Apple Brandy, Baked Goods & More Unique Moonshine Recipes By Mark And Digger
30 miles north of County, Tennessee, at Mark and Digger’s behest, Amanda and Kelly are hunting down ingredients for a century old apple brandy recipe with mass appeal. We want to set the world on fire with the next new apple brandy. We want something different, something that sets it apart from the crowd.
But to make it, they must track down an elusive apple used by a notorious East Tennessee moonshiner known as Big Haley. We’re on a mission right now to resurrect Big Haley’s apple brandy recipe. People are still talking about her apple brandy 125 years later. We’re basically on a hunt now in this whole area for small ugly apples with little black spots that taste really good.
I’m really hoping that some of these apple trees are still standing. We need the specific apples that Big Haley would have used in her lifetime to recreate her apple brandy recipe properly. I think I see what we’re looking for. Yeah, slow down. I want to check this out. Is those fruit trees? I think so.
So, we finally spotted an old abandoned apple orchard. And there’s all different types of trees. So, fingers crossed that there’s some of Big Haley’s apples still out there. Well, it’s overgrown. There’s some apples right there. Remember, they’re not supposed to be pretty.
I’m pretty excited because we found a bunch of apples growing and literally it’s right below the ridge, couple miles from Mahala’s cabin. My gosh, there’s all kinds of them on the ground. I can feel Yeah, I’m stepping on them. I mean, there’s hundreds on the ground. This could be the exact apples that we’re looking for. That’s the ugliest apple I’ve ever seen.
Yeah. Um I think it’s perfectly ugly. Yeah, right. I mean, it’s even got the black spots that she described and the yellow. It’s a pitiful apple. I’ll say that for it. These apples are spot on. They are exactly how Dana described them to us. All that’s left now is how they taste. Damn. Really freaking good.
That might be the best tasting apple I’ve ever had a bite of. I didn’t expect that to be so good. It looks like a crab apple, but it tastes like a baking apple. It’s got a lot of sugar in it. It’s so sweet. Big Haley apples. I think these are I really do. We may have found the last of Big Haley’s apple trees that exist.
So, this is a good find today. The process here to make this apple brandy is probably one of the simplest that we’ve ever done. We’re literally just using water and apples to make an apple brandy. Kelly, have you ever used wild yeast before to make a mash? No. Never? Nope.
I use some kind of bread yeast cuz it’s readily available and easy. Back in the day, they wouldn’t have had access to anything. and they would have just had apples, wild yeast, and water. So, we’re going to do everything exactly how Haley would have done it and see how it turns out. Yeah. I just want to heat up a little bit of water.
Get this like lukewarm 90° or so like body temperature. Body temperature. Yeah. I mean, this is try to like wake that yeast up a little bit that’s on the apples. Wild yeasts live naturally in the environment in the air and it’s kind of all over the place. So, the idea is to make sort of a wild yeast starter by crushing up some of the really soft apples.
These really soft apples probably have more yeast present on them because the yeast is consuming those apples and regenerating more yeast bodies. I’m not touching it. I’m going to let you be in charge. That way, if something goes wrong, you’re slacking. Look at these big pieces in here. Speed up. Slow down. Mash it harder. This is a really long process to make apple brandy.
Haley had about 14 kids or so, so I’m sure she put them to work when she was crushing up all these apples. Is there a reason that we have to shred them? I mean, them being shredded helps us get all those sugars out of them, cuz we’re not really cooking the apples. Doing a cool mashing will definitely benefit our flavor.
In cooking the apples, you let off a lot of the aroma and the flavor that the apples have in them. It’s building up. It’s hot to right here now. So, we’re going to have liquor before long. This has to be something that we can get a little extra bang for the buck with because that’s the only reason they even want to get into the market is if they can sell a high-end apple brandy.
I really, really hope that Big Hell is going to look over us, give us her blessing, and let us make some good apple brandy. Going to be running soon. I have brought Kelly on a wild goose chase. I’ve had Mark and Digger waiting all this time. I’ve really talked this recipe up, and if I don’t come through, they’re going to be pretty salty with me.
Nope. There it comes. We’ve got liquor. I’m going to dial the flame way down cuz we want this to run slow, don’t we? Yeah. Turn it down a little bit. Kelly, we’re going to dump out a lot more heads on this run than we normally would with like the standard run-of-the-mill corn liquor.
The fructose conversion plus that wild yeast is going to make way more acetone. When I make apple brandy, I tend to produce more acetal aldahhides, which are the heads. Oh my god, we killed it. That is freaking amazing, right? Totally amazing. I’m drinking some more of this. I’m calling them the head guys and tell them they need to come up here.
You think they’ll come up here and try it right now? And you know, they’re dying to know what this is. I’d love to hear what they think about it. Kelly and I both agree that we freaking nailed it. Uh you’re going to want to come and see me and Amanda. I can’t wait to see their faces when they taste this.
Well, now we know how to bait in when we want something. You want us in the middle of a run, there’s something usually bad wrong or something really good. Show them, Amanda. Well, this is what I’ve been waiting for. I see a hint of happiness on your pretty little face. Amanda, you picked up on that, huh? I did.
That in there. That’s a good sign. That’s a damn good sign. Damn that don’t want you licker. There ain’t no man going to is he wouldn’t want to. I’m telling you that’s a sweet jar right there. It’s starting to pick up a lot of apple in that one. It’s got a fine nose on it. Well, it gets down in the tails when we get her mixed together.
