They called them criminals… but these ‘hillbillies’ quietly built one of America’s biggest underground empires
Virginia’s Appalachia rich in culture and tradition and largely misunderstood by Outsiders the region is a bridge from the past to the present this series will explore local Legend of lore mixed with the science and skill you’ll only find in Virginia’s Appalachia today we’re taking you to Franklin County the moonshine capital of the world people didn’t look up to us you know those bunch of Moonshiners except when it came holiday time every holiday they’d always come around wanting some Brandy from us the rest of
you are they big customers you know those low-life Moonshiners and to watch it evolve the way it has over the past five ten years it just amazed me you know you take these Appalachian Mountains and all these Blue Ridge Mountains the ice cold water running out of them I mean we got the ideal place to make moonshine I like to call this area the Goldilocks zone you know it’s not too hot it’s not too cold it’s not too wet it’s not too dry the climate noise is perfect to make moonshine you know an ice cold water all these mountains that
you can hide in and centrally located you know you got to keep that in mind too you know we’re right here in Virginia so Philadelphia New York North Carolina Atlanta you know a little higher Chicago well you’re right in the middle of it all as far as distribution is we will set and for years I’m like oh damn making all these sales of this liquor and then you know you hit me yeah we are we’re right here in the middle of it all when we’re talking about moonshine that’s a term that a lot of people outside to reach and use around here
they refer to it as white liquor and originally in the 18th century it was a farm product a lot of the inventories of the early settlers had a still in their equipment and in the fall of the year when apples or peaches or whatever was um being harvested they would make liquor and sell it and so it’s always been made in this area from the 18th century to the present day and the thing I think that most people don’t think about they think about someone making liquor and it’s made for the community right around it but in
this community it’s been a way of business a way of life a way to support yourself and whole families were involved in it and um it’s just part of the customs and the culture of this region history of moonshine in this region we’re just really well known for it and it’s because it was really an industry it wasn’t just a business it was industrial and volume and I think people just don’t understand the magnitude of what was being produced here especially in the western part of Franklin County and that’s why we became
to be known as you know the moonshine capital of the world people have a misconception that you know the people you know are hillbillies that they’re lazy and it’s the complete opposite there’s a lot of Ingenuity involved in in making moonshine because you’re trying to make it in circumstances that are very hard you have to be very creative and so in many ways it’s very sophisticated what they do and there’s no way that you would want a product that’s bad because you want to have returning customers so you want to make
your products really well and the folks obviously did in Franklin County and that’s why moonshining you know we’re known for that and it’s part of our heritage and we Embrace that Heritage and it’s based on facts I mean there’s you know there are books written about it and it’s you know the the records from you know the train companies and everything about how you know the shipments of sugar and all the products coming through here it’s you know it’s it’s legitimate so we just stated that that’s a way of you know making making a
living and making a very good living for some of those Folks at the very top well it started um with the people that settled the area and they came out of Ireland they came out of Scotland England it came out of Germany and they had a knowledge that they brought with them and so it was just part of their culture their Heritage so they brought with them and it was established here it was established in most of it colonies are the states early on in the east coast it was just something that was part of everyday life and farming so the
Traditions were already within the families and that’s how it came and it just continued here other areas that did not contain but in this area it continues during the prohibition it just boomed in this County that was probably the Heyday and from looking at railroad records to the amount of sugar that was sent in by Real by boxcar loops here and I voted there’s not a containers that were shipped in here it was a real Heyday for making it and after that the prohibition was over it was legally legal to bat but there still
was a market for this other alcohol it was cheaper and so it was sold in a lot of different places and it continued and it continues on to this day now we have several legal distilleries in this County some of them are are really tied through families that had a tackle back Generations in the making risky and it’s sort of been a thing of Pride there was a pride in what you made people have talked about whiskey that would make people go blind or things like that you didn’t sell twisty to someone that would not come back as a
repeat customer and if you were selling someone 60 or 80 cases of whiskey you wouldn’t get paid so this this thing I’ve met going blind and selling bad whiskey just wasn’t taking place because it was a business and that’s what people have through their lives you know if you take a moonshine you take a stack of metal and a stack of lumber and set it out here on the ground how many people can take that metal and that Lumber and cut it and nail together submarine Steels turnip type Steels Steamers that we used to run from
