Original subtitles

Check it out. Oh, she looks good.

[narrator] This time on "Moonshiners" --

We need to find a good place to store these.

Henry came up with the idea to stash our brandy over here on

one of these small islands and then just sell our

apple cider brandy to some pretty wealthy people that

live here on the lake.

Somebody's coming up to the island, y'all.

You ever hear of an old-fashioned cocktail?

I've heard of them. Tell me this wouldn't be

a good liquor if we can make it clear.

I've been brainstorming about how we can switch up this corn

liquor and make it something a little bit more premium.

[Kelly] Oh, God.

I don't know if I'm gonna sneeze or puke.

Tim, this isn't a 10-gallon operation here.

This is 1,000 gallons we got to produce.

All we want to do, get to Kentucky, make 1,000 gallons of

liquor, and get it to Canada.

I know you guys are from Virginia.

-Mm-hmm. -We're in Kentucky now.

It's totally different up here.

-Cut the lights off, guys. -Uh-oh.

[man] What's going on in here?

[moonshiner] This is how we make the moonshine.

[twangy music plays]

[Tim] Come on, Howard. We got to get loaded up.

-What, we digging graves? -No, man.

You know how it is. When you set up stills,

you got to have tools, man.

In Culpeper County, Virginia...

-[Tim] Oh [bleep]. -[Howard] God dang.

...after a group of vigilantes destroyed their stash house

and still site,

Tim and Howard are moving their operation to

the heartland of Bourbon, where they plan to produce

1,000 gallons of tariff-free liquor for their customer

in Canada.

[Tim] Yeah, get that water hose, too.

All right, Howard. Look, this is all we got, man.

We got to get to Kentucky and get out of Virginia,

because these people here is crazy.

You know, every time we turn around, they're after us

on something.

Kentucky is far enough away from Virginia where I feel like

it's a safe place to be.

And we all talk the same language.

[Howard] This is what we're bringing to Kentucky.

[Tim] Well, I mean, that's a start, we ain't got no still.

We ain't got nothing else.

[Howard] So we got a couple shovels, a hoe, a goddang pickaxe,

and a water hose. -[Tim] Well, I reached out to

my buddy Gary, which is my dad's old friend.

You know, back in the day, they did some moonshine

business together.

So we get to Kentucky, I'm just hoping that Gary will

come through for us.

He's a good contact.

He's been there for his whole life.

He knows the outlaw business, and he's the man

I need to talk to.

And then on top of that, Kentucky is all about

distilleries anyway because of

the area, the terrain, the limestone water.

You know, way back, all the distilleries, this is

where they started going from illegal to legal anyway.

So I'm thinking there's a lot of resources out there.

There's a lot of grain out there.

You know, there's a lot of people out there making alcohol.

But now all these tariff taxes, it's taking some of those guys

down too, right? -Yeah.

But for us, that'll be resources.

We're going to swoop up what they dropping off.

This might be one of your most genius ideas ever.

[Tim] Think about it.

We'll be closer to where we need to be anyway.

The Ohio River connects to the Mississippi.

Guess where the Mississippi goes? Canada.

Put the thousand gallons on a boat,

that'll get to Canada.

So, you know, no guarantee, but right now we got to go.

You're damn right we got to go.

-We should have been gone. -Yeah, all right.

Oh, my God. Kentucky.

[music plays]

[phone ringing]

Gary.

Yeah, man. I'm glad you called me back.

It's Gary now.

So what's the deal, Gary?

You can't do it?

What do you mean you can't do it?

Well, I guess you can --

OK, well, that'll work too, I guess.

I mean, you trust him, right? OK.

We're loading up. We're on our way right now.

All right, see you.

Well, now Gary's got some health problems.

He said he can't really physically help us,

but he can help us.

But he's got this guy that used to work with him that he knows

the liquor business named DJ.

In the moonshine business and the outlaw business,

normally we know people for years, or even generations,

and we know relatives.

When someone just pops up out of nowhere, it can

give you that question mark a little bit.

All I know is we need to get there, and we'll kind of

analyze the situation, all right, when we get there.

We'll figure this DJ guy out.

-Let's get our asses to Kentucky. -And then we'll see where

it goes after that.

We can't back up now, Howard.

[Tickle] I'm gonna back it back up over there.

-[Henry] Yeah. -[Tickle] I can't see.

[Henry] Come on back, come on back, come on, all right.

-[Henry] All right. -[Tickle] All right.

That worked good, man.

That worked like a dang charm, didn't it, Henry?

In Franklin County, Virginia...

[Henry] Just turn just a little back toward me.

There we go.

After losing time

to Tim and Howard's doomed shine operation,

Tickle and Henry turn to apple brandy to make a quick profit.

Here we go. We got it.

But finding no source of Winesap apples for

Henry's family recipe, they rolled the dice on mashing in

fresh apple cider instead.

Hey, Henry, how's that mash tasting?

Tasting good, man. Tasting real good.

That's great.

We got this apple cider from a friend of Henry's that's got

a local orchard here around.

Now, the problem is, Henry always uses

Winesap apples.

It's a recipe that his dad passed down to him and his

grandpa passed down to his dad.

Now, while there are Winesap apples in this cider,

it's a mixture of five different apples.

So, I'm a little concerned to see how it's gonna come out.

All right. That's it right here.

-We good. -That's it.

[Paige] Yeah, that's it.

[Tickle] All right. We got all that over in there.

You know, the difference from this cider to the Winesap

apples could be comparative to the difference in a single malt

and a blended whiskey.

