[Digger] Making moonshine is illegal.
You can get seriously injured
or lose your life or lose your freedom.
Do not try this at home.
[narrator] This time on Moonshiners...
[Mark over phone] Go ahead, puss.
Cowboy got killed yesterday evening.
[Mark] Oh, no.
Sadly, when we lost Cowboy,
we lost access to the old Ghost Town theme park.
We still had a barrel of the aging whiskey in Ghost Town.
-We gotta fetch it. -[Digger] Yeah.
[Mike] Our bank account's dry.
We're not making the money that we need to be making
with three people working on the same team.
Richard, perhaps you get your own still.
That's some bull[bleep].
It is what it is.
No, man. It is what I say it is.
I gotta get my restaurant back open.
If I can't sell this shine,
I've got zero dollars to open my restaurant up.
These people are 15 minutes late right now.
[Tickle over phone] He'll be right there.
[Henry] It's damn loud, man.
-Spotlight-- -There's no spotlight on us.
[Mark] This is how we make moonshine.
100 proof corn liquor, all ready for bees.
Telling you, it's a whole lot easier just to...
-push this on out the door in these big barrels. -Wholesaling it.
[narrator] In Cocke County, Tennessee,
Mark and Digger meet up with master dealmaker Kelly
and bootlegger Killer Beaz
to put a plan in place
for their last few liquor runs of the season
before winter sets in.
[Beaz] Greeting.
Let's start with that.
Go ahead and get that out of the way right there, buddy.
-You done kept your part, right? -[Beaz] Uh-huh.
-Oh, yeah. -Of course you have.
Now, this is for me to take to Virginia, right?
-If that's where you're going with it. -Oh, yeah.
Now, listen to this,
every trip up there, this guy's asked me
if we can come up with some 140 proof liquor.
He's under the understanding
that if he goes with 100 proof liquor to soak his cherries,
the cherries won't be 100 proof
because they've already got their...
-their juices and stuff in them. -[Mark] He's right.
If you use 100 proof liquor,
by the time the cherries absorb the alcohol and everything,
and the juice waters it down,
you eat a cherry and you're eating about a 60 proof cherry.
I told him I didn't know if you guys wanted to do it.
He has told me he'll pay us 140 bucks a gallon.
He's wanting to do a 100 gallons at a pop.
Oh hell, it would take us damn 20 runs
to get 100 gallons.
You know, every run you do,
you get a certain amount of your liquor
that's gonna be 140 proof.
Uh, but then you know, it progressively goes downhill in proof.
But, this guy's requesting a lot of it.
We don't have the capability with the equipment we have
to make that much of it.
Column stills up the proof, but it strips the flavor.
He's loving that-- that corn flavor there.
[Kelly] I've got an idea.
If you took a worm like this
and you took a thump keg like this.
Cut the end and set that dude right down in there.
Cut you a little hole where you could run this out the top,
and this in the bottom, putting cold water in here,
your post here is gonna take the steam all the way down, ain't it?
And as it comes up, it would condense on every one of them.
This customer wanting what he wants,
being the customer that he is,
I think we owe it to him to try.
Y'all get started on that
me and Beaz will get started on running a mash.
Is there something we can tweak the mash?
We can sugar it up a little more
and use a little more grain in it
-to up the ABV. -Yeah.
We gotta do everything we do
to try to stretch that 140 north hole
-a little bit longer. -[Mark] Yeah.
Our goal is for it to be profitable.
[Digger grunts] Ready?
We wanna pull off as much 140 proof as we can
on the first run.
I don't care. Let's see if we can modify this.
[Digger] So, as it stands now,
Kelly and Mark are gonna go work on the thump keg
and me and Beaz will stay behind
and we'll build us a little fortified mash.
We've gotta also boost that ABV in this mash, too.
Not just the end run.
Yeah, let's light the son of a bitch.
This is not unlike any of our mashes,
other than we'll probably use a little extra corn.
Just to bolster that flavor.
It's paramount that we get our corn ground up to the right consistency.
A good, heavy grit is what you want your corn to be at.
Beaz, this is quite a bit more sugar than usual.
Yeah, it is.
Instead of six, we're putting nine in.
-Extra-- -[Digger] Extra 25 per 50 weight.
We'll extra sugar it, that way, we got
a little higher ABV in the mash,
and that should bring us more liquor to the table.
Yeah, chase that sugar around in the corners.
Make sure it all gets melted.
Beaz, I'll man that, you pour some grain in.
We'll take this from 12 to 14 ABV mash,
probably up to somewhere 18%-19% ABV.
Time to get the party started.
The reason I'm putting extra yeast,
I want it to get started early.
It'll do as much damage as it can
before it cools down too much that the yeast slow down.
-Got you, got you. -[Digger] So...
about a pound-and-a half-yeast.
It'll take off like a rocket.
Well Beaz, stir that wheel,
it's living in the world it wants to live in,
-full of sugars. -[Beaz] Plenty to eat.
It's gonna be farting out Co2
and pissing out that high proof alcohol.
I believe we've got it.