You think it’s good now? It’s got way more apple flavor than regular apple brandy. Yeah. It’s almost like it’s got some of that syrup out of them canned apples on. It’s that good. This is outstanding liquor and uh this is going to be the only run of it because there’s no more of the apples and with no sugar. It is very limited in the quantity that it makes.
That’s apple hell west and crooked ain’t it? This is a top shelf brandy and it’s going to bring a top shelf price. I’m going to sit over here and watch a little more of this get the steel. Yes sir. I’m going to tell you something mander. I mean down in the right shoulder, you’ll be laying over there in them damn weeds. We still got a little work to do.
So I haven’t really tapped in too far into that yet. But I was pretty impressed with how that come off the still just so smoothly. Couldn’t believe it. I believe you’re on to something. We’re still running good. You know, usually push, we ain’t want to just sit around drink damn jar of liquor like that. No, we’re usually over there humping it out.
We won’t get off this damn mountain before you get much deeper in it. Yeah, we’ve been stuck on a mountain before. It ain’t going to be like a We’ll cover you up. We’ve got a tarp. Let me have that again. Damn. Hey, Big Haley. Thank you, sweetie. I knew she was here the whole time. I guess you just got to drink enough of the brandy to be able to actually see her.
What do you think, Kelly? I think we’re looking good. We’ll eat it and see what it tastes like. Is it real sweet? They’re super sweet. Now in County, Tennessee, 3 weeks after Kelly and Amanda cleaned up a local vineyard in exchange for a share of the grape harvest. I’m going to drive the tractor here and get all this stuff straightened out that we can.
This is milky spore, and this stuff is going to kill all of these Japanese beetles. The two Shiners return with Tennessee Kingpins Mark and Digger to reap the fruits of their labor. What’s up, fellas? George, I got to give it to you. Y’all better get it. We’ve been doing our share of it. Check out these grapes.
Yeah, buddy. Look under there. Wow. Some musketines. The musketines. They’ve got a really sweet flavor this year. Yeah. Yeah. Them’s outstanding. So, what’s good about using these musketines is we can basically get two runs out of them. We can make a little brandy and little grape of both. Exactly.
Brandy is made from fruit juices. It’s distilled wine that you cook in a steel and get the alcohol out of it. It’s got a great flavor. Graa is made from the stems and the grape skins and the pulp from the grape. Well, there’s still sweetness and flavor in those skins and pulp. Better known the palmus.
So, we take that and capitalize off it. Hey guys. Hey. What’s up guys? Good thing Steve and Jean are here. They’re going to show us the most efficient way to get these off the vines and get them juiced out for us pretty quick. We got tarps. Then we got like a boom stick. Tap the plant with it and it all the sweet, really sweet ones that are ripe will fall off and all the ones that are still working. Stay on.
You know it’s time to pick us some grapes. They’re here. We’re here. We need them. Let’s get them. Think we’re ready for you. I’m bringing the boom. Just a big piece of foam rubber at the end of a PVC pipe and you simply just whoop the piss out of the vines with it. I mean, the musketines just rain down onto the tarps.
I’m thinking about my first wife. She used one of these. Looked a lot like this on me. Amanda, what kind of liquor are you trying to make with this? Well, from my understanding, we can make a brandy with the juices, but we can also ferment all that pummus again and we can make a graa. Yeah. So, I I think use it all and, you know, make two different spirits if we can.
Don’t waste anything. Exactly. But musketine shine probably what we’ll wind up calling it. Musketine shine. That sounds It’s memorable, right? Hell yeah. People try it. Man of Before when we came down here and harvested grapes, we didn’t we didn’t make any brandy. Really? No, we just simply collected the pummus and and that’s when we made our hillbilly grapa. Yeah.
I think musketine shine’s got a nice ring to it. That’s what I thought. After tasting the wine, I knew I had to make it shine. Right. After tasting the wine, you know you had to make shine pretty much. Yeah. Your poet didn’t know it, but your feet give you away cuz they’re long fellas. Are you making fun of my feet now? I am not.
I’m making an observation of your feet. As tall as you are, you need a good size feet. Need a good foundation. You had a soft spot. What? The top of my head. We’re literally seeing the fruits of our labor. No pun intended. Collecting it really makes you realize that all of your hard work was for something.
I never imagined we’d have as many grapes in our hands as what we’ve got right now. There you go, Amanda. That’s the one we was looking for. You know, here it is. We’ve already got a be and that’s close to,00 lb which is going to get us over 100 gallons of juice and plus the pummus we’re going to capitalize on. Once we get the juice out of these and mix it with a certain amount of water and add some sugar to it and not take any of the flavor away, Amanda, that’s your territory, you know.
Yep. Yep. I put a lot of time and energy into making these grapes perfect and I’m really proud of how they’re turning out. So, with the brandy we’re going to make plus Braa, hopefully it’s a double whammy. We get two different spirits that we can turn a nice profit on and make it all worth it. Well, before they all float off in this rain, we need to get them up here and get them spared.
You got to get naked though. That’s a whole lot of images I don’t need in my mind. Let’s go. Going to make some fine brandy right there. I’m glad we don’t have to count them. All right, they smell really good. We’ve been through the whole harvesting of the musketines, which was super fun.
