[narrator] This time on Moonshiners...
We might very well be on a little lead on our liquor.
Where?
And I'm either gonna get my liquor back or
I'm gonna get somebody's ass for it.
Kim, this is your legacy right here.
Now we're gonna switch gears and go into something else?
I'm just gonna brush the bees off.
I'm thinking, "Oh boy, I don't know. Here we go."
I think there's one in my suit kit.
When you go messing with bees...
Can't see nothing.
...you're gonna get stung.
It's almost like attack mode.
I can see Mark and Huck starting around.
What in the hell they doing?
You gotta have a fast bullet to set it off.
It's gonna blow their ass to Kingdom Come.
[gunshot]
[man] This is how we make the moonshine.
Hey, Mark, get down there!
Sail Cam. See him over.
Sends it straight to their phone.
But I'll tell you something,
we're gonna have to send them a message.
That's why we do it in the backwoods.
We're gonna put them out of here.
Let's do it quick.
[narrator] In Graham County, North Carolina,
after moonshiners, Mike and Jerry
broke an unspoken rule
by setting up a new operation
on the long standing turf of another liquor man.
Traditional shiners, Mark and Huck
take backwoods justice into their own hands.
I worked a lot with Mike
a couple of seasons, you know,
I showed him a lot of tricks.
[Huck] Make you a bull's eye.
[Huck] Ain't gonna happen.
[Huck] We gotta move quick.
[Mike] I mean, how in the world would Mark Rogers find our still site?
He had to be looking for it.
When me and Jerry's on our way to the still site,
I could see Mark and Huck stirring around
I don't know what these guys are up to.
They're bending down, doing something.
What in the hell are they doing?
They look like they're fitting with the mash barrels.
I mean, they keep crouching around,
going around the dam, mash barrels.
[Huck] I tell you what?
There will be nothing left of that pot.
We're gonna use a lot of dynamite on this right here.
Because, you know, we just don't want to kind of dent it up.
We want to destroy it.
Yeah, where we gonna put it?
Over here?
12 sticks.
[Huck] Exactly. Let's go.
It'll be big.
He just flipped us the bird, right in front of the camera.
So he knows we're watching.
Obviously.
I don't know what they're doing here,
but we need to get there and get there in a hurry right now.
[Jerry] We'll catch his ass and that's what we're gonna do.
[Mike] We need to get there as fast as possible.
We got to put a stop to this.
We ain't got much time to get there.
I mean, burn it off for real.
Maybe they'll still be there when we pull up.
[Huck] I'll tell you what, 12 sticks.
Let's get on down the creek.
[Huck] Let's get on down the creek.
[gunshot]
[explosion]
[Huck] It's over.
[country music playing]
[Digger] Guys, we've got some video footage to look at.
Hot dogs.
Yes, get in here in the shade where we can see it.
[narrator] In Cocke County, Tennessee,
after capturing security footage
of a mysterious thief
who returned to their barrelhouse to siphon more liquor.
Mark and Digger waste no time
seeking out anyone who might recognize the culprit.
Oh, there he is.
Yep.
This guy has stolen a total of about $70,000 worth
of our favorite gallons of liquor,
and we want it back.
[Amanda] That looks like an old man.
[Mark] And it looks like a pretty good sized gentleman.
[Digger] Those cameras at the stash house where we kept our barrels
gave me an alert.
And we've got images and videos of our whiskey thief.
Can you get the license plate at all?
-No. -Can't see a thing.
So we got to get it back.
But we got to be careful doing it.
Going to find folks we can trust
and let them know what's going on.
Kelly, you know who to tell.
Somebody out there is selling good quality aged liquor.
Right now they're gonna stand out like a fart in church.
Yes, they will.
We're going to put the word out
to people we know
to see if we can get any feelers
about someone selling barrel aged whiskey.
I mean, we've got to start on this.
We've got another problem to deal with here, right?
-Oh, yeah. -Oh, yeah.
You guys are here right in the nick of time.
We've got a stalled fermentation
baked goods mash that's struggling to work off.
We've got to figure out an answer for that.
I know what's going on here.
[Amanda] Yes. Our chocolate rye espresso cookie is doing pretty good.
This is what we would have liked them all to look like.
But unfortunately...
[Mark] Oh, rut roll raggy.
What's all this yellow stuff floating on top of it?
[Amanda] That is the butter.
-That is a ton of butter. -[Amanda] Yeah.
You know, the ones that had just bread and cookies in them,
they're doing wonderful.
But the ones that had the crescent rolls
and those big croissant loafs,
they're dead as last year's calendars.