[Beaz] Good job, man.
This is nice, right here.
Check that big-ass creek out down there.
Is it a trout stream?
[Henry] There ain't gonna be no damn fishing.
The only thing we're gonna be doing is making liquor, son.
[narrator] In Franklin County, Virginia,
Josh, Henry, Tickle and Kenny
are headed to a friend's barn
to set up a new still
for a run of carrot apple brandy.
All right, Tickle, let's see what we got.
It's a big old barn, that's for sure.
[narrator] Tickle is counting on the proceeds
to re-staff and reopen his restaurant.
[Tickle] We don't know how these carrots are gonna work out.
So, if this liquor turns out bad,
I've got zero dollars to open my restaurant up.
This stuff, it's gotta come out right.
We're gonna have to move that sign
or we're gonna wind up busted.
It is a beautiful old barn.
Very well-built.
-Man. -[Henry] Well, I can see from here.
That's the dirt floor.
We set the two boilers side by side,
we can go right through the floor
-and we're set. -That's it.
We come up with the idea
that we probably ought to put the boilers down here underneath
on a dirt floor, and pipe the steam
to our still site upstairs.
[Henry] I say we get the still unloaded.
We're gonna pull the truck down here.
You got the thumper on yours, right?
You wanna take that off first?
Now, if this were submarine pots,
we'd have this thing set up in no time.
But, this stainless steel steamer rig,
with the sheer size of it
and the weight of the stainless,
this is not child's play right here.
If we're not careful,
somebody's really gonna get hurt trying to move this thing.
-Watch out... -[Henry] All right, buck her up.
-[all exclaiming] -[bleeping]
[Henry] Don't get your foot on that son of a bitch, Tickle.
[Tickle] Watch 'em toes, please, watch 'em toes.
All right!
On a normal basis, to move something like this around,
you would want something with forks on it.
But, that's not what we got out here.
Only thing we can do is try to be as careful as we can.
And hopefully, nobody gets killed trying to move this thing.
We've got to get the other boiler in, right?
Let me get a little bit better angle here.
I'll spin it.
I don't wanna flip this thing.
[Tickle] We're pulling one of these boilers off.
Josh, he's trying to do what he can on the tractor,
but there's a massive amount of weight right here
hooked to the front end of this thing.
And there's just numerous safety issues.
[Josh] I'm telling you, man, I need to take the weight off of it.
One of you grab it from the other side.
-Hold on. -[man] A couple of us stand on it.
[Henry] Couple of y'all stand on it.
Hold it, hold it, you gotta raise the thing up.
-Whoa, whoa, whoa. -I see that.
[Josh grunts] Yeah.
-[Tickle] Watch it. -[Josh] Yeah, good.
That a little bit of weight made all that difference.
-All right. -[Tickle] Beautiful.
We've got the hard part done of getting it in here.
But, we've still gotta line everything up,
get everything connected.
You know, pipe that steam all the way from downstairs.
-[Henry] Man, oh man. -Yup.
First stainless rig I ever was around, I built it.
I called it Big Bertha,
but it's like a baby compared to this thing.
This thing is amazing.
[Henry] The pipe looks good.
We can use this pipe here too, and it'll fit pretty good.
Something like that right there.
Henry is saying that he believes
that the safest way for us to join our pot to our boiler system
is to come immediately out of the pot
and go directly through the floor.
We've got to connect up to boilers, right?
[Henry grunts] All right.
Pipes will all be under the floor.
We don't have to worry about any of us tripping over them.
Oh, yeah, that's good right there.
[Henry] We don't have to worry about knocking anything over them
or anybody getting uh, burnt real bad with this steam.
[Kenny] How's it looking up here, fellas?
-Good, man. -[Tickle] Pretty good.
Can we just go home? I'm tired.
[Tickle] Yeah, I'd say the same thing.
-It's been a long damn day. -[Henry] Long damn day.
[Mike] Can y'all damn believe that we're going to meet somebody for an order
and there's snow all over the damn ground.
Whoa, son!
-God almighty! -What's wrong with you over there?
Damn, I thought she was going off the bank.
[narrator] In Haywood County, North Carolina,
while an early snowfall forces most backwoods shiners
to pack it in for the winter,
partners Mike, Jerry and Richard
are on their way to close a deal
on an order they will run at their newborn still site.
I hope this guy that we're going to see right now,
I'm hoping he's looking for
more than a couple of quarts of liquor.
-[Richard] Yeah. -I hope it will be
several gallons, at least.
Today I got a call from a friend of mine.
He's a contractor here in the Valley,
and he works with a lot of high end people.
He said he could potentially have a good order for us.
I think this is him here.
-[Mike] Is this our guy? -[Jerry] Yup.
[Mike] You know, usually at this time of the year,
most moonshiners, they get a call for an order like this,
they wouldn't even take it.
But us, we've got to take this call.
We've had money come out of our pocket for a bunch of copper,
we've had to pay this henchmen guy
that we didn't need to be paying.
We've got our still stolen.
[Jerry's friend] Morning, fellas.