Now we need to learn how to process them. Come in, Jean. They’re your grapes. We’re just here to enjoy the bountifulness of them. What’s up, boss? Man, I know this looks like a lot of grapes, and I hope it helps you guys out. And we’re going to take all that pomus off your hands still, right? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, honestly, we can’t use it for anything. We can. What’s the process here? This is about 1,400 lb. So I have to use the fork lift and then it goes into the de stemer crusher. So we’re going to put them into that and it’s going to crush them initially. So what it’ll basically do is kind of squeeze it like this. So the center comes out.
This is just the initial breakdown. Yep. Okay. That will be pumped into this press here. So this machine, that one is what separates all the juice from the palmus for you. Yes. So, that takes all the skins, stems, and seeds. And then all the juice will come out of that. And then we’ll pump that into a tank I’ve got sterilized already.
Let’s go get the juice. And I want to taste the juice. It’s a lot easier than stomping them with your feet, right? You ain’t kidding or mashing them with your thumb. The juice will flow into this thing fast. There it comes. Gosh, look down in the tub. They ain’t even started squosing them yet. We’ve put in a lot of work from growing the musketines, harvesting them.
This is tons of musketines. And with all this equipment, we’re going to be able to separate the juice from the palmus. Brandy is made from the juice. So, it’s 100% of the fruit fermented to make a brandy. Graa on the other hand is made from using the palmus or the leftovers after making wine. And that’s some good musketine juice right there. Cheers you guys.
Cheers. There’s the successful harvest for you. Look at that. It’s almost shamed to do anything to that, ain’t it? Good. That’ll run your sugar up. That’s so good. That musketine juice, it’s out of this world. It’s super super sweet and just loads of flavor. It’s just hard to believe something tastes that good without any alcohol in it.
I just know by tasting this, it’s going to make the best brandy we’ve ever had. I’m telling you, there’s plenty of flavor left over in that pomish in here. There’s two big rubber discs. So, basically, it just kind of squeezes in from both sides. This juice just keeps it coming. It squeezes them hard. There’s no way that you can crush them or get them beat up enough the way we would have to do it to get this much juice.
They’ve got everything figured out here. All right. Wow, that looks pretty well squished up to me. We’re going to rinse the sugar and the flesh. Going to get the little bit of juice left in there. Make some graa. We’ll gladly haul this to the dump for you, Jean. Yep. Yeah, the dump. We’re going to do what we do. So now all that remains is for us to haul our bounty off, get it out here to Kelly and Amanda Steel site and let them get busy making some brandy and groin.
Jean, we can’t thank you enough, buddy. Let’s go try some wines now. Well, twist my arm. Everybody thinks corn tastes like corn, but there’s a huge range of flavors you can pull out of all different types of corn. Check out this field of corn, brother. You’re going to find a variety of different shades.
Oh, wow. That right there is a moonshiner’s delight. I was always taught when I was as a kid that moonshining was hard work. And I finally realized there’s no harder than farming. But there’s a whole lot more money that can be made making liquor than they are punching cows. All different shades of blue.
They ain’t very big. Is that dark enough? Oh man, that’s perfect. Yes. This is something you really got to love what you’re doing or else you’re like totally in the wrong field. If it was easy, everybody’ be doing it. That’s very true. Picking this corn by hand is hard work. I had no idea the amount of effort and sweat equity that goes into harvesting corn. It’s hot. It’s not pleasant.
I have a whole new appreciation for that bag of cracked corn that I get from my farmer now. It’s a whole new perspective on where that whiskey comes from. Now that we have all this corn harvested, it’s just the beginning, you see, because we still have to shuck all this corn. We have to shell it all. And then we have to grind it all.
And then we have to mash it all in. Just processing all this corn that we have, it’s hundreds of pounds. Hold up. Hold up. Trying to be a hero. Superman. I’m really excited to work with Amanda. She’s a great distiller. She’s going to make this red, white, and blue blended whiskey possible for us. Jeff’s the real hero.
You men are just stubborn. You’re all trying to hurt yourselves. Corn is one of my favorite ingredients to use and to drink. I have used all different kinds of heirloom grains. So, anytime I get to work with a new type of variety of corn, I’m all about it. The largest quantity we should probably mash in on this still here would be the Bloody Butcher, I’d say.
It’s got that good oil content, that really butteriness. I know. I know. I mean, safe to do that for the largest portion of the mash, cuz we know how good this is going to be. The white corn, we basically know what that’s going to taste like, too. But to make this unique, let’s do less white corn. And then the experimental, the blue corn, we’ll do it on smaller scale.
That’s completely different for me. It’s a blue corn. It has like a really intense flavor. It almost has like a nuttiness, floral, earthy note. It’s widely different from most other types of corns. It would be super easy to just take all this grain and mash it in together. But what would kind of happen is it would mute the flavors.
So, our idea is to mash them in and distill each one separately so we can isolate the characteristics of each corn. There’s a sweet spot you got to get it into. When this thing was made, this was considered a modern farm implement. The industrial age. When you’re blending, you kind of want to start with a base.
So, the majority of your spirit is that base corn that gives the overall flavor profile. Bloody Butcher is like buttering your bread and just it’s like a really good taste of corn. Let’s get the white going. Just out of curiosity, what do you get for 50 lbs of this? We’re looking at about $9 a bushel right now. Yep. Jeff is a dedicated farmer and he grows a wide variety of corn, but 50 lbs of corn sells for about $9 on the market today.