[Amanda] Seeing this butter,
I went back and called my sister
and asked her how much butter is in the pastries.
She says it's like 20-25 % butter.
So my math is there's about £50 of butter in each of these totes right now.
And I think it's so much pressure.
The yeast get crushed.
[Digger] Yeast, they're fragile.
Their cell walls are thinner than a human hair by about 10 times.
Any pressure that builds up on top,
it puts pressure on that solution.
And they end up drowning in their own liquid
they were thriving off of.
Well, the one thing we can do,
we've got to dip all this butter off the top.
And then stir it up good and get it re-oxygenated
to help that yeast kick off again.
[Mark] Here. This thing here might work that roller dipper thing.
-[Kelly] Yeah, them lids are working just fine. -[Mark] Here.
[Mark] You know what?
I think that we could dip it off and strain it and save it.
And I could eat it on biscuits.
[Digger] You can have at it.
[Kelly] I don't know that.
[Amanda] Oh my God, this is gonna be horrible.
There is such a thing as too much butter.
[Mark] Skimming this butter off of this mash,
it's nasty, it's greasy,
but it has to be done.
We don't got too much time invested in it now
to not see it through.
[Kelly] Yeah, we're getting to where it's gonna be able to breathe.
[Mark] God almighty!
[Amanda] That's looking a lot better.
[Mark] I think we've got all that we're going to get.
But there's got to be some way to keep it stirred
and keep it agitated
so that it don't form on the top of it again.
[Kelly] Well, I can take an air compressor
and we can make a giant aquarium pump
and have it pumped into every one of these
and just leave it to sit in here and not worry about it.
That's a good idea.
So that's pretty much what we're going to do here,
is making a big old aquarium pump,
and we're gonna aerate this
where the yeast will thrive a little better.
[Mark] When we get the air ready,
we'll be able to pump air into all four totes at the same time.
Kelly's got a little small air compressor
and he's got fittings,
we run pex lines to each of these totes...
[Kelly] Oh, yeah.
...drill some holes in them, hook them up to the air compressor.
It's a quick plumbing job, but I think it's enough
to get the air turning in all of these.
[Mark] Count us down, Amanda.
All right. Ready?
One, two, three.
-[Digger] I hear it. -[Kelly] There you go.
[Amanda] Works.
Well done, guys.
[Mark] Outstanding, Kelly.
They're bubbling, keeping the butter dispersed.
You know, there's no reason now, for this not to take off.
Good luck, yeast babies.
[slow country music playing]
This is Howard.
[Howard] What do you got going on here, Tim?
You're in the delivery business now, huh?
No, I'm actually bringing it back.
Where you bringing it back from?
I'm bringing it back from the liquor store.
It ain't selling.
[narrator] In Culpeper County, Virginia,
longtime Shiner turned legal distiller Tim Smith
is reckoning with a mounting surplus of unsold shine.
You know, it's been over 10 years I've been on the legal market,
-Yeah. -and when I first started, I couldn't feel that pipeline.
-I remember. -You know,
I had too many orders and I couldn't do the production.
Now, nobody wants this.
It's the trend of people.
Maybe the next generation of people has come along
and they want something else.
So we're going to regroup.
You know, the generation has changed in 10 years.
Because think about it if you talked to someone who was today
21 years old of drinking age,
10 years ago, that person was 11.
They don't really care whether it was illegal or legal,
and it doesn't have to be high proof.
But I mean, Tim, this is your legacy right here.
You crawled out of the woods.
Your father's recipe to put this on the shelves and
and now you're pulling all this product
and gonna switch gears and go into something else?
Yeah. I mean, it ain't selling.
Well, you know, in the backwoods, you gotta adapt.
You gotta overcome.
You know, you gotta pull a rabbit out of the hat.
You gotta do something to make it happen.
So right now, same deal.
We're gonna take this moonshine.
We gotta turn it into some kind of flavor
that's gonna, you know, pop.
Well, you know right now, my legacy on the line right here,
I hate to say it, but I'm in like survival mode here.
I've got to get down with it.
I gotta come up with a new flavor.
If not, you know what's gonna happen.
I would be out of business.
-Let me help you unload it and let's get to thinking. -All right.
[Tim] Come on out.
Last boxes, man, let's get these boxes inside.
Well, you know, I'm pulling the moonshine off the shelf,
and I'm thinking about, you know,
this is my whole life, really.
I mean, I'm current on tradition from my dad of making moonshine.
I went legal 10 years ago.
