Everyone laughed when they heard the ingred1ents… until they tasted the final drop.
We’re going to take some of our sorghum liquor and we’re going to add that to the still when we put this pumpkin mash in there. Here we go. We just throw them up here in this truck. And hopefully when we combine these two, we’ll come up with something good because as of right now, the sorghum, it just ain’t good enough. All right.
If you can’t make mash out of that, you can’t make mash out of nothing right there. This is how we make the moonshine. Howdy. Hi. So, this whole elderberry mashion is totally research and development. This is what an elderberry looks like. Yep. It’s going to be a learning experience for all of us because we’re all trying to get the hang of how to mash in an elderberry.
What do they taste like? No, don’t. You can’t eat the elderberries yet. They can make you sick if you eat them raw. What are we doing with them, man? So, we got to cook them. When we mash them in, they’ll be safe to consume. Well, we’ll help you and smash this in. Well, let’s do it. Yeah, let’s get out of here.
The elderberries have a toxin in them that has to be denatured through boiling. You’ve got to get these berries up to 212° bare minimum to hold it there for about 20 minutes. You can’t just pick these off line and eat them. You’ll be stuck somewhere with minus two rolls of toilet paper. Yeah.
I think if we cook these in the water, they should just come right off these stems here. Well, we can shake them in the water. I’m trying to make sure that we get all the stems out. I don’t want them to impart any kind of a weird bitter flavor and it’s just not something that we want in our mash. Nervous here are you? Smell that higher a little bit.
Look at the color. Well, that’s rich pretty color, ain’t it? Yeah. Your hands going to be that color for a week. You know that, right? I’m glad we put You look like you’re down coloring Easter eggs. We start cooking these burries down. It’s a really pretty color.
Hell, I think we need to run with them raisins to it. We let them boil hard. Then we dump in all the raisins. So, the recipe called for one part elderberry and two parts raisins. So, that’s what we got. Soon as we put them in, we turn the fire out. These raisins will sink right to the bottom. And with all the sugar that’s in them, they would scorch.
They would stick to the bottom. That is hot. Look at them. They’re done getting unrinkled. Raisins are kind of like the backup team for the elderberries. So, they’re there to to bring more sugar and more fruiness to the party. 50 lbs of grain, 50 lbs of sugar. We’re going to go heavy with rye in this mash.
Essentially, it’s going to be about 50% rye. So, I got a really, really nice molted rye to help bring out a sweet, buttery flavor. I’m hoping that the rye can go along with the fruiness of the elderberries and these raisins, and they’re just going to meet each other right in the middle and complent each other nicely. Oh, it’s pretty color, ain’t it? Mhm.
You can really see how translucent it is when when you see through it. Pouring it. You can’t tell nothing about it down in that bucket. Look how pretty. Kelly starts bucket brigading over this hot mash mixture into the sugar. It’s smelling phenomenal. This molded barley is really bringing a nice aroma. Fired up.
You know, I think you made a good choice on the molded rye instead of just rye. Yeah. Mhm. Now, as far as East Tennessee goes, this right here is a cla.ssic split brandy. Yeah. Oh, that’s good. You know, the malted rye will have a spicy peppery note with a little light earthy tone that that maltton brings around.
So, it should balance out this really sweet berry really well. It’s too hot to pitch yeast. Yeah, that just k1ll that yeast immediately or stress it to no end. I like it. I’m happy with it. I like it too, Amanda. You know what I think Pop could say? What? Good job, girl. All right, Manda. Ready to strain some mash? I reckon I am.
Oh, that’s a pretty mash. Mhm. Tastes good. Checking on our mash. The cap fell. The fermentation looks like it worked off perfectly. It tastes really sour and there’s some booze in there. Oh yeah. Look at that pretty color on this elderberry. That is so fr3aking awesome. You know, this elderberry mash is worked off.
It’s ready to run. Precious cargo. Today’s the day. We’re going to gather everything up we need. Get this stuff in the woods and run it. I’m excited to see what it’s going to taste like. I definitely feel a really cool connection with my great grandfather right now. All right, Amanda.