-What's going on, buddy? -[Jerry] Good morning.
That's why we're out here freezing our balls off,
trying to make a living.
-What you got on your mind, What you look for. -[Jerry's friend] Yeah.
I build houses around here,
and I've got some really good,
high end customers that treat me right.
I'm looking for something
they're gonna be able to drink,
and it's just going to warm that body up,
-on these snowy days. -Okay.
You're looking for, probably a good-
just a good winter rum.
Something you know that you are drinking,
but not going to knock you flat on your tail.
-Yes, sir, exactly. -[Mike] We got that.
-We can make that happen. -[Richard] Yeah, we can do that.
How much do you want?
I need about 14 gallons.
Is that something you guys can handle?
[Richard] Oh, we could definitely handle that.
What's this gonna cost me?
Well, just seeing it to be in a good-- to be in a special order,
you're looking at about $110 a gallon.
-Let's do it -[Jerry] All right.
-Jerry, you got a deal. -Thank you.
This order, that's confirmed, that's the easy part.
But you know, it's hard to split money three different ways.
So we'll make a much bigger batch of this shine
to continue selling.
The challenging part is Mother Nature.
But if we can figure out a way
to make mash work off in these elements,
we're gonna make some money.
Tell you what, guys we're gonna make it happen.
That's for sure.
Okay, let's see if we can figure out this magic thump keg.
[Kelly] We'll come up with something, surely.
[Mark] You know, Beaz has got this order
from a a really, really good client.
And he wants 140 proof corn liquor.
I mean, my whole thought on the whole thing
was to try to do something that we already kinda had built,
-so we didn't have to go into a bunch of... -Well, I understand that.
But I'm-I'm saying if we try to put this in it and screw it up,
then we don't even have a functioning thump keg anymore.
To get a lot of high proof liquor, uh,
you really need a column still.
And that, in essence, strips all your flavor.
We need column still effects,
but we need to retain the flavor that he wants.
That's what we've got to try to shoot for.
I think it will b our advantage if we can get this to work
because 140 proof liquor,
you know it comes at a much higher price point
than 100 proof does.
You're way more help than Digger
when it comes to building something.
[chuckles]
We're building it with two chambers and four pipes.
The alcohol vapor coming into the thump keg
is actually gonna pass by eight whole water pipes.
As it rises from the first chamber, it will pass four of them.
Then it goes over and all the way down to the bottom
of the second chamber and rises again.
The remaining steam,
which should be the purest alcohol
goes onto the condenser.
[Kelly] I'll tell you what worries me more than anything,
is with doing a double thump keg,
and then we add this water to it
to cool everything
that we put so much back pressure
on the pot, we blow the cap off.
The only way that'll do that, I think Kelly,
is if we let this thump juice build up too high.
We'll have to drain it pretty often
because once it comes up past the escape routes for the steam,
it might create too much back pressure
and cause the steel to pop the cap.
I don't think it's that big of an issue.
I'm not sure yet.
Uh, we'll see.
I bet you if it works like we think it ought to,
everybody else will be trying to build one before you know it.
-[Mark] That's okay. -[both chuckle]
[Josh] We're gonna run our carrot apple brandy in the morning.
We got a $20,000 or $30,000 still here,
but I really don't like the fact
that we built a cap that goes on a still
that it's not perfect to do the job.
It makes no sense.
[Henry] The cap that we've got,
it's just a little bit too small.
There's just not enough cap.
-It's not gonna work. -It must be wider.
I can't see putting some kind of piece of [bleep] apparatus
on a [bleep] still like that, it just don't make sense.
My concern is not that the cap is gonna blow off
and [bleep] kill somebody.
My concern is that right in the middle of the run,
when it starts steaming over really good,
it starts blowing all our paste out of the joints,
and then we're screwed.
Okay.
Definitely not gonna argue with Henry
and them about what they wanna do.
This is his stuff.
But, just in case this don't work out.
I'm definitely gonna go ahead
and build me another cap.
He's gonna be surprised when he comes back out,
and I've got a brand new super
badass cap freaking ready to go.
Hell, yeah.
It fits perfect.
But, if I'm gonna make this and not get bitched at,
it better be a hammerhead cap.
Because Henry's always going on and on and on
about these hammerhead caps, like Virginia's.
Famous for these hammerhead caps.
From the past, and he's super proud of them.
This would be a whole lot easier if I had some help.
But the last thing I wanna do is ask for any help,
because if I ask them for help,
they're gonna be like, "What the hell are you doing?"
What the hell does it look like we're doing?
We're building a cap.
[Henry] Oh, look at him back there sleeping.
Uh, how we doing, son?
You didn't make it to the house.
What the hell's that thing right there?
What the [bleep]? Are you serious?
[Josh] I've stayed here all night, working my ass off.
-[Henry] You built this overnight? -[Josh] Yeah.
-[Henry] You're bull[bleep] me. -Yeah.
[Henry] Man, look at this.
Hey, Josh.
So you just come in here and built it, just like that?
-[Josh] Yeah. -You didn't build this for the steamer?
Yeah.