And if this stuff is not selling,
I can't just sit it on the shelf.
We're in business.
We've got to make money.
We've got to do something different.
You know what I think we ought to do now?
Get us a sip?
I think we ought to go to the liquor store,
find out what it's selling, you know?
What are these people buying that they love so much?
-[chuckles] -You know, their evaluation,
get some data right here.
You mean to tell me I get to ride with you
to liquor stores for you to buy liquor for me to sample?
Something like that.
Well, let's get in this truck
-probably go see what the competition's got brewing. -Yeah.
[Tim] So I'm gonna lose the ground I got,
and I want to come out with something bigger.
We gotta move this stuff and if it's not moving,
we've got to come up with something that will move.
I'm not gonna lose.
[Mike] Holy cow!
[Jerry] I can't believe this.
Well, by God, you better believe it, because there it is.
[Jerry] Are you kidding me?
[Mike] No, I ain't kidding.
[Jerry] There's no justice.
[Mike] Look at the damn still.
A total loss there, for sure.
Oh my God, look,
there's a can down here in the creek.
-[Mike grunts] -[metal clanks]
Holy cow.
It may be the only damn port we can use.
But it's still jacked up pretty good.
Bastards!
You know, we tried to get here as quick as possible,
but we got here just a minute too late.
Everything we've got is sabotaged.
It's gone, it's blowed up, and I don't understand why.
God!
[Mike groans]
He's done messed with the wrong damn one, man.
He just signed his own damn death warrant.
I promise you.
I don't understand why Mark Rogers would do this to me.
I'm hurt over it.
I'm mad over it, and I'm damn well confused over it.
[Jerry] What are we gonna do now, Mike?
I mean, I thought this was the damn best location we've ever had.
Yeah.
How do you think he found us so damn easy?
[Mike] I don't know.
[Mike] This freaking mash ain't no good.
It's got crap all in it.
Well, I'll tell you what.
We're gonna have to get our damn heads together
and figure out what we're gonna do.
First off, go cool down and think about it.
We're gonna premeditate this damn plan.
-You understand me? -All right.
I can be really hotheaded sometimes.
But over the years I have learned to back away
and think before I act.
Grab that damn jar of yeast. That's all we got left.
Pretty much we can start a barrel with that.
Yeah. Let's get out of here, man.
[Mike] Mark Rogers, we're coming for your ass, buddy.
[instrumental music playing]
-[Amanda] I can't wait to see what these are doing. -[Kelly] Mm-hmm.
If it'll just work off in a timely manner so we can get it
to the woods and get it run.
We have six totes of these baked goods mash,
and four of these matches have totally sold out.
But we built an aeration system
and we scooped off loads of butter
and re pitched the yeast.
So I just know that we've made a difference.
It's such a relief to see it.
Finally doing its thing.
I see fermentation.
I see yeast activity,
carbon dioxide coming out.
These are exactly all the signs I'm looking for.
They look perfect.
These agitator things, I think that kept the butter off the top
long enough for it to...
-It's obviously working like hell. -get back to working, yeah.
[Amanda] We've since turned off the aeration system.
We're just gonna let the yeast do its thing,
because now that there's active fermentation,
it's actually moving around enough in the tote
to agitate itself,
move that butter around,
and it doesn't need any more help from us.
[car door opens]
[Kelly] Here comes the Directors.
[Mark] What's up, guys?
-Howdy. -Have we got fermentation?
Yes. We've got the blueberries back and going.
Outstanding job, guys.
Yes, and thank God we have some cinnamon buns we'll be making pretty soon.
[Kelly] Lemon and Monroe.
[Amanda] That's what I'm excited about.
So here we go.
We got all six totes of mash running.
We're gonna see what it's gonna taste like after all.
Here in about five, six days,
we should have some alcohol ready to cook off.
-[cell phone vibrating] -Smell how good it smells.
-I mean, that smells just like a cinnamon roll. -It smells like the bakery.
I gotta take these guys. I'll be right back.
-Yellow. -Oh, oh. That ain't good.
[speaking indistinctly on phone]
Yeah.
[speaking indistinctly on phone]
No kidding.
Yep, that old barrel aged red liquor.
That's probably ours.
Ain't no many people got it out there.
All right.
We'll look at it and double check it, make sure.
All right, man, I appreciate it.
Well,
we might very well be on a little lead on our liquor.
Really.
We got a guy that said he was at a little gathering
the other night out in the field
and they had a little bonfire
and some cat showed up with a jar of liquor
and passed it around talking about how good it was.