Time to run Elder Berry Ride. I feel like in a way I’m paying honor to him and keeping his memory alive. I can take a little bit of this back to my grandom and let her taste what her dad might have made. He kept these recipes, so they must have been near and dear to him. So, the fact that I have them and we’re recreating it, it’s near and dear to me now, too.
Pretty convenient to have two guys that pretty much have any kind of distillation equipment you could ever want. We’re going to set up a 50 gallon little research and development still that Mark and Digger lent us. It’s going to be perfect to make the split brandy on. Oh man, that one smells just as good as the other one.
You know, we may get a good yield out of it. It may have more alcohol content in it than we think. I’ve never heard of anybody having elderberry moonshine, so this is going to be rare. And with a split brandy deal on it, it should bring a premium price. Let’s fire her off, Amanda. Wait a minute. Go ahead and cap it. You know, this small pot, even though we’ve never ran it, just setting it up is a little different.
Perfect. You know, it’s got the clamps on it and everything. This is going to be easy peasy. It’s pushing. You can smell it strong. Yeah, I can smell it when I walk back down here a while ago. Strong right away. It smells really fruity. I can smell that elderberry coming through. It’s just in the air.
Oh, look at that. We got liquor. Okay, I’m going to adjust. Now is when you need to turn it down. How much you want to toss? Is that enough? Oh, god d@mn. That’s strong rocket fuel. But I can smell that berry in there a little bit. You know, the thing about it is if this small batch is a hit and we need to, we know to start looking early for elderberries and where they’re at.
And now that we know what they look like, we’ll be able to find them a little better. All right, here goes nothing. Oh my god, that’s amazing. Thank you, great grandpa to Bill Fisher, man. You got to try that. It’s just like, holy crap, that is like no burn. It is way better than I thought. There is rye up front and you get the whiskey, right? Like boom.
It’s a sweet, savory rye whiskey, but on the end it gets super fruity and complex. Oh my god. It just keeps getting better and better and better and better. This liquor is just something that I’ve never tasted before. It really tastes kind of like grape jelly with a kick. Your great grandfather would be so proud to be sitting right there drinking that with you knowing that you ran that.
I believe it. I am super grateful that my great grandfather saw the good of this recipe and thought to preserve it and just it was able to come down through hands into my hands so that we can make this recipe today. I’m excited to take this to market digger and show them what we did.
That is some really good right there. All right, Greg. Let’s just load 100 lbs of these up. Ain’t no sense of bringing all that out there. I’m going to go get that cooji and get ready to load that up. It’s been 7 days. This is the moment of truth. It’s hot down here right now. It’s really, really humid. That should be perfect for this kji to grow.
And we’re about to find out if it grew. Smells like alcohol. God, look at that. To me, this rice definitely looks moldy, but I’ve never done this before, and I’m not sure if it’s right. Craig, I just hope that this is the cooji mold that’s working because if this is some other type of mold that’s taken over, this could be disastrous.
That’s mold for sure. I want to try it, but I’m scared to try it. We too far from a hospital. I’d d1e out here. Yeah. Yeah, for real. The only way to know if we got this koji mode right is to smell it. It smells sweet and kind of like shu. This is actually a pleasant smell to say they got mold growing on it.
Man, the flavor that I’m smelling is exactly the flavor that I tasted in the Shou that Steve gave us to try in New Orleans. There’s no other way to get this flavor other than using Kojimi mode. Let’s go take us a little tr.i.p. Man, I love this, man. We ain’t got to worry about nobody come and steal the moonshine steal from us.
All the alcohol. All the alcohol. I have a friend who has a h.unting lease in the middle of a Chaffallayia Basin. Ain’t nothing over there but alligators and mosquitoes. Ain’t nobody going back there to disturb us. Let’s get to work. This is definitely historic. Man, this smells like yams. We are making a creole shou.
This one’s light in the bayou of Louisiana. It don’t get no better than this. So, we’re going to boil these sweet potatoes down. We’re going to add them to our koji mold, throw them in a barrel, and let nature do what it does. We’ll be making shu. One barrel done. So, to mash these potatoes in, we’re going to ball them down real good.