It fits tight.
I don't know, man, I wanna look at it.
I like those hammered heads.
I know you do. That's why it's on there.
It's so damn ugly, it's pretty.
[Josh] Henry loved it.
And you know what that means?
That means we're gonna use the new cap that fits the still
versus the cap that don't fit the still.
Where are the cap holes?
It'll be like, a few more hours of work.
You need to let me lay down a couple hours or something, damn.
[Henry] You don't need any rest, you're a young man.
[both chuckle]
[Jerry] My biggest thing is like, you know,
he's wanting this-- this winter rum.
I mean, what are you guys thinking?
Everybody loves the daggone cinnamon style.
-Like, a hot toddy kind of thing? -[Mike] Yeah.
We've got an order of 14 gallons of wintertime rum.
Now, we just gotta nail down that recipe.
What do we have right now other than brown sugar?
[Jerry] I mean, I've got maple syrup.
[Mike] That would be a good mixture.
[Richard] Oh, if we took that
and put a little bit of traditional spice in there,
-holiday spice in there. -[Mike] Maple--
A daggone maple, brown sugar with a little cinnamon fire kick to it?
I know I'd drink it.
The key thing here is like, you know,
we're having these cold nights and these cool days.
We've got to keep this mash warm.
Basically, what we're gonna do is we actually just make a...
Basically, like a radiator.
[narrator] In order to ferment mash
in the cold of winter,
Jerry plans to build a solar mash warmer.
First, they'll build a radiator
of parallel copper pipes placed inside a black box
that's covered with plexiglass
and fill the pipes with homemade antifreeze.
As the sun's rays enter the box through the plexiglass,
it will heat the antifreeze inside the radiator,
forcing it to flow out of the heater box
and into a coil in a barrel of water.
As the coil heats the water in the barrel,
a solar powered pump will circulate that warm water
through a set of six coils,
one in each of the mash barrels,
keeping the mash above the 65 degrees needed
to sustain fermentation.
[Jerry] Well, let's get started on this, guys.
We haven't got long to burn.
This season, the way everything's worked out,
we've had to overcome a lot of obstacles
and creating things to get over those obstacles.
It's been important,
but not nowhere near as important as this one right here.
[Mike] Lay it to it, Jerry.
[Jerry] This is the final jump in our season.
We've got a big order riding on this,
and we've got to make this happen,
and this is the only way I can think of to make it work.
I say, every time we spray paint all this black,
and this is all absorbing the heat right here, all the surface area
it actually gets reflection of the heat,
the back side of the box is gonna, you know,
heat the back of the pipes up too.
It's gonna be a black box
for this radiator to sit down into
with some plexiglass over the top of it to generate a lot of heat.
So we just gotta start, you know, soldering some flux pipes in
o the ends of the-- the other pipes
and just create this thing.
[Jerry] See what we can do real quick.
We'll put some corks into these things
with a little air to it, just to double check it.
-Make sure it's-- -Let's do it.
We've got everything soldered together.
All of our flux pipes are in and soldered.
It's got air pressure, man.
We're going to take it and pressurize it with iron corks,
shoot some soapy water to them to see how we've done.
All right, y'all, let's test her out
and see what it's gonna do, brother.
-Put the layer to it, hold it. -Flame to it.
-[all exclaim] -[Mike groans]
-Damn! -[Richard chuckles]
I thought you had that thing drove in there.
[Mike] Holy-- Yeah, I had it drove in there.
Sh-- Three more of the bastards were in there
-and that one decided to come out. -[Richard chuckles]
You know it holds pressure.
There's no leaks whatsoever.
A radiator, it's built.
It's ready to hang.
Richard's finishing up painting this thing up.
We've got it set in a box.
[Jerry] It's like, early morning sunshine this way,
late afternoon sunshine that way, we're all good.
That's gonna get hot hot.
Now that we got the heat and the source,
figured it out, got it built,
and now comes the important part,
we've gotta have something to go in this system,
into the heat extension coil to keep this mash warm.
In my opinion, the best thing we can do,
we've already got a little bit of alcohol on hand.
Why not just use that instead of going here
and buying some kind of antifreeze?
Antifreeze we can't use, because if we were to have
any kind of leak in the system,
it could contaminate our mash.
This is, say, 60% alcohol, 40% water.
[Mike] No, that'll work right there.
You guys want to get this towards the door?
I'll go grab the controller and some extra wire
we need for that thermostat.
All right, all right.
[Mark] What you doing, Puss? Is it ready?
Mash is ready. It ain't hot yet, though.
-[Mark] Looky here. -It needs a thump keg before it can get hot.
Today's the day that we run this new thump keg
and see if we can make that high proof liquor
we're needing for Beaz's order.
There it go.
[Digger] This run of mash, it's ready to go.
So we've got to have this thump keg work.
This liquor is supposed to be 140 proof
and have plenty of corn flavor.
[Digger] We got a hose in them.
We gotta get that hose out of there.
Let's call the mash done.
This should not strip the flavor,
as does a column still.
Now that's the plan.