And if they liked it, he could get 'em some more of it.
-That's aged liquor? -Barrel aged red liquor.
He got the rest of that jar from the guy.
Okay.
He wants us to come meet him and look at it and taste it
and see if we can figure out if it's ours or not.
Oh hell, yeah, that's a good start.
Hopefully, in addition to our mash coming alive,
we're fixing to catch us a liquor thief.
I mean, this could be a really good day all the way around.
Good job on this, guys.
[Digger] Thanks. We appreciate the hard work.
It's paid off.
Now let's go get some of our liquor back.
You know, of the firm opinion
I'm either going to get my liquor back
or I'm gonna get the money for it,
or I'm gonna get somebody's ass for it
one way or the other.
[Mark] If this is our whiskey, then we're coming for it.
[Tim] Now let's get in there and see what flavors are selling
and what people are buying.
[Howard] What jumps out.
[Tim] I selected this liquor store, 'cause
I have a great relationship with this owner.
They've been buying from me for, like ten years,
and I'm thinking they can tell me what's selling.
So that way I can figure out where I can go next
and what the next product I need to be making.
Howard, it's got a whiskey section over here.
Because whiskey is where it's at nowadays, man.
Yeah.
I've been trending on what my dad put out.
I mean, what he put out, that's what I've been putting out.
But right now, things are changing.
I mean, look, we've got major brands here.
These are major brands and most
all of them have some kind of flavors.
I mean, look, you've got apples, you've got peaches,
you've got oranges, strawberries.
When I make a change,
and when I come out with a brand, it's gotta hit.
'Cause you've got one shot.
Yeah. I just don't have unlimited funds like this.
Hey, Danny.
Hey, Tim. How are you?
All right. Good, good.
What brings you in today?
We've been seeing that my moonshine sales is not really selling.
And we're noticing that whiskey is turning into flavored whiskey now.
Oh, yeah. The last four or five years,
every major distillery has went to flavor.
-I'm looking at it. Yeah. -[Danny] Yeah.
Vanilla fire, apple, peach, honey, orange.
I just can't put it in my head,
I got some old school vanilla whiskey?
-I know... -You know, chocolate whiskey?
Is this like the young generation, I guess?
I'd say most of the people, the 25-year-olds,
they want that flavor now.
I mean, the younger people don't seem like they like the strong stuff.
But I need to know what flavor is really selling the most,
'cause I don't have a budget like these guys.
These guys got crazy money.
Overall, I would say the honey flavor sells the best.
[Tim] Honey flavor?
Yes.
Honey is the number one flavored whiskey going off the shelf.
There's major brands out there
and each one of them got 10 different flavors out there.
Everyone's trying to find out what's it,
but Danny's telling me what's it.
Honey is what's it.
Tim, it's obvious. I think we know what we need.
Some honey.
-Damn right, we need some honey. -All right.
You make it, we'll buy it.
Okay. All right. That'll work.
If honey is what consumers are buying,
then I'm gonna have to find out
who is producing the best honey in this country.
So I can put the best flavored honey whiskey
out there on the shelf and beat all the competition.
[Tim] Honey is where the money is at.
[Howard] I like it.
[Rogers] Check our mags, Sheriff Huck.
[Huck] Smells good.
[Rogers] It ought to be ready.
-Cap drought. -He's ready to roll boys.
This is the first time being back in still flight.
[Huck] I'm gonna build a fire.
[Huck] This'll keep it from getting fogged up on us.
I've been trying to figure if they're gonna try to do
anything to my tush, you know,
but it seems pretty calm right now.
[Rogers] I believe I can light her.
And I hope that's the way it goes.
[sighs]
[Huck] All right. We're good.
[grunts]
We got to cap her off and get her sealed up.
-There we go. Hold it. Hold it. -[straining] There we go.
That's the thing about these caps.
You got them fixed right, you don't have to use much.
[Huck] It worked just like it did the last go around.
Yeah.
[Huck] Let's just hurry up and wait, eh?
[sighs and groans]
-Power cutting out down here. -Damn, it's hot, son.
[Huck laughs]
What do you think about old Mikey boy?
Well, Maybe if he's smart, he carried his ice back to Mississippi.
I hope it's over.
No hard feelings.
As long as he don't come back on my side of the hill.
Oh, any day, any day.
Blowed it well and then vaporized it that thing.
If I don't give somebody the message right there, mate,
all I can figure is they just want to fight.
All right, we're running.
Well, if you keep that in check,
I can slow that thing down a little bit.
Whoo! That's one hot bugger.