If we were to take that same 50 lbs of corn and turn it into shine, it’s worth nearly $400. Jeff, this white corn is beautiful. It’s going to be a great contrast to our base. Each of these corns have a totally different flavor profile and taste to them. That’s how you start to build complexity. And then you have the option to throw in a little bit of something else, which is a wild card. Just a little bit at a time.
And that really creates a full rounded flavor profile when you’re blending. My neck and my back are screaming, but this is a lot of corn, guys. Almost there. Almost there. Then we start grinding, right? Yeah. A lot of people use just plain crack corn, but the way that I like to do it is grind that corn into a fine flour.
And the reason being is that it unlocks all of those starches that are inside of the kernels of corn. So, we’re going to grind it down to a nice fine flour before we add it to our hot water. So, hopefully we get some conversion out of this corn. That looks to be the end of it. Yep. Okay. Um the main thing we got to focus on is getting those other two stills down here and getting them set up so that we’re not behind the eightball when Digger gets here.
We now have to set up two more stills because we’re doing three separate runs. This is a lot of hard work, but that hard work is going to go a long way in telling the story of this red, white, and blue whiskey to people who are going to be drinking it. Red, white, and blue whiskey. Heck yeah. All right, guys.
I think she’s about full. I hope we can get this water heated up before. I mean, I look to not have at least hot water when the boss man shows up with the ingredients. You’d think we’re slacking. Yeah, right. It’s mashing day and we’ve just pulled two stills out of storage. There’s three of us.
We got three different types of corn and three different stills. Woo! Lord have mercy. Ready for steal number two. Steel number two. We’ll fill this one up and get water heated up for the white corn and then we’ll mash in the barrels with the uh blue corn. Digger is actually on his way here now and he’s bringing us the sugar and our special yeast.
Joe, I think you’re getting right. Yep, that’s about full over here. Okay. The idea is to put one type of corn in each pot and distill them all separately. That way, we get distillate from red corn, white corn, and blue corn, and we can literally compare them throughout the entire process. I usually build furnaces while they’re lit.
Don’t send your hair, darling. I burned my finger. Just the scale of these pots alone takes a very long time to heat up. So plan is just insulate these pots with some bricks and that’ll trap in all the heat. And it makes sense to me that we do a large majority of our corn is the bloody butcher.
Secondly, we’re going to do a nice portion of the sweet white corn. And then lastly, that little bit of blue corn that we’re fermenting has like a really intense flavor. This is kind of our wild card. Oh shoot. The man, the myth, the legend has arrived. Somebody call for sugar. Look at all of our hard work. I mean, we got our red, our white, and our blue.
Blue corn gives you a sweet tamalei finish. I don’t know what it is about it, but it’s it’s like you’re eating the dough off a tamalei. It’s got that really unique Yeah. earthy flavor profile. You know, these guys, they have put the work in. They’ve got three steels set up. They’ve got water heated up.
All right, let’s get this bloody butcher corn in here. Amanda’s got the ratios of corn for the weight of the grain bill figured out. And all that’s left for them to put it together. The white corn. Our white corn is a super sweet white corn, which is going to contrast that bloody butcher very well, and it’s going to be good to blend.
Pretty blue corn. And lastly, that little bit of blue corn. It It has like a really intense flavor. None of us have actually ran or worked with this specific kind of corn before. So, I’m really interested to see what kind of flavors this brings out. This yeast is our hammer. It’s going to do the job on this mash.
Well, let’s let’s pour the the powdered gold. This yellow label yeast, it’s a distiller yeast. It already has the enzymes mixed into it for us. Well, that cooked up good. Yeah, it did. It has all the additives you could possibly need for optimal fermentation. I’m going to las the cleaner. Perfect. If you need anything, holler.
Thanks for the sugar, man. I love that guy. I really hope this works. This is a sticky process, right? There is a ton of room for human error. This like semi frozen, but not exactly. Is it supposed to float? I I don’t know because we’re just we’re figuring this out at the same time here. We basically have stage baths to make the spirification work.
First, the alcohol with our calcium lactate goes into the sodium algaate bath. We leave it in there long enough to form a thick enough membrane and then we rinse it in a series of warm, clean water baths to stop that membrane from forming anymore. Wow. Isn’t that something? What do you think? Does that remind you of a laundry pod? Yeah.
After several tries, we’ve got quite a few intact pods. Right. You can pick it up and hold it. I’m liking the thicker membrane. If no other reason, the tougher they are, the the easier it is to to transport for one. So, we have figured out how to encapsulate our cocktails.
We have a sphere and there is an alcohol cocktail inside of that pot. My goal is to be able to drop that in a mixer or whatever and have it spread the liquor in there. Oh, that one’s not as pretty. That one broke these. Yeah, these things are just they’re like egg yolk. It looks like we’re making a slasher movie. These membranes are kind of durable, but they’re also pretty fragile at the same time.
They also don’t always turn out the perfect spear that we’re looking for. I want to test one and see if it will dissolve and turn into the beautiful concept that I’m pitching to the customer. It’s just a matter now of how pleasant is this experience going to be? Oh, there it goes. Is it dissolved? I see a little bit. Yeah, I see it, too.
Got some blobiness going on in there. Yeah, I saw the membrane float by. Once the foam dissipates that slimy, gross membrane, it’s still hanging on in there. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t think I could go with that. You’re not a fan of this, are you? Not even a little bit. From being a bartender for years, that is just not something that you want to serve to any customer, especially at a high-end party.