But whether it actually does it,
well, hell, we ain't got a clue yet.
That's why we're here.
All right, Kelly, let's get her lit.
Let's see if that thumper's gonna work or not.
-Let's crank this on some water. -[Kelly] Okay.
Now I'll tell you.
I mean, I know we've got a whole lot of weight
on that cap and everything,
but I think it will back pressure. And I mean,
that's what worries me is blowing that cap off.
You know, this whole thing is a new deal to us.
We understand how much back pressure that your pot builds up,
so we may back pressure ourselves right out of the building.
Well, since we've got that bottom cut up about yay high,
just drain it down enough to keep it. We can see where it's at.
You know, just to be on the safe side,
we put a drain in the bottom of it.
So we'll keep an eye on it.
[Digger] Feel like it's getting closer?
Yeah. Damn hell. Yeah, it's getting closer.
If it functions like we hope it will,
I'm gonna love it.
[Kelly] It's trying to spit a little, ain't it?
[Mark] Oh. Looky here, boys.
[Digger] Yonder she comes.
[Mark] I wanna see the proof.
[Digger] Ready to throw these heads out?
[Kelly] I got it.
[Mark] The smell coming out of this worm spout,
I mean, it's promising, so hopefully
the corn flavor is still there.
But most importantly, see what our proofs at.
[Kelly] Whoop it up.
It's gotta be high.
Yeah. I-I hope it's 170 or so.
[Kelly] Oh, hell. Far.
Digger does the shake test on it.
It's got these big frog eye bubbles on it.
They glare at you real bright.
Then they disappear immediately.
And that's what you want.
We don't know exactly the proof yet,
but we're gonna find out.
One sixty-eight, look.
Outstanding.
We give her a look-see, test the proof on it.
There we go. 168.
-[coughing] -[laughing]
[Mark] Mother of pearl!
It done put a blood blister on your lip.
Let me tell you something. It's hot,
but the flavors are in it.
With this thump keg proving itself as it has,
this could be a game changer.
If this thump keg will work on any steel that we have,
it will up the proof on any recipe.
Do us that thump keg boogie.
This damn souped up thump keg
is knocking it out of the park.
That right there, we're halfway to our bargaining point
with Beaz for this load of liquor. I mean,
we've already got over $4,000 right here
-between these two. -[Mark] Ain't that crazy?
All we have to do is bring water, temper it down
and bring that sweet nature to it.
We got the liquor we need to send Beaz up with.
I think this thump keg's the best thing
we've done in a long, long time.
Yeah.
[Tickle] Man, I hope this run turns out good with his carrots.
Here's what I'm worried about though.
I gotta get my restaurant back open.
And if this carrot liquor don't turn out all right,
I don't know what I'm gonna do.
[Josh] We definitely got to hit the ground running.
[Tickle] Let's get this thing run.
[Henry] Show them that beautiful cap you got there, son.
[Tickle] That ain't the same one you built the other day, is it?
[man] It don't look like to me it's the same one.
[Tickle] Well, I'll tell you what. It looks good.
[Henry] He worked all night long on this
because he wasn't quite satisfied with the other one.
Hell, yeah.
All right, let's get on. Let's get some mash in this thing.
[Tickle] Being as we're in this old barn,
we chose to put this boiler system
in the basement of it, on the dirt floor
so as not to, well, burn the barn down around us.
All right, Paige, go for it.
[Tickle] There you go. Both sides in one shot.
[man] Looking pretty good down here.
[Tickle] Yes, it does.
So I guess we need to get some mash up in the still.
[Tickle] I reckon so.
Are you going to try to mix 'em or run 'em separate?
I say let's mix the two and just roll the dice.
That's what I say.
-Mix it together and then roll with it. -It is what it is.
[Tickle] Originally, we had discussed running the carrot mash
and the apple mash separately
because we don't know what this carrot's gonna do.
Now Henry's saying, "Let's just put it all together
so we can fill this pot up," and that's smart.
Because we're gonna save a lot of money on gas.
We're gonna save a whole lot of time.
Let me see where we're at.
[Henry] That's what we're gonna see.
Yeah. Yeah, well, you're about right here.
[Tickle] All right. Good.
-All right. That's it. -[machine stops]
[Henry] All right, boys. Always around. It's a waiting game.
Good deal.
-[winces] -[Tickle] She's getting hot?
[Henry] That's steam there. Yeah, you can't-- That's hot.
Hey, y'all. Look, we're starting to get
a little methanol coming out right yonder.
It ain't going to be long we're gonna be ready to cap.
We leave the cap off,
all the methanol will be boiled off.
As soon as it boils off, we cap it. Bam!
We got the best of the best.
Cap that baby.
[Josh] All right now.
[Henry] There you go, Paige.
[Kenny] Just perfect fit.
[Tickle] Tight...
She's starting to get hot coming out of the thumper now, Henry.
-[Henry] Oh, yeah. -Yeah.
Only thing I can say about this is if this liquor turns out bad,
I'm not gonna have the money that I need
to open the doors back up
on the night of my wife's restaurant.