nothing I mean from nothing most people these days had to run by get online and try to buy the equipment we built everything we’ve ever used and with that said then you got to get out and you know to set up a steel site and hopefully make some money you’ve got to find a place to put it in summertime you got all the leaves out so you can go under these big old White Oaks and Red Oaks and everything’s fine but then winter time comes the leaves fall you’ve got to find a pine patch and that’s what my dad always did you know we had he
knew everybody in the county and everybody in the counter knew him so we had no problem finding sites we’d give a landowner maybe 100 bucks a week to come through his land he didn’t care a little drank a good liquor and then you got to have the water you got to have enough water to supply that cooling system not only had Philly Subs up but uh when you go to run that liquor you got to have a stream of water that runs all day long you can’t stop in the middle of it you got to condense all that steam you got to
condense it down to your to your alcohol and you’re talking about a all-day process from daylight to dark days and days in a row so you’ve got to make sure you got plenty of water you got to make sure you got plenty of coverage you’ve got to be able to get in and out of a steel site you know summertime you can take a regular car a regular pickup truck and drive right on in because there’s no snow and ice and all that stuff come winter time all that went out the window you had to have four-wheel drives Jeeps you had to
have chains I mean you had to have an array of vehicles just to get into a site because you gotta you’re going far far back in the woods you know working on a side road anywhere you’re working way back in the woods steel site is a whole lot more to it than most people think you got to find some land you got to have plenty of water you gotta have plenty of coverage first thing we do is of course is find a piece of land with a nice ass creek on it and the landowner that’s willing to take a few dollars to let us come in so
once all that’s taken care of you come in you start digging in your flus and um such a steal the cinder blocks has to be full of dirt you put about that much sand all dirt on top of it for to level up the steel it’s too far I’m gonna mash it in the barrel not to steal right exactly all right you think about the climbing here I mean it’s not too hot it’s not too cold it’s not too wet it’s not too dry I mean it’s perfect perfect for our grain it’s perfect for the the water that we need and that’s why I lick her so good
that’s why I look it’s so good just because these Springs you can see rolling down these rocks here and if you don’t have good water you must hang it up you can’t we’ve worked out off of rivers and we’ve worked off of ponds you can tell you can taste it once the liquor comes out no not that it just don’t produce as much liquid we have a new turn when you come over these Springs like this come straight As mountains you’ll make a whole lot more look and that’s what it’s all about good looking and and a good turnout good
turnout exactly that’s what I was trying to say now you know you learn thank you put your water in there you touch a pump run and put your water in the steel get it boiling because we’re here now to do a mash we’re mashing in and have a certain grains we’re not worried about a worm we’re not worried about a thumper we’re not worried about any of that right now right now all we want to do is get this baby mashed in get everything matched in boiling water cook in our grains get everything mashed in covered over now we’ve got four or
five days for this Mash to work off we’re gonna let this cook for an hour and then we’ll do what we call sweetening it we bring some molted we got that malted boiler it’s going to be just like cornbread when you look in there it’s going to be thick once that molded baller hits it those enzymes in it it’s going to break it up real thin and then the whole trick is we’re gonna have to beat the heat out of it it’s a little trick to that you beat that heat out and when you’re able to stick your hand down in there and move it around without jerking it
out that’s with some weird stuff man it may it means it’s ready for the water and time you fill the barrel up the temperature be exactly what you’re looking for it works every time all right cool crazy stuff the old timers man you can’t all go down yeah don’t argue with them you know we like using uh you know we use an abundance of Rye malt malted barley corn wheat and all from a general area from the farmers you know everything comes from this area grown right here and it gives me chills even talking about it because everything’s
just grown right here and when you take those pure fresh ingredients and you ground them up and you mash in those steels it’s a good feeling it’s a great feeling because you know there’s nothing in it can harm anybody it’s no additives no preservatives and we do the same thing with with our with our peaches growing up in this area you know everyone I don’t care who it was son you knew somebody that was involved with it you just had to whether it was your family or a friend or whatever and some people weren’t you
know didn’t want to talk about it and it really wasn’t talked about until honestly you know the past decade or so because of the distilleries coming about now and it’s oh you know the Mystique of it um my grandfather in 1935. pay cash for a brand new car a brand new pickup a brand new bulldozer and a brand new two-story brick house that’s the amount of money he was making at the time um but there’s a lot of people that you know laugh about it and you know just don’t take it seriously and I just I’ve always found it an