[Huck] He'll thaw his heads out.
-That's slowing it down, Mark. -Yeah.
That's why you run liquor right there.
Let's take this little taste to see if it's any count or not.
It'll be hard there.
[Huck] Oh, I know. You don't want to swallow much of it.
-[Huck chuckles] -Well, burn me out.
-Ooh! -[Rogers coughs]
That's good.
I doubt it would be.
You know it.
[laughter]
I doubt it would be.
[Rogers] We've got our first run made right here now.
And everybody's done drunk up every bit of liquor all winter they've had.
[Huck] It'll go and wind her up.
[Rogers] No, guaranteed.
They're gonna be thirsty and wanting a bunch more.
Me and Huck's got a lot of liquor to make.
We're just gonna get on it and make it.
That's all I know.
[Huck] I'm ready.
[Huck groans]
I think we've got our territory back.
[Huck] How about that till now?
[Rogers] Well, it better be.
[instrumental music playing]
[Mark] Two totes of cinnamon roll moonshine ready to run, Amanda.
[Amanda] I know it's gonna make a lot of good liquor.
These are gonna be our first runs of the season.
We haven't been back to our still site in quite some time.
It's gonna be good to get back there
and make sure everything's okay.
Hopefully, it's all just how we left it.
Well, let's see how bad a shape we're in.
Not too shabby.
We made several different kinds of mash
out of all the pastries that we got from the bakery,
but the one I'm most excited about is the cinnamon roll.
Does that just not sound delicious?
Who wouldn't want to drink that?
[Kelly] I'm actually really surprised.
Everything looks pretty good.
We've got our stainless steel pot.
This thing still looks like it's sitting good.
[Amanda] I don't think it's buds at all.
It'll be perfect for these baked goods.
Yeah.
It's super functional for these exact recipes
we're about to use it for.
This stainless steel pot
is our stripping still at our still site.
It's perfect for doing large runs
of things that have fats or butter in there.
So we can strip it out
and retain all that good flavor
and get it out of the stripping run
and re-distill it in our copper pot still.
[Kelly] Let's pump some of this beautiful cinnamon bun mash we've got.
Ready when you are.
[Amanda] It smells like a bakery in here.
I mean, I just hope it carries that flavor over.
I know. That's the plan.
My goal is to literally take that cinnamon roll
and put it in a jar.
I want there to be no question what went into this mash.
100% cinnamon bun shine is what we're going for.
All right, Salamander.
Light that bad boy up.
[muffled whoosh]
[Amanda] Whoo!
Every time I light this burner, it just feels so good
to turn the still back on
and get it back to working again.
I mean, there's just no feeling like that in the world.
Just gotta get the hose hooked up to the worm.
Cold water coming from the creek coming up.
It's nice to have that running all the way up here.
This is like the best property ever.
Oh yeah, this is perfect.
I guess we need to work on this deal
while we're waiting on that to run, don't we?
Yeah. It'll help us kill time while this is heating up.
[Kelly] Yeah.
[Amanda] I know Mark and Digger have high hopes for this recipe,
so we gotta knock it out of the park.
We will.
I always take my work very seriously.
But I feel a lot of pressure for this run to make it perfect.
I talked a good game, so I better deliver.
[Kelly] By time we get this done,
we should be about ready to have some
cinnamon bun moonshine.
You know it. I got the bucket ready.
It should be getting hot here pretty soon.
-We're getting there. -Thump keg, hot yet?
It's getting the thump keg, yeah.
The anticipation is killing me.
It is dripping.
It's pushing the first drips.
We did it. We got liquor.
Pretty strong smelling like cinnamon.
That's what I'm getting.
It's just the heads though right now, I mean.
Yeah.
[Amanda] To be honest, a little nervous.
Sometimes in the beginning of your run,
some really funky aroma and flavors
can come out in that head's portion
and you know, I try not to taste this at all
because it will throw off your palate
and it will really get you confused and worried.
But right away, I can kind of sense
that there may be a little bit too much cinnamon.
Well, about 10 gallons in, we'll taste it.
I know.
But we're trying to make cinnamon bun, not fireball.
Yeah.
I'm just hoping that this is
something weird that's going on with my heads.
And once I get down to my hearts,
it'll be like the perfect balance.
[Kelly] Amen to that.
And there's full. What do you think?
Let's pour it in the tote over there.
Yeah.
[Kelly] All right.
[Amanda] Money in the bank.
[Kelly] I love it.
You wanna try to taste it and see what we've got now?
Yeah.
Now we can actually make a good judgment.