Make sure we can mash them up real well. Oh yeah. Yep. That’s what a yam supposed to smell like. Oh, they slice through easy. I can mash them like potatoes. They are potatoes. All right, there we go. Ah, let’s get to the Craig. We got our 100 lbs of potatoes cooked. Here we go. That’s that good cooji right there.
We’re going to mix this with the cooji mode. This is the moment of truth right here. I’m going to break it up real good so the yeast can enjoy it. Man, you smell that smell? It definitely did a conversion on this rice cuz this rice even smells sweet. If this koji is anything like the smell I’m getting right now, then we’re in business.
They should work good together. They will work good together. All right, I got us. So, it’s been 10 days. We gave this mash a chance to work off really well. We’re going to head on back to the woods, and if it’s right, we’re going to show you today. Let’s see what this mash did. I bet you it look good. Smell good. Oh yeah, this smells good.
Smell like alcohol, man. It tastes like alcohol, too. Digging around in the mash bow and all the fragrances come up, man. I could drink that just like that. The sweet potatoes, the aromatic rice, all that stuff is really in there. You can taste it. I think we’re on the right track, man. This mash is ready to run. This is good.
Let’s start unloading this steel and get to work. So, this new steel, it doesn’t have any bells and whistles. This is old school. It’s a little work, but once we get this thing running, we should be just fine. All right, Craig, let’s get started making some paste. I’m going to start loading the steel with mash.
I’mma fire this thing up. Four. Ah. Hey, you hear that wrench? Yep. That thump. You see something? Yep. Oh, yeah. She’s singing. All right. This thing is hot for real hot. We should be making liquor in a second. Yep. Craig, look. We running. We on our way with the shou. That’s alcohol.
That smells like shou for real. You can smell the sweet potatoes. You can smell the rice, the aromatics. It smells just like shou. And I can’t wait to taste it. All right, let’s try this here. That’s it. Tasting the show off the worm. I think we hit a home run here. Holy crap. When I’m getting the sweet potato, I’m getting the rice.
I can taste the cooji. It tastes like bubble gum. It’s sweet. It actually reminds me of a fruity cereal I enjoyed growing up as a kid. If somebody would drink that bottle right there, they would swear that we bought that off of the show. This shou is going to put my name back on the map because people are going to love it and they’ll be willing to pay for it.
Man, I can’t wait to start making calls and letting people know what we got here. That’ll work fine. I can take the tractor up there here. Let’s do one row across the front. Carol and I are trying to do a lot for our community. It’s a funking day, Charlie Brown. We’re a new startup business, so we figure a fall festival.
And you know what you got to have there? A pumpkin patch. Just fill the bucket up. I can just move it, drop them easily. Good thing we got all this help. There you go. Hey, can we get those two baskets? I’ve got two things going on here today. One, got all kinds of people out here hand unloading pumpkins off of this truck.
But I’ve got a little side thing going on here. You know, I don’t reckon anybody’s going to miss a couple dozen of these things. I got over 1,600 of these big ones. We’ll just start loading them up. I’m steadily, while nobody’s looking, sneaking a few pumpkins over into the bed of my truck to make pumpkin liquor.
Yeah, got more room to put pumpkins. We’re going to take some of our sorghum liquor and we’re going to add that to the still when we put this pumpkin mash in there. Here we go. We just throw them up here in this truck. And hopefully when we combine these two, we’ll come up with something good. Because as of right now, the sorghum, it just ain’t good enough. All right.
If you can’t make mash out of that, you can’t make mash out of nothing right there. Level her up. We start smashing some pumpkins. Exactly. What we’re going to do, I’ve got a whole truckload of pumpkins and we’re going to mash them things in. You did a good job, T. I have to say you did. I’m hoping this stuff breaks up good.
bre4k up good. Pumpkin should be the perfect compliment to our sorghum liquor, which right now is tasting pretty flat. It subtle fall flavor should actually bring out the nutty and the sweet notes in the sorghum. Let’s see what we got. Anything any stronger might completely mask the sorghum and totally change our flavor profile of our liquor.