The texture is really, really unpleasant. Just really not water soluble. it. No matter what, you can break it, but there’s going to be that gelatinous blob still. Oh, I hear Mr. Jackson. You think he could get less stairs? What the? Welcome to Spherification. I’ve been doing research and development with Joe now for a little while.
Digger had this brilliant idea to put us together to make hazelnut rum, and he’s really good at troubleshooting. To me, that looks like what I would expect with reverse spearification. Visually, it’s just freaking me out. I don’t know why you chose this color. I come up in here and I haven’t seen you in how long and this is how you greet me.
I know. When Joe looked at our shine ponds, I could tell he was trying not to laugh. Dropping a pod into a drink and having it react is not as feasible as I wish it would have been. Well, let’s think about this. Maybe it was like a cart before the horse scenario where the idea of making a cocktail, dropping it in the glass wasn’t the endgame. Let’s elevate this.
What if it’s an edible cocktail? An ordurve cocktail that somebody comes around instead of a tray of glasses with cocktails in it at a party, you come around and you’ve got these pretty little pods that people just pop in their mouth. It’s got to be like appealing. It’s got to be palatable.
Joe’s impressed that we’ve managed to make these little encapsulated cocktail spheres. If we can just improve the appearance overall and that texture a little bit, then we might actually have something here. I feel like if we’re going to elevate this to the place that it needs to be for this customer, we’re going to have to up the game and the actual cocktail itself.
Yeah. Okay. I got this wine based spirit that I distilled off recently. It’s really good. that I added blueberries to it. And sounds good. I’ve been planning to play around and do a blueberry mojito. So, I’ve got some spirit for us to work with to build this cocktail. Famous bar bag. I got limes, some mints.
It is a bar bag. It’s literally an entire bar in a bag. Some blueberries. I got some blueberry simple syrup. So between sweet, mint, blueberry, and lime, you get the acidity, the sugar, a little bit of spiciness. Yeah. And then we can balance with our simple syrup. We could add a whole blueberry, too.
You could add a whole make something gives you more texture for them to bite into. It’ll be encapsulated inside of the pod. And the mint leaf garnish, I think that looks a lot more appealing. A blueberry mojito is something that a high-end customer would buy at a really nice restaurant or at a really nice party.
It’s not corn shine and cherry juice. All right, this will obviously all be strained, but doesn’t that look a lot more appealing? Oh, that smells really good. So, in the cocktail is like a garnish of mint and blueberry. I think that’s going to look nice and it’s going to definitely help with the texture a lot. Wow, that’s good.
Next, all we got to do is add the calcium lactate to this. So far, with Joe’s input, I’m feeling a lot better about the edible cocktails. So, we’re going to add the calcium lactate to the new cocktail that we have mixed up and freeze it overnight. Hopefully, this next batch turns out better than the first one did. I love that, dude.
Let’s go see what the animals have got going on. Bees reaches out and tells us that they’ve got something to look at in the way of our interactive cocktail/shine pod. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your fine dining experience. I know Joe and Bees are super excited and I’m happy that they’re happy about it, but I really don’t know what Mark and Digger are going to say.
Got to explain real quick. We made a pivot. We dropped the idea of the dissolvable liquor pod and we have come up with an edible cocktail. I kind of made a blueberry mojito. You know, we garnish it on the inside. Make it look pretty. Yeah. I mean, look that little rascal. Look at the little blueberry moving around in there.
It’s just swimming around like a little tadpole, right? It could be little pieces of strawberry. It could be peach. You just change the delivery system. Can we have enough of these done for the party? One person can make 60 of them in an hour. That’s outstanding. We wasn’t even sure it could be done. So, now we need you guys to taste this.
All right, guys. Here we go. Wow. Outstanding, guys. They ain’t a thing in there unpleasant. That cocktail is wonderful. That blueberry is right up front and that little mint hanging out. God bless America. This is a game changer. I’m hooked on these already. I love the idea of having some in the refrigerator and just pull them out and let people reach in with a little plastic pair of tongs or a spoon and get them a cocktail and go eat it.
It’s just a joy to to chew up. That’s exactly how I wanted that cocktail to go. Outstanding. I think that it’ll spread way beyond this cat that he’s going to sell to. And I look forward to making a lot of these. I can’t tell you enough how happy I am what y’all did. Good. You made me proud to be making liquor again. They love it.
It’s a weight released off the three of us. Outstanding job. You know, this is the first time I guess I’ve ever ate a cocktail. It’s delicious cocktail, but most importantly, it’s $425. and one gallon of liquor. Can you believe the money that we’ll make off of that? It was good. Every trip up there, this guy’s asked me if we can come up with some 140p proof liquor.
He’s under the understanding that if he goes with 100proof liquor to soak his cherries, the cherries won’t be 100p proof cuz they’ve already got their their juices and stuff in. That’s right. If you use 100p proof liquor, by the time the cherries absorb their 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 100 gallons at a pop. Oh, hell. It would take us damn 20 runs to get a 100 gallons. you know, every run you do, you get a certain amount of your liquor that’s going to be 140 proof.
Uh, but then, you know, it it progressively goes downhill in proof, but this guy requesting a lot of it. We don’t have the capability with the equipment we have to make that much of it. Column steals up the proof, but it strips the flavor. He’s loving that that corn flavor there. I’ve got an idea. If you took a worm like this and you took a thump cake like this, cut you in and set that dude right down in there.