There's no going back from here.
Like what we have is what we've got.
So I really, really hope
that this is better than my worst fears.
Moment of truth.
Oh!
Moment of truth.
Oh!
[Kelly] I don't think I need to taste it.
Your face says it all.
That's gonna light you up.
I'm getting a lot of cinnamon.
It's overwhelming everything.
That weird thing that cinnamon does when you distill it, it just constantly...
We're concentrating everything.
And we concentrated the cinnamon.
But we eliminated all that sweetness like
all the sweetness is gone.
I'm gonna fire it right here.
Yeah.
You know, this cinnamon, It's just overpowering.
It'll slap you right in the face.
It should taste like icing.
And butter and pastry dough and like brown sugar
and then cinnamon.
Not like cinnamon.
And my worst fears are coming to reality.
Like, I am not picking up any of the pastry notes.
[Kelly] How do you get rid of the cinnamon?
Like in my mind, I don't know if we can fix it.
Like scientifically, I don't know how to get cinnamon out.
I don't think you can distill it out of it.
But I just know
Mark and Digger had really high hopes for the cinnamon bun moonshine.
And this cannot be what we bring them.
This cannot be a fail.
I agree.
One way or another, we have to correct this somehow.
So, Tim, this lady has the best honey in the world?
Well, the best honeys, but also,
you know, we need to get the correct honey.
And that's why we come all the way to Connecticut.
Because this lady is
one of the top honey sommeliers
in the whole world.
But if I'm gonna add a honey to the Climax whiskey,
you know, I want to have the best.
So hopefully she's got one that's gonna match and merge
so I can have the top shelf
honey flavored whiskey out here.
You just don't want to just put honey,
because anybody can say, "Well, we use honey,"
but what kind of honey?
So if I have to drive 500 miles, I drive 500 miles.
Whatever it takes to get what I need to beat the competition.
Well, it says Red Bee, right there on the door, man.
This might be the 'bees'iness.
[Tim] Let's go in and see what's going on.
-Marina, hello. -Hi.
Tim Smith. We talked on the phone.
Yeah. Welcome.
I brought you a little gift, but,
you know, we come to find out about honey.
Well, you came to the right place.
-People think all honey is the same. -Hmm-hmm.
So when bees visit various flowers,
they make honey from the specific nectar.
So it is kind of regional, just like moonshine.
-Yeah. -People make moonshine different regions
because of what's available.
Exactly. Same thing with honey.
Now I want to take you out to the apiary
-and show you how the bees make honey. -Okay.
This is what it's all about,
you know, going to the source.
Now all we gotta do is gear up
because I don't wanna get bee stung.
Howard can get stung all he wants to.
I'm planning on going home today.
[Tim] All right, let's do it then.
[Marina] So we'll check out this hive with the most bees on it.
And we give them a little puff.
There's a lot of bees in here.
-I see. -They're getting excited in there.
[Marina] So now we're gonna slowly crack it.
Okay. Look at that.
[Tim] Marina, you know, she works with these bees,
so she automatically takes the top off.
She don't have no gloves on.
Wow, that thing's heavy.
That's a frame of honey. Look at that.
[Howard] That one's ready to harvest, right?
[Marina] This is ready to harvest.
[Tim] She pulls the frame out
and it is loaded with honey.
It's like ten pounds of honey on there.
Gorgeous. The two bottom boxes are what we call the nest,
and that's where the queen lays her eggs.
[Tim] See, this is a worker bee. That's a little girl.
[Tim] If you just kill one or two of them
and they're gonna tell everybody else you just killed me.
When you go messing with bees,
the old saying is, " You're gonna get stung. "
Easy how you tell me to put my stuff.
-I feel like the beekeeper. I am one. -Really?
This is my jam, buddy.
I mean, look at this. The bees are flying all around.
You think, you know why they're not nervous,
are they intimidated? Because I'm here.
Howard, he thinks he's a bee whisperer.
-And them bees love you. -And my calming voice.
I ain't gonna lie. I found that I'm one with the bees.
I mean, I am the bee whisperer.
I'm just gonna gently brush the bees off.
You know, I'm thinking, "Oh boy, I don't know. Here we go."
-Would you hold that? -[Howard] Yes, ma'am. I would love to.
I'm getting a little bit excited over you, Howard.
So we'll have to just take it away quickly.
Because you know these bees,
once they recognize that you are taking that tray of honey away
that we've been working on all winter,
it's almost like attack mode.
[Howard] They're coming my way.
[Tim] There's one on you right there, Howard.