Yeah. Look, it's gonna be coming out of here in a minute.
[Tickle] Yeah. Wow. There she comes, y'all.
Yep. Damn sure is. She's running.
[Kenny] And that smells good, don't it?
This stuff, it's gotta come out right.
It's good liquor.
I can smell the apple coming through a whole lot.
It's a huge relief to me.
It's got very good apple notes in it.
So you know what?
I'm excited about this.
Man. It tasted good.
Carrots and apples.
Tastes like money to me.
I ain't mad at that.
No. Hell, no.
Got a hell of a flavor to it.
-But the true story is gonna be... -Yeah.
...when we take it to the customer, is he gonna buy?
That's right, man. Putting out the money.
Well, now, that-that-- I'm glad y'all mentioned that,
because I got somebody already interested in this.
I've got a guy. He owns a bar,
and he's looking for some illegal liquor
to sell out of his bar.
Well, you know what? I've got him.
But now look, he's on up in the city.
And the delivery is gonna have to be made at night,
and I ain't gonna be able to be there to do it.
I got stuff to do at the restaurant,
trying to get everything ready.
We got customers, man.
Well, I mean, look,
this customer is ready to buy right now.
Every day my doors are closed,
I'm going farther in debt.
This guy's willing to buy everything.
What you think, Josh? About going up in the city like that?
You like the city.
Well, I feel like our boy Tickle's
asked us to do something for somebody
he feels like he trusts.
-He needs the money. -[Josh] We all need the money.
[Henry] All right. Let's roll with it then.
-Let's rock and roll. -Sounds good.
Sounds good to me.
[Henry] If it wasn't for Tickle,
I would never do anything like this, man.
I'm over here in the middle of the damn city.
[Josh] Tickle's asked us for a favor
to make a run into Roanoke, meet some folks,
and get all the liquor sold.
Tickle needs the money really bad right now.
He's got his restaurant in trouble. So...
we're gonna get it done.
[Henry] All right. Here we go, son.
We're getting a little closer here now.
You still got him on GPS?
[Josh] Yeah, we're in the right spot.
We pull in this place over here at Roanoke
that Tickle told us to go to,
and I don't like it.
-[Josh] You good? -[Henry] Straight back.
First thing I see is a couple signs.
No, uh, no, trespassing.
"Don't come beyond this point."
And it's a huge bridge there,
with lights running all underneath it
and it's-it's like we're sitting out in the broad daylight.
Cars running up and down the street.
I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
Listen, man, we've been here, what, ten minutes?
-[Josh] Yeah. -Call Tickle and see what the hell is going on.
Only ten minutes.
I know, but, man, I don't wanna sit here any longer.
Even though Tickle's one of our business partners
and we totally trust him 100%,
Henry is tripping balls,
-about having to go out here in the city... -[line ringing]
...and meet somebody that we don't know.
I mean, I don't understand why.
He's been to prison and wrote the book on it,
but, uh, it don't really bother me as much as it does him.
-[Tickle on phone] Hello. -[Josh] Hey, listen.
Henry's saying he's got his panties in the water
about frigging being in this freaking city here,
freaking down, loaded down like this.
He's a little bit nervous and...
Well, these people are 15 minutes late right now, so...
-Are you sure they're coming? -[Tickle] Yeah. They're coming.
I know this guy.
[Josh] It's all good. Just wondering.
[Tickle] Look, I've gotta have this money
or my restaurant's gonna shut down for good.
If he ain't here quick, then we're out of here.
[Tickle] He'll be right there.
-All right. -[Tickle] All right.
-And now here comes the train. -[Josh] Yeah.
[Henry] I don't think we're supposed to be here.
Don't like it at all.
I can't believe that Tickle's guy picked this spot.
He's got to know that it's going to be patrolled.
You know? It's a rough city.
Cops gonna come in and check stuff out.
[Josh] Yeah. All they gotta do is see us.
They'd be like, "What are they [bleep] doing?"
They're gonna search us.
-[Josh] We know they're after... -[bleep].
Well, that's probably them.
-[Henry] Right there. -[Josh] Oh, [bleep].
Oh, hell. All right, [bleep].
[Henry speaking]
[Josh] Spotlight.
That's damn law, man.
Police are yonder. I'm sitting here no longer.
You know, I'm thinking, okay, why don't we get the hell out of here?
Well, I look in the rearview mirror
and the car turns around.
And I know we're not gonna see lights coming back.
[Josh] Oh, hell.
It's the same car, too.
[Josh] They saw us.
No, no, no, no. He didn't either.
He went on.
[bleep]. Maybe we shouldn't have been here to start with.
I don't care about Tickle's guy anymore.
I don't care about Tickle's restaurant.
I'm out of here. I'm not gonna get caught
sitting over here in the middle of this city
for some guy that's 15, 20 minutes late.
I ain't waiting for him to come back.
I'll tell you that much right now.
[Jerry] Well, it's nice being at a still site.
You know the still is gonna be there when you get back.
We got a order of 14 gallons of our winter rum to fill.
So we're gonna mash in about six barrels
to make about 45 gallons.