immense source of Pride that people in this area you know were so um you know creative and hardworking that you know look what they did with nothing and um you know they they made something of themselves with nothing so I think it’s a it’s a wonderful thing to talk about but a lot of people they think about it in the in the stereotype in that in that way he’s like oh we’re more than that well of course we are more than that but look at this you know this is really you know our Roots this is who we are these are our ancestors let’s be
proud of that you know there’s nothing to be ashamed of in my opinion and now with alcohol being you know it’s okay to make it all these distilleries that’s changed perception you know it’s the cool Factor now and oh that’s really neat but hey we go way back with it and this is why we’re known for it back talking about the Moonshine days my father was a big Kingpin Moonshiner I mean he ran on probably one of the biggest moonshine business this country’s ever known and uh you know I grew up around it I used to take and
pump gas for him and he’d go out to Steel sites he used raw gas back then came in 10 cans and and he’d give me a nickel a can to pump the gas could be Bunches of cans then the next day those cans would be gone and I’m like man they’ve got some kind of operation going on here and then I remember him sitting around before daylight when I was a kid and be four or five guys around the kitchen table and they’d be talking business of course that time I really didn’t know what the business was but as I got a little older he started taking
him it would take a few pints of Luke and had me to hide it out in the woods so people would come wanting a plant or two he would send me out to get the liquor and bring it bring it back to the house to make the sales but you know I watched my father go in you know it’s in and out of prison my whole childhood my whole entire childhood you know visiting him in prison so I pretty much knew what was going on and it came to a point where you know was working working in the factors and all there’s nothing wrong with that
but I want to do the same thing that my dad did my uncle my grandfather and all that now I’m starting to get a little taste all that you know knowing what they’re doing for a living so I asked him one day I said you know Dad I want to I want to make a liquor you know I turned 18 years old I said I want to make liquor I de Factor him but I was killing me you know going in at five o’clock on me six o’clock in the morning can’t get out at four five o’clock at night it just wasn’t for me so he said hi son I’m gonna tell you now he
said you go in there you got to remember a couple things you can have diamonds on your fingers gold around your neck but the biggest thing is you’re gonna have Shackles on your feet if you stay with it long enough and he was right you make that money everything’s great you got them diamonds and that gold if you want them but those handcuffs and shackles are definitely on their way you know years of making liquor throughout the county you sort of build a rapport with the agents and all you got your ATF it’s Federal and you guys ABC which is
state these guys I mean they do their job you believe you me they do their job but you had a certain number of them that wouldn’t overdo the job I guess I’m trying to say they would come in and raise a steel site and they would know who you are but they wouldn’t go see where I want for it I mean it’s amazing when you when you think about that now a lot of the agents if they saw you within a half a mile of Steel Place they’d go take out a warrant for you and then you had to prove that you wasn’t at that still site you know
if you don’t have any Witnesses you’d be hung and some a lot of Agents has done that over the years you know just the rest whomever they want to really because they thought they was there because they must have been working to still say because they was on that road but time went on another bunch of Agents came around and they went I like to think they were much more men because they wanted to catch us they want to jump on our backs slam us into the ground and put the handcuffs on was like a real man and a lot of them really hated doing
their job I would say because they did have so much respect for the Moonshiners but uh you know it was like a cat and mouse game you know they was after us trying to put us in jail and we were trying to get away I mean you talk generations of moonshine in here Generations you take right now people beg for recipes you know what we’ve got the recipes and we we kept a close-knit Tylenol as recipes too my father always told me he said you don’t let those recipes get out you know generations of tweaking it and and I
laugh now I tell people I wasn’t taught how to make moonshine I was told how to make it you know all right son this is where it’s done don’t change anything do it exactly the way we’ve been doing it and who might argue with that get everything matched in boiling water cook in our grains get everything mashed in covered over now we’ve got four or five days for this Mash to work off while that’s working off we bring in our Thumper we bring in our water box our condenser all that we set all that up to make sure everything lines up we take
the cap bring the cap in all the pipe and the tubing that we need to line all that up once we get all that done we know we set when that Mash Works off it comes under a cap when it works down it’ll be sizzling and and you know you listen to it and quit sizzling and you taste it and it’s good and bitter and you know she’s ready to run it’s not sweet all the sugars don’t work out up now you talk about people using hydraulicism like that you know what our hydraulic is it tastes pretty bitter you bring and we bring a propane in with