[Howard] I think there's one in my suit, Tim.
Howard, let me smoke you. They're everywhere.
They all love you back and everything.
What Tim does, he starts smoking me out.
I don't think the smoke's helping.
-Trying to get it off of you. -I can see 'em right there.
[Howard] I can't see nothing.
My glasses fall out. Now I'm blind.
[Marina] We're good.
[Howard] All right. God bless that. Let's get out of here.
-The sooner I get undressed and be free of my bees. -[Marina laughs]
All right, let's go. Off to the honey house.
Howard, he can thank me later for that
because I feel like I probably did a little bit of saving there.
What's going on here now?
I'm gonna show you how we cut honeycomb.
We've got this frame of honey out,
and we need to, like, taste it raw right now, fresh.
So this is beautiful, fresh honey from the hive.
It's just perfect and gorgeous.
So you can just take a little piece.
Lip smacking.
I mean, this is liquid gold, right?
Oh wow, It's still warm from the bee's body.
[Tim] That's about as fresh as you can get.
It's kind of like the moonshine,
when you're making moonshine at the still and it comes out.
-Hmm-hmm. -This honey is wonderful.
Nothing like I've ever tasted before.
But we've got a lot of choices here.
So I've got to taste more honey,
and I want to know what honey is gonna pair with my Climax moonshine.
-That's fresh too. -Never gets old, seeing a frame of honey.
-Hmm-hmm. -I know I love it.
[Digger] Well, hopefully, this is our liquor Josh got.
He's pretty positive that it is.
You know, ever since we found out that our liquor was stolen,
we've been putting feelers out in all directions,
trying to find somebody that knows who it is.
And this is the best lead we've got so far.
So we're gonna head out to smell and taste this liquor
and find out if it's ours or not.
[Mark] What did he tell you? He got it out now.
Josh said that some cat was...
passing jar of liquor around this bonfire
he went to the other night.
And he bought that half a jar off that guy.
So he's got a little bit for us to taste.
And I think I'll know it when I taste it, don't you?
[Digger] I feel pretty positive I will.
And if it's ours, I want to know where the rest of it is at.
Exactly.
You know, we've been selling liquor to Josh for a long time.
And he knows what it's like and,
if he's got information,
it will be bonafide information,
but we don't have no way of knowing that
until we actually taste it.
What are you doing, Big time?
Looking for yous, boys.
-Here we are. -What's up, big man?
-How you doing? -I'm doing good.
-You may be able to help us here, I hope. -I'm hoping.
[Digger] Let's get in here and give it a little once over.
It looks familiar, don't it?
It do, in fact.
I'll fix us up a little meal right here.
You like deer meat, don't you?
-Oh yeah, I eat meat. -Well, good.
Well, most people, they go to the grocery store,
everything they eat, everything they need,
they got to go there to get it.
But me and Huck don't.
Squash, cucumbers,
tomatoes, onions,
I raise and kill everything that I need.
This might be the worst meal we ever eat,
but I think it looks pretty good to me right now.
I'm getting hungry.
[Rogers] That old pan right there kept me alive a lot of years.
You ready to eat?
[Rogers laughs] [Huck whistles]
Yeah, that's hot.
That smells good. We will see.
That's good. Hmm-hmm.
What you gonna call this meal right here?
[Huck] We call it a goulash.
Mark's famous goulash.
I just don't have that as anything.
[Digger] Let's give it a little once over.
[Mark] Digger tastes the liquor first,
he smells it,
hands the jar to me.
And you know, I gotta say it's real familiar.
I'm not a rocket scientist,
but the second that I smelled and tasted this liquor,
I knew it was ours.
Tennessee whiskey.
There ain't no liquor in the county
that finishes off that sweet other than ours.
That's definitely a jar of that liquor that's been stolen.
I figured.
[Josh] Usually when they've got something, it's always clear.
It's not... never aged.
So what remains now is for us to do a little backtracking
and see the path that this jar took
getting to this bonfire last night.
Where was this party at?
[Josh] It was at a friend of mine's house
off of Jones Cove Road.
Then this other guy named Jeff brought this.
It was a younger guy that had that jar of liquor.
A younger guy, but he said he bought it from an old timer.
Oh.
He had just bought this junk.
He had just bought it that day.
And that's what we've been looking for is an old timer.
And that old timer's probably gone stole our damn liquor.
All we know about the guy
that took the liquor is he's a pretty good sized man.
Got a little age on him.
He's driving a extended cab,
a pickup truck, a white one.
But other than that, we don't know anything about him.