Put 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 going to 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 bees get started on run 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 up the ABV. We got to do everything we do to try to stretch that 140 north hole a little bit longer. Right. Our goal is and for it to be profitable.
Ready? We want to pull off as much 140 proof as we can on on the first run. Come on, Kelly. Let’s see if we can modify this. So, as it stands now, Kelly and Mark are going to go work on the pump keg, and me and Bees will stay behind. We’ll build us a little fortified mash. We got to also boost that ABV in this mash, too.
Not just the end run. Let’s light. 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. These This is quite a bit more sugar than usual.
Yeah, it is. Instead of six, we’re putting nine in. 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. Please. 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. Gotcha.
So about a pound and a half of yeast, it’ll take off like a rocket. Well, be stirred. It will. It’s living in the world it wants to live in. Full of sugars. Plenty to eat. It’s going to be farting out CO2 and a pissing out that high proof ali. You know, Bees has got this order from 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 kind of 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 pump keg anymore. To get a lot of high proof liquor, uh, you really need a column still.
And uh that in essence strips all your flavor. We need column steel effects, but we need to retain the flavor that he wants. That’s what we got to try to shoot for. I think it would be our advantage if we can get this to work because the 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. We’re building it with two chambers and four pipes. The alcohol vapor coming into the thump keg is actually going to pass by eight cold water pipes. As it rises from the first chamber, it’ll 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. I tell you what worries me more than anything is with it 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 it’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 cuz once it comes up past the escape routs 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. That’s okay. There it goes. This run of mash, it’s ready to go. So, we’ve got to have this thump cake working. This liquor is supposed to be 140 proof and have plenty of corn flavor.
We got a hose in the We got to 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 to whether it actually does it. Well, 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 going to work or not.
Let’s crank us on some water. 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’ll back pressure. 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 and 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. Feel like it’s getting closer. Yeah. Damn.
Hell yeah, it’s getting closer. If it functions like we hope it will, I’m going to love it. It’s a trying to spit a little, ain’t it? Well, look at here, boys. Yonder she comes. I want to see the proof. Ready to throw his heads out. I got him. 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. Whoop it up. It’s got to be high. Yeah, I it I hope it’s 170 or so. Oh, hell far. Digger does the shake test on it. It’s got these big frog eyee bubbles on it. They glare at you real bright, then they disappear immediately.
That’s what you want. We don’t know exactly the proof yet, but we’re going to find out. 168. Look. Outstanding. We give her a look. See? Test the proof on it. There we go. 168. Let’s go look us over a spot. Y too. There we go. It looks kind of pretty right here. I tell you what, puss.
It’s been a minute since me and you got together to make another run of liquor. Ain’t it? Me and Mark are back to my old farm here. I’ve got a good limestone sprig on it right in here. an outstanding spot. We’ve got our ingredients. We’re going to mash in this all grain legacy whiskey that we’re going to make. It’s a known fact that Limestone Water makes the best liquor on the planet.
If you’ll turn some gas on, I’ll baby light that fire. Okay. Oh, that looks good. Let me ask you a hell far, puss. What? We’ve got a fire going here. Well, hell, you’re farming. What the heck? I’ve taught you. Always hit the base of the fire. Don’t put the burner out. No, don’t put the burner out.
We didn’t really think about cleaning this stuff away from it, did we? Well, I didn’t worry about it. I know you as a fireman and you could handle a fire. And look what happened. Oh, Lord. Well, I think we got ample supply of water. We do. That’ll be boiling hot time we get our corn ground.
Everything we put in our liquor, we source right here in our state of Tennessee. We do go to great extent to find the best corn. I’ll let you adjust the grind way you like it. Digger likes what he calls a coarse grit grain. Let her go see what she do. When it comes to corn, especially because corn has so much sugar, if you get it too fine, it’ll clump up and you got a corn cake.
If it’s too thick, you can’t cook all the carbs out of it. You have to pay attention to your grind or you’re not going to get good flavor out of your grain. Then we move on to that molted bar. You know, by cooking this corn longer and at a hotter temperature, this is part of the game changer that’s going to create this legacy whiskey.
We want to cook out the starches. The more of them that you cook out, the more fermentable goodie that you get out of the corn that creates sugar and then that gives the yeast something to enjoy and turn into alcohol. Ain’t it been good out here? It’s just me and you like the old days. I’ll be honest with you.
I feel a tiny bit kind of revitalized. You know, Mark and I, we’ve made a lot of liquor out of a lot of different things. But we’ve come to realize now with this recipe simpler is better. That’s cooking up. Look how thick it’s getting now. Yeah, I know it. So, we’ve eliminated the sugar. We’re back to all grain.
And that gives us more flavor. It’s the purest form of liquor. And it’s the way our predecessor started this craft. Well, come on. Let’s grind that barley. Let’s grind us some barley. Get that out of there. Oh, I was just going to leave it there. See, I know you was, but I can’t stand that. You know, you know, I I’m a little bit OCD.
Just a tiny bit. I can’t around the edges. Does that suit you where it’s right there? Go to hell. It ain’t running the wrong direction or nothing, is it? Boy, it smells good to us. I’m telling you. Oh, yeah. Mountain Legacy Corn Whiskey. You know, Digger and I, we’re really excited today. We’re down here.
We’re checking the mash for the all grain legacy whiskey. I’m telling you one thing, a some damn alcohol in it, too. It’s got plenty of alcohol. Hell, it’s loaded up. I love it. I love it. If we get what we’re looking for out of this legacy liquor, this will secure me and Mark a seat at the table with the great of this craft.