You know, we've had a rough season.
Nothing but total chaos.
The henchmen are still getting stole.
Having to split our money three different ways,
we've got a lot of money to make up
for all the setbacks that we've been through this year.
[Jerry] See, this thing we'll just connect here
and that'll go to our water pump,
and that'll go into the barrel.
-[Mike] Exactly. -So let's go from here, less on the bottom.
Before we mash in, we've got to get our heating system
all hooked up so our mash can work out.
[Jerry] Hold my side.
-[Mike] All right. -[Jerry] Then I'll return-- Hold your side.
One of the most important things we've got to worry about today,
hanging this solar heater
is we gotta make sure we got the most sun exposure that we can get
throughout the whole entire day.
So we gotta find our east to west daytime exposure.
You kind of put it right in the middle.
[Mike] All right. You ready to hang this solar panel?
[Jerry] I am.
So we decided, you know, to hang our solar panel
and our water heater manifold
on the very corner of our barn.
Really, really close to our actual holding tank.
The shorter all of our water lines can be,
the less time it will take
for our water to cool off as it's circulating back.
[Richard] Here's our 60-40 alcohol mix.
[Jerry] You know, the next thing we got to do
is get this thing charged with our antifreeze.
As that radiator rises up in temperature,
a pump on the inside is going to kick on,
circulate a little bit of that fluid
into our water barrel.
As that water barrel starts to heat up,
our pump on the inside,
it's gonna be circulating that warm water
through each one of our mash barrels.
Well, now all we got to do is get the water barrel filled up.
[Mike] There we go. We got water, Richard.
You know, step one is done and took care of.
We got the solar panels, the mash barrels,
all the coil set in place.
It's ready to rock and roll.
All we got to do now is get her mashed in.
We got six buckets of brown sugar.
We got six buckets of maple syrup.
[Mike] That's what we gotta have.
Fire in the hole.
[Mike and Jerry] There we go.
[Mike] We can set it down now.
To make this winter run mash,
we're gonna put a five-gallon bucket of maple syrup in each barrel.
-Woo-hoo! -[Richard] Looky there, looky there.
A five-gallon bucket full of brown sugar.
[Jerry] You smell that?
[Richard] It smells good, buddy.
And then we'll fill a bucket of hot boiling water
with some cloves and cinnamon to go along.
Oh, my God, that smells so good.
With that cinnamon punch,
you're gonna automatically think,
"Oh, heck, this is fixing to be hot."
But then it just settles down
and you've got a good, comfortable drink.
[Jerry] That heater going in there?
Yes, indeed. That'll keep her warm, won't it, baby?
We've still got five more barrels left to mash in.
-Let me get one of them old blankets there. -[Richard] Yeah.
[Mike] But at the end, the sell here
is only 500 damn dollars apiece.
So I mean, come on, man.
This is gonna be a long night.
I got one more piece I gotta spot.
Oh. Right over there it is.
[cell phone ringing]
Never fails.
Hey, man, what's going on?
[Little Bill on phone] Did you see the news?
No, I've been working. I hadn't seen any news.
[Little Bill] Well, our buddy Cowboy Coward.
He passed away last night, buddy, in a car wreck.
What?
[Little Bill] Yeah, buddy. It happened last night.
He's no longer with us.
Dear Lord.
Man, now that's a kick in the gut this time of the morning.
[Little Bill] Well, I just called to let you know, buddy.
Al right, buddy, I appreciate it.
[Little Bill] All right. Bye.
[Digger] All right, man, bye.
That was a call about our old buddy, Cowboy Coward.
Probably one of the sweetest, kindest man
that I've ever had the opportunity to know.
He was a good friend to Burt Reynolds as well.
He was, uh, in the movie with Burt. Deliverance.
He was the guy that told Ned Beatty
he's got a pretty mouth.
But Cowboy was a total opposite
of what he portrayed in that movie.
He was, uh, he was quite a character.
He, uh, he got us access
to the Maggie Valley Ghost Town property.
What do you need me for?
-Uh... -Well,
we got some barrels we want to take up there
-and let them age. -And let them age?
We're gonna try to set it somewhere where it'd wobble around
like, you know, it was on the ocean.
And the wind blows up here, yeah?
Do you care to let us in up there and--
I'll let you in and let you out.
Hey, won't nobody know nothing.
Oh, yeah. Well, this is perfect.
Look how it's blowing here.
If it just moves around like this here during some wind,
-that's plenty. -Sure is.
[line ringing]
-[Mark on phone] Go ahead, Puss. -Hey.
I got some news that we wasn't looking...
we wasn't looking for,
and damn sure didn't wanna hear.
[Mark] Uh-oh.
Uh, Cowboy got killed yesterday evening.
[Mark] Oh, no.
Yeah. Uh, had a wreck.
[Mark] Oh, my God. That's so sad.
-Boy, he was a kind, kind soul. -[Digger] Yeah.
He was, in fact.
I guess you know what that means.
But we've got a little business we've got to tend to.
[Mark] Absolutely. Immediately too.