us we bring a proof and Barrel in with us with a filter but once you dig these flus in get everything in all the equipment in and the beer is ready to run we come in that morning we put our Mash over in the steel we throw the fire to it we use propane with no Regulators on it coming straight off in a propane tank with a regulator you don’t get enough heat to heat a steel that size so we always take The Regulators off which is very dangerous and uh once we throw that fire to it you got to keep it stirred you got to keep
your stir it don’t keep it stirred it will burn a lot of people talk about poison methanol and all this stuff that’s one thing about here in Franklin County in the Appalachian Mountains here anybody’s got any sense at all to know and these guys do through these areas methanol boils off at 148.5 degrees when it hits that temperature all the methanol boils off then the ethanol starts to boil once that stalls the boil you cap the baby so you’ve got no methanol in your system at all it’s gone once you cat that baby
when it starts to boil the steam comes out which is ethanol now what you want to do is you want to take it where you want it to go and that’s where the cap and all the equipment comes in now we want to direct it a certain way so we put the cap on it we chain the cap down and first place we want to take it is to the thumper or the double and that Doubler will have usually has charges in that Doubler to where it’ll increase the alcohol after we get it run it also strips it up impurities a lot of impurities go through that doublet the
alcohol travels for me to Steel to the cap over to the Doubler now it goes from a Doubler over to the coil wire now this coil worm we call it sitting in a water box we got the pump running cold Waters constantly coming into that water box your water line and this is very important your water line goes in the bottom of that water box where when you as it starts to condense the alcohol starts to condense the hot water will rise just like heat at any given thing anytime you throw heat something he’s going to rise so we got a
slot in that water box with the cold water on the bottom as it heats up that hot water rises and runs off the top of that water box that way you constantly got cold water coming in as that steam goes down that coil it reaches to it recoils it starts to condense now when it condenses we want to make sure that we don’t run it too hard we want to make sure that lick is good and cool because you don’t want it too hard too hard it’ll uh it’ll be a little hot and uh once it starts running it’s real high proof you see a lot of people grab it
right out of the right out for the worm and start drinking you can’t do that that stuff is so high proof I’m going to leave the skin off your lips believe me so that’s why we use we got a proof and Barrel and we got a filter so as it comes off we start catching it a bucket at a time before through that filter it goes down now every bucket we get it starts to get a little bit lower as far as the alcohol content lower and lower so this is a trick you got to keep mixing the low with the high until you get it to a point where you
can sell it now different Liquors calls for different what we call Bead different proof if you’re running regular corn liquor you can have it set 19.95 proof if you’re running branded Peach Brand Apple Brandy it’s got to be 105 110 proof people won’t buy it it’s just the way it is I don’t care if when they take their jar and hit it if it don’t have that big bead on it you might as well so get it and as far as hydrometas and and proofers and all that stuff we never knew what internet was none of it I never saw proof in my life
we always did it by that’s the way we were taught I tell people that we weren’t we weren’t uh taught how to make liquor we were told how to do it and we never changed the thing anything we do we do it exactly the way my father did it his butt as my grandfather did it and we stick straight to that why change something’s been tweaked 100 years ago and that’s the best way we look at it I think just the misconception The Stereotype the big one is that you know it’s the hillbilly to hillbilly doing this and you know if a hillbilly is has
a lot of Ingenuity they’re hard working call me a hillbilly I you know I’m a hillbilly then fine with me um that’s that’s the big misconception about people that make moonshine is that they you know look a certain way and act a certain way and to me it’s all about carrying on your heritage and being a smart business person and honoring your Traditions your family and um you know it’s it’s really gained traction with the distilleries now being legal and I like seeing that people that have done this their whole lives or
learned it from their parents or grandparents can now make a legal living doing this you know moonshine is a big factor in our tourism here in Franklin County but it’s also somewhat it’s in its infancy which is hard to believe it’s been around for a very long time but here recently we started to see the families that have opened up the legal distilleries and it’s really opened up a lot of opportunities here in Virginia’s Blue Ridge and especially in Franklin County and we’re also very excited as we move into the future as Franklin County
Patrick County and Floyd County have kind of partnered and teamed up and we’re creating the Virginia moonshine Heritage Trail which will again will look to draw even more visitors into our local localities the Moonshine industry is bringing in folks from all over the world and a big reason for that is the authentic nature of the Moonshine and spirit industry here in Franklin County from the family the places the people and those unique stories that authentic nature is I think what is drawing people here at Franklin
County to experience authentic moonshine Sam smells real good thank you thank you foreign