You know, it’s going on, God, over a year that me and Mark built a mash. Just me and Mark. And honest to Pete, I’d rather never make another run of liquor again than have to make a run of liquor without my best friend, Mark Wayne Ramsey. We going to charge that thump cake with anything or just let it run. We can put a little of that mash in if you want to.
Can’t hurt. No. Let me get us a bucket full. On these bottom fired steel pots, we can’t take the chance of scorching the grain. So, we just put some grain and a little bit of the liquid mash in the thump cake. That’s what we’re looking for. That’s what we want. And just infuse it. So, all the steam that comes over from the pot going into the thump cake, it’ll pick up the grain notes even more.
Yeah, that’d be a plenty right there. And there’s plenty of grain in there. Yeah. We want to give this every chance in the world to be the best corn whiskey that’s ever been. I just have to tell you, my heart’s beating in my chest. I can’t wait to run this liquor. We got a little drip heating up. It starts running off a little bit.
We pitched just a little bit of heads. There’s the first of it to coming. Hot dog. Here we come. Mountain legacy corn whiskey. Yeah, boy. You know, puss. one of these days, years from now. I hope there’s some really, really good upand cominging young distillers out there. And you know, I hope we’ve influenced them the way some of the old-timers influenced me and you.
Yeah. You know, one of the funniest fellas we ever got to have any dealings with with Jim Tom. I’m pretty good on this rye whiskey. Oh, I know. You’re the best. We’re fortunate enough back in the day, we saved us up some Jim Tom rye and we have some popcorn sutton corn liquor put up. How about that? You know, occasionally we’ll twist the lid off of one of the jars and just the the smelling and the tasting of it, it brings back a memory of each of those fellas.
Watch it. Whiskey, whiskey, whiskey. Come on out. I’m a craving whiskey with my spout. I’m going to drink a drink and sit right down. Imagine I’m in Texas with my gal. You know, I feel in my heart that Jim Tom Hedrick’s legacy is rye whiskey. Yeah. You could open a jar of Jim Tom’s rye whiskey and or you could open somebody else’s jar of rye whiskey and you could immediately pick out Jim Tom.
Oh yeah. You know, like we’ve done here with this whiskey. He used plenty of grain. He used a lot of rye. Yeah. Maybe me and Old Digger will be spoken in the same heartfelt kindness as Jim Tom and Popcorn, you know, and some of the others from our era, you know. Uh that’s the best we can hope for.
We’ve got damn near two gallon of liquor. I’m saying this ought to be dead in the hearts. Well, I’m going to give you the benefit of the first taste. I tell you, I just I just ain’t got no words for this. I mean, there’s corn and there’s that bread note that that barley brings in. Then it finishes corn again, but it’s so sweet on the finish.
It’s not pretentious. It’s not trying to be something that it’s not. It’s just Appalachia in a jar. The best you can get it. This truly truly is our legacy. All I can think about is calling every team we’ve got working right now. Tell them to meet us and we’re fixing to grind up all the white corn and the malted barley we can get our hands on and they go to producing this.
Wouldn’t it be sad to limit it to just a select group? If it’s this good, you want to share good stuff with good people. Let’s go call the guys. My hope and dream is that people that drink this, I want them to want the next step of it because my plan is to ramp up production and barrel up as much as we can.
And we’re hoping that it’ll be some of the best bourbon it’s ever been and be able to compete with these $1,500 $2,000 jars of liquor. Patty boy, I feel like I’ve run my first run of liquor all over again. Kind of like the first time you kissed the girl. I believe it’s a little better than that. What do you say Kelly and Amanda’s got wanting to show us? You know, with our luck, he’s probably loaded up a big truckload of spaghetti and meatballs and cans.
Yeah. And marshmallows. Kelly and Amanda have called and they’ve got something they’re just dying to let us in on. So, here we go. You know how Amanda is. She She thinks up a lot of stuff. I believe them damn hamster wheels turning her head 24/7. Yeah, there they are. The thing about it is, you know, as we try to expand our moonshine business and dealing with this damn thief, it’s definitely a distraction.
Well, you look like you just sitting plum purity until we can get a line on who the thief is. You know, our priority is making sure that our teams are making top shelf backwoods liquor. It’s quite a road trip, but at least I didn’t have to drive. Well, thing about it is you never know with ham. Well, if it’s something make liquor out of, I hope it’s cotton can.
Come look at it. You’re not too far off there with the cotton candy. So, you know, normally Kelly gets this windfall of free ingredients, right? This time it’s all me. Oh, it don’t sound like a damn herd of buffaloos are coming. Oh, boy. We brought you baked goods. Oh my good. A lot of them. Damn.
Loaves of bread, cinnamon rolls, and buns. I don’t know where they’ve got all this, but they damn sure got plenty of it. My sister’s bakery had a power outage and she lost an entire retail day and all of her wholesale product that they had baked. This is crazy. Picture this, guys. Cinnamon bun shine. Huh. You know, under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t even consider making liquor out of baked goods.
It’s too expensive. But being the fact they’re free, hell, I’m willing to give it a shot. Imagine the mash this would make though. I mean, a blueberry croissant moonshine. You know, every one of these these baked goods is it’s it’s top quality. It’s as good as it gets. They’re delicious. They may be a little crustier, a little less spongy, but there’s nothing wrong with them. They still taste fine.