Would you be willing to reach out
and see if you can maybe line up with this guy to buy more?
I'll get in touch with him and see what I can do.
Yeah. See if he just puts you in touch
with whoever he got it from.
Okay.
So the plan is if Josh can find a way back to the old man
that this guy got the liquor off of
and he can set up his own buy,
then we can be waiting in the weeds somewhere,
and we can follow the guy back to wherever he's got our liquor heads.
You don't know how much we appreciate this.
You may have saved us a lot of money,
and we won't forget it.
If the guy that shows up fits the description that we have.
We know we're in Pineapple Town.
[Mark] You ain't gonna have to buy no liquor for a while if we get it back.
[Josh] That sounds great.
[bee buzzes]
You know, I can see the marriage between
the moonshine world and the honey world.
And I think that this is gonna be pretty epic, right?
Yeah. I'm very excited to introduce you
to seven different honeys that I handpicked.
[Howard] I've never seen no colors of honey like this in my entire life.
My idea of honey is in a plastic beer bottle.
And I grew up on that, and that's delicious to me.
So I'm really looking forward to getting my socks knocked off here.
Howard and I, we came over to Connecticut to meet Marina.
You know, Marina is a honey sommelier,
she's like a PHD in honey.
This is what we need.
We need to get educated.
Marina, she has set up a tasting table for me and Howard.
So we need to go down the line here.
We need to find out which one is gonna pair with my Climax moonshine.
I want to learn as much as I can about the honey,
because if I got the best moonshine and I got the best honey,
if I can merge those together,
and then I think I would be above the rest.
I just got to move up.
-Yeah. -I'm gonna up my game.
Up your game. We're gonna do that today.
So basically what we do is
we take the spoon and we smear it.
And the more that you move the molecules around,
you're gonna be amazed at what you smell.
Our nose is where we get the flavor.
Thanks Tim.
I am getting like a lime, lemon...
Like a savory.
Yes, it's delicious.
It is truly like a wine tasting here,
a wine pairing of some sort.
I've never seen nothing like this before in my life.
So this honey, it's crystallized.
I would have never guessed this was honey.
-Yeah. -Right?
This is true clover.
You know, commercial honey, that you see in the store,
they're usually blends.
So they maybe take a little clover
a little bit of something else,
and sometimes they heat it.
So this is buckwheat honey.
[Howard] It's beautiful on the glass.
I mean, the look of it, I like it.
Yeah, so I'm gonna let you smell that.
Very complex.
It's got a lot of flavor in it.
It's not just sweet.
It's staying on my palate.
It's staying there. It's not going away.
I think we should take you know, the buckwheat.
We'll put in a little sipping cup,
we mix it with my moonshine.
The buckwheat honey at the end,
I kind of grew up myself tasting that style of honey,
so it kind of hit home.
Let's put some honey in the moonshine.
Let's mix it up and let's drink it right now.
I mean, I'm smelling the honey, you know.
Wow.
It is really buttery,
smooth, rich. Rich flavor.
-Really good. -[Howard] I love it.
I'm getting now a little bit of the coffee bean
-and a little bit... -I think it brings it out.
Wow. This is something special.
There's a little chocolate.
I'm picking up all of that.
[Tim] This has got to be the right honey.
I mean, it tastes good.
This pairing, excellent.
We're gonna have something a little bit
above the rest of the honey that's on the shelf.
Well, you know, me and Howard, we drove all the way up here to Connecticut,
but it paid off because
we got something we can work with.
With your honey and with my moonshine,
we're gonna make something to go on the top shelf.
I think you chose the right honey.
Marina, you know, it's been great.
The experience and the knowledge that you taught us.
But right now, I need a bucket of that buckwheat
to take it back to Virginia
so we can start making this honey moonshine.
Howard, get that bucket of honey.
We'll follow you.
For Marina, she set us up with a big bucket of buckwheat honey.
Let's put it in the back of the truck, Howard.
And I think this is what's gonna pair well, with the Climax moonshine.
We gotta get back to Virginia and get to work.
[Howard] If I stay here any longer, I'll eat all this honey.
-[Tim] And you'll have diabetic shock. -[Howard] Go on, have some.
There you go.
I believe that's all we've got.
We've got a deal with this guy in Philadelphia,
and we're going to be shipping him about
200 gallons of liquor every week.
This run has got to go off without a hitch.
Y'all smell liquor?
Oh [bleep]
I see a jug completely turned over.
Here's the biggest pack they got right here.
That ain't good.
He's coming in here, man. He's coming in here.