Here we go, baby. Getting all these free ingred1ents has been key, but not if it turns out to be a total bust. It’s stuck all on the bottom. Don’t look too good. Nah, it’s really not breaking them up. We probably need to put some more on top of them. Let’s try it again. Now, it’s really important that we get these pumpkins smashed up as good as we possibly can.
Cuz let’s face it, a little yeast trying to eat a big piece of pumpkin, well, that’s like you trying to bite into a bowling ball. That’s to the maximum. One thing it’s it’s not it’s crooked. Pop it out and see what we got. I don’t think that’s going to do it. This ain’t going to get it fine enough. No. No. You can’t mash that in.
That’ll work off like that. See if we can’t hand chop these things in. Let’s do it. All right. Now, we’ve invested a lot of sweat and tears into this liquor. We’ve already mashed in and made one run. Now, we’re mashing in again and going to have to make another run. Now, this is starting to get out of hand.
We really need this to work. So, what we going to do with that sorghum liquor? We’re going to take this right here. When it works off, we’re going to pour that liquor over over this mash and pour it over in the steel. You know, putting the two together, hopefully we’ll get something drinkable. Now that we’ve got these pumpkins mashed in, when we go to put our pumpkin mash over into our steamer still, that’s when we’re going to add this sorghum liquor over in there and hopefully extend our run and see what flavor we come up with
next. A lot of hard work. That’s true. But I know I can smell it. That’s for sure. Smells good. We mashed in these pumpkins. If they’re worked off, we’re going to run them together with the sorghum. She looks like she done something, that’s for sure. Drop down the barrel. Our plan is to use the pumpkin mash to get a little more flavor in with this sorghum liquor.
It’s bitter. It’s good and bitter. Say she’s ready to run. Oh yeah. Let’s light this burner. Yeah, baby. That’s my first bucket. There you go. Now we’re adding 10 gallons of sorghum liquor for each 50gallon barrel of pumpkin mash that we’ve put over into this box. We’re going to mix it all together.
Hopefully the pumpkin adds a good amount of liquor and changes our flavor for this sorghum and we get something that we can really sell and it’s going to be really good. Let me see if she’s turning. Oh yeah, she’s rolling. She’s rolling. Yeah. Let’s get this baby cap. Now I really can’t wait to taste this stuff.
What I’m really hoping is this pumpkin flavor carries over very well, Henry. Yeah, baby. You reckon this is going to change the flavor of that sorghum mini? I sure hope so. If you just pick up a little bit of that pumpkin, we’ll be good to go. Well, we’ll see what we got here for too long. Yeah, I smell it. It’s coming through.
Well, this is going to tell a tale here. Did we just waste two weeks producing an undrinkable liquor? Or do we got a k1ller new product that cost us basically nothing to make? Hey, I I believe she’s rolling right now, fellas. Yeah, man. Hell, I’m gonna see what we got. What do you think, Hul? Well, there’s plenty of alcohol there.
That’s about all I can tell at the moment. She just started. We got a nice stream running, but this liquor, it’s too hot to tell what it’s going to taste like right now. There you go. That one’s about full. Yeah, baby. One thing’s for sure, though. We’ve got plenty of alcohol here. I think it smells good.
What does it look like? Oo boy. Well, let’s see what we got now that we done got a little lower proof in there. Oh, I can smell it, man. Wow. Pick up that pumpkin, doesn’t it? Not too much, but not too much. Just enough to give it that pumpkin flavor. This liquor tastes great.
The pumpkin flavor, it’s added a lot of good depth to a once real flat tasting liquor. It worked out well. It really did. Yeah. Load this stuff up and get it on out of here. We’ve put our twist on a long lost liquor from our ancestors. And this is what Moonshining is all about. Keeping traditions alive and making some good money while you’re doing it.
I was worried we done messed up. And you know who was I was going to blame? He’s going to blame me. You going to be the pumpkin man? Well, it turned out good.