I'll see you in a little bit.
All right. Be careful.
-[Mark] All right. -[Digger] Bye.
[Digger exhaling deeply]
Hell, I ain't got much left in me after that news.
The perfect woman is definitely gonna have to happen at some point.
-She's gonna come, that's for sure. -[laughing]
Ms. Perfect don't exist. Neither does Mr. Perfect.
No, I'm Mr. Perfect for my miss forever.
-No. No, you ain't. -What do you mean?
Ain't none of us perfect.
No, I didn't say I was perfect.
I said I'm perfect for my miss forever.
-Is that right? -[Josh] Yeah.
"Oh, he's perfect." Can you hear her say that? "He's perfect."
Think about it. That makes sense, right?
It might if I didn't know you.
What do you mean?
[laughing]
What are you trying to say?
And I'm going to tell you, I'm getting nervous, man.
We've not made no money hardly this-this season.
[Jerry] That's for sure.
[Mike] But I feel like it's a great time
-to go ahead and bring up what we've been talking about. -[Jerry] Yeah.
[Mike] It seems like that we should be
doubling our profits, production,
the whole nine yards,
and we just have not done that.
Trust me. I feel you, too.
So, Richard, on that hand,
what we propose is,
you know, starting up for...
for next season is that maybe...
perhaps you get your own still.
We'll have two still sites running at the same time,
making double the amount of alcohol.
Maybe we can double the amount of profit.
[Richard] Mike and Jerry talking about
they've been having some side conversations.
We could have had these conversations together.
Hit the floor rolling next season
and start making some money.
Where do you propose I get a still from?
I mean, damn. I mean, go ask Mark and Digger.
-That's your buddies, you know. -[Richard] Wow.
No, no, no, no, no.
I mean, I don't like feeling like I'm ganged on right here.
You know, like y'all ganging up on me, man.
Don't mean that we're ganging up on you.
-We know you are. -[Mike] We brought you in on our team,
but you've done a daggone good job, man.
But it's hurt every one of us,
splitting our money three different ways.
It's just business.
It's nothing personal, whatsoever.
Mike, what more do I need to do, man?
It ain't about what more do you need to do?
It's about what we all need to do.
We need to create more alcohol.
That's why we're asking you
to go get a still and let's get it set up,
go to make some extra money.
[Richard] I mean, what more do I need to prove?
I've been in this game a while.
I've proved myself already.
What do-What do they expect?
That's some bull [bleep], man.
It is what it is.
No, man. It is what I said it is.
I'mma just go ahead on and do what I gotta do, man.
I'mma prove myself again.
Man. I can't believe this bull [bleep].
Well, Digger, it just breaks my heart about Cowboy.
Well, ain't that heartbreaking?
It's a shame to live 85 years,
and then that's the way you go out.
You know what that put me to thinking?
And I'd almost forgot about it.
We lost our access
to that last barrel of liquor
that we've got at Ghost Town.
Sadly, when Digger and I received the news
that we had lost Cowboy,
we lost the access we had
to the old Ghost Town theme park.
But we have still had a barrel
of the mountain aging whiskey in Ghost Town.
This liquor's been up there swinging on that mountain.
Two years it's been up there?
It's gotta be "off the chart" good.
It's equal to 20 damn years
of static aging in a building.
We spent a lot of time with that whiskey,
and getting it up our end of that old ride
and making it function.
We gotta fetch it.
[Digger] Yep.
You know, Daniel helped us put it there.
He knows where it's at.
[Digger] Yeah. We get on the horn to him,
we get him to go get that and bring it to us.
So we got to go immediately,
before things change drastically
and get that whiskey.
[line ringing]
-[Daniel on phone] Hello. -[Digger] Hey, old head.
I reckon you can do me and Mark a little solid favor.
[Daniel] There ain't no doubt. What do you need?
Ain't real big, but you'll need to get Tater to help you.
Here's what we need.
[Mark] Mountain Legacy Corn Whiskey.
Whoo!
Ain't it been good out here?
Just me and you, like the old days.
We want to do something
that will chisel our name
in the same stone
as some of the best whiskey makers in the world.
That's what we're looking for.
[Mark] That's what we want.
[Digger] We're making the finest run of liquor
that the backwoods has ever seen.
I just ain't got no words for this.
$90 a gallon.
Ninety a gallon?
My back's against the wall right here with my restaurant.
If I don't get the cash money
to open this place back up,
we're sunk.
There's cops all over the place here.
[Tickle] They say hiding in plain sight is the way to go...
I got some good brandy right here.
$1.25 a gallon.
...but this could go down in a bad way real fast.
[Richard] You see that filling in there?
King cake moonshine?
That's dollar bills to me.
[Mike and Jerry shrieking]
[laughing]
Tube start expanding, it's dripping.
We're filling up buckets.
That's Mardi Gras in a jar.
We're gonna be able to really make some money with this.
[Mike] Jerry?
[Jerry] Where the hell's the liquor at?
[Mike] There's only one other damn person
who's got the key to this lock
and that's Richard Landry.
He's had enough.