They’re really good. And there’s certainly not enough wrong with them that we can’t make liquor with. Who has fresh baked goods? It’s not like we just have flour and sugar and yeast. Like, these are caramelized. They have those little baking spices and it’s that baked flavor that we can’t replicate in a mash unless we have the actual baked goods themselves.
I got two words for you. I mean, maybe it’s just one word. I ain’t sure. Game changer. I like it. Good. Good. Wow. We need to get this mashed in as quick as we can. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, Amanda, she thinks outside the box all the time. And she says for years, it’s been her dream to try to make liquor out of these pastry products and breads from her sister’s bakery.
There’s no doubt in my mind that these baked products will make some really good liquor. I’m excited. Well, that’s the last squad of them. Oh my goodness. Our customers are always looking for that next big thing. Something that’s a little bit different, a little bit bolder. That’s what keeps us fresh. All right, Mander, tell me what your plan is here.
Well, I was thinking, guys, since we have this whole trailer of baked goods, it’d be best to make three separate mashes. Two of the cinnamon bun, two of the blueberry croissant loaf, and two of the the cookies. We’re going to get started right now on the cinnamon bun, I think. So, let’s get this show on the road.
Mhm. Well, these things are a couple days old now. We got to get them mashed in. We don’t want them to start molding. You know, the way the humidity and the heat is here, it it’s possible. So, we’re just going to jump right on it. We got everything we need to get them mashed in.
So, we’re going to get busy and see if we can make anything out of them. I reckon you just want us just crash them up as much as we can. Right, Amanda? Yeah. And see that caramelization and the crust? Those are the flavors I’m hoping. Be delicious. I mean, it ain’t got no choice but to carry through. There’s no reason that all of these products won’t make a really really fine liquor, you know, and and the thing about it is they didn’t cost anything.
Just Kelly and Amanda’s time to go get them. Oh, hell yeah. Absolutely. Normally, when we’re making liquor, we’re just steeping grains and converting the carbohydrates into fermentable sugars. But under these circumstances, everything’s been converted when it’s being baked. Now all we got to do is break it back down all over again.
I say we finish this and move on to blueberry. Yeah, blueberry croissants. These ones are killer. So this is going to be our second recipe. Blueberry moonshine is always a hit. It’s an easy seller. But with us incorporating all of these pastries and that bakes flavor into the blueberry moonshine, it’s going to be one of a kind and people are going to love it.
Almost caught it. I hope that was your plan. That is basically the plan. I think if we just break them and let these soak. The last of the three mashes. is Amanda wants to put the breads in these and they just simply have the grain flavor, but she’s also got hundreds of these big nice cookies. Time for some cookies.
Damn. Oh. So, this is what I really always wanted to put in a mash. This is made of rye, tons of chocolate, and she adds espresso to it, so it’s got a little coffee flavor. There’s a lot of sugar there. It’s probably the sweetest thing that we have with all the milk chocolate in the recipes.
So, the plan is for me to mix the cookies and the bread. The bread is just fermentable for us, but won’t give a lot of flavor. So hopefully that milk chocolate and the rye is what comes out on the other end. Okay, guys. So, I got my sister’s yeast starter. So, I’m just going to pour a little bit of this into each of them. You know, I got to give it to Amanda.
She She’s come up with a good one on this. You know, I’ll have to say I’m pretty stoked to see what this liquor turns out like. Amanda has brought the liquor world something they ain’t never seen before. I think right now we have six totes filled with baked goods fermenting. I just can’t wait to run them. I’m excited.
Good for you. I’m excited, too. These are doing. Yeah, I’m pretty excited. This is going to be cool. Do you hear that? What is it? Fermentation. We mashed in tons of high-end baked goods into these totes. Walking up, I can hear the mashes ripping. It’s bubbling and cracking, and that’s a good sign. Look at that.
Holy smokes. That’s a strong fermentation right there. First one I can get to is the cookies and bread. It has a healthy cap on top. It’s ripping. It’s bubbling. It’s good activity. That mash is going perfect. What’s the rest of this look like? Oh, this don’t look good, Amanda. What’s wrong with this? Um, that is a lot of butter.
There is no activity. There’s no cap. I see no bubbles going on, no movement from the yeast, and there’s just a slick of butter on top of everything. I guess if it can clog up your arteries, it can stop up your mash, too. I’ve never seen so much butter ever. What about this one? Oh god, this one’s even worse. It is.
These ones had all the croissants in them. The blueberry croissants and the cinnamon rolls are made with the same type dough and it’s packed with butter. It’s not fermenting. It’s It’s like totally stalled. This is my first attempt at having anything to do with baked goods. And we went big and we’re having to pay a big price for it.
Man, we can’t lose my blueberry mash. I wanted them blueberries so bad I can’t stand it. We can’t lose any of these mashes, Kelly. We need all of them. This is a ton of money. That’s as dead as a hammer. Yeah. Is the yeast Is it kill the yeast? Is it dead? I wouldn’t even know if the yeast is dead, if it’s dormant. I don’t know.
My first go-to whenever I have an issue is call Digger. See what Digger says. I know better than to try to just fix this amount of problem on my own. I think it’s best to just call Mark and Digger and see what they say. This is not good. I hope he doesn’t get upset about this. Something you never want to tell the boss man.
Two/3s of our mash have completely stalled. The longer this sits here stalled like this, that’s money out of all of our pockets. This is like my worst nightmare.
