. We got steam. -We got steam.
We got money flying in the air right now.