While both of them are good, one's always

much more distinct.

She's rolling.

Let's go ahead and get her capped up.

We won't make no liquor till we get the cap on, do we?

There you go. Now check this cap out.

Look at all the axe holes.

This cap has been around so much.

It's seen many men go to prison.

Well, I bet it has.

Just seen a many men make a lot of pile of money, too.

[Tickle] There we go.

You pull the other side across there, Paige.

There you go. She looks, she looks pretty doggone good over here.

-Let's pace that baby up. -[Tickle] Yes, sir.

This run right here could either make or break our season.

Oh, oh [bleep]. Henry.

-[Henry] All right. -Check it out.

Look at her yonder. Lord, she looks good.

I can smell it. I can smell the apple.

[Tickle] We're already four weeks behind because we've been

helping Tim, and we're in this apple cider brandy run

for money and even more time.

If we don't have something good to start selling our customers

soon, we stand to lose every one of them.

-It's getting close, y'all. -[Paige] I know it smells good.

It does smell good, don't it my guy?

You can smell the whole [indistinct].

It smells good.

I'm just anxious to see what we get out of this.

Oh, that's a good looking bead on it now, ain't it?

[Paige] It did look good.

[music plays]

-Oh, my God. -[Paige] We might be on to something.

-Oh, my God. -[Henry] We are on to something.

[Tickle] It's actually sweeter than our old apple brandy.

And I swear, I can taste some notes of honey in there

on the back of it.

I think we can get more than what we're getting for

the brandy made out of the Winesap apples.

After trying that taste and smelling it, I think

you may be right. -If this apple cider brandy

had turned out bad, we'd have lost

a lot more money and time.

But it turns out, we've got a whole different set of

problems now.

We need to find a good place to store this.

You know, Tim's stash, like, it burned up

almost 800 gallons in it.

We can't be having that happen to us.

We can't have no more setbacks.

This lake, it's public. There's people all over it.

Can just anybody roll up on this island?

You know, no one would ever suspect us being on this island

like this. It's a perfect cover.

Be close to our customers, less time transporting it.

We shouldn't have anybody trying to follow us,

so we should be in good shape.

We shouldn't have to leave it on the island that long.

Stash it there, pick it up, we got the boat,

make the delivery, and get our money.

You know what? You feeling strongly about it, Henry?

I say let's go for it.

All right.

[music plays]

What took you so long to get here?

Well, the still site's not very easy to get to.

Well, I hope that you're not tired because we've got a lot

of work to do. This mash is ready to run.

In Graham County, North Carolina,

after an unscrupulous outsider tanked the regional moonshine

market with cheap jars of industrial grade alcohol...

Our area's flooded with that.

$15 a jar for that liquor right there.

Amanda and Kelly need to come up with a strategy to eke out

a profit of their expiring batch of corn mash.

You know, the mash is ready to run.

The question is, do we run it after what Mark and Digger

told us, or do we dump it in the creek?

[Amanda] Well, I've been putting some thought to this.

I think we could dress it up, but we'll run the corn liquor

and we'll make it taste like something way different.

We would just lose money selling liquor to customers

who want to buy for $15 a jar.

I mean, it's not worth the time and the effort even to get out

to our still site.

You ever hear of an old-fashioned cocktail?

-I've heard of them. -You ever have one?

-No. -If we can craft the corn mash

into a more premium spirit,

then we can sell it for a higher price.

So I brought some ingredients along to play with it a bit.

So I brought everything to make you an old-fashioned cocktail.

And you taste it, and you tell me this wouldn't be

a good liquor if we can make it clear.

I mean, I'm open for ideas.

This is obviously a big risk, because we're doubling down.

We're spending twice as much time and a little bit of extra

money on changing the spirit around a little bit.

So, hopefully it pays off.

I think these changes could be worth it, but I just gotta

convince Kelly to get on the same page first.

OK, so old-fashioned is whiskey, bitters,

sugar, and water.

During prohibition, they started adding cherries

and oranges in.

So take a cube of sugar, bitters.

Bitters is a old, traditional recipe where

they're making an extract of different

botanicals and spices.

So we're gonna give it some orange and cherry.

And then you just muddle a little bit with your muddler

and your whiskey.

[Kelly] Here we are in the woods, Amanda says she's gonna

make me a cocktail. You know, maybe rather than

running this corn liquor,

Amanda just wants to drink her sorrows away.

[Amanda] Try that.

You know, it's actually pretty good.

So you're trying to tell me that we can make a clear liquor

that tastes like that?

[Amanda] What we're gonna do is we're gonna make our own bitters.

Just a gallon of that is all I'm gonna need.

And then we're gonna strip this mash, right?

It'll be really quick if we just strip it.

-Uh-huh. -I wanna do a stripping run

because the idea is we're gonna re-distill this a second time.

So essentially, we're going to use the stripping run,

flavor it with the ingredients for the old-fashioned,

and then re-distill it in a spirit run to fortify it.

I mean, if you think you can make clear liquor taste like

that, I don't know why we ain't already been doing it.

I know if we do this and we do it right, people are gonna

go nuts for this.

I never heard of it, so I'm game.

No risk, Kelly. No what?

Jail time?

-No reward. -[Kelly] Oh.

[Henry] Hey, well, boys, it's gonna be a big move today, isn't it?

[Tickle] Uh-huh. You need me to put a hand

on something, holler.

Henry came up with the idea to stash our brandy over here on

one of these small islands.

Tickle, can you grab this one, too?

And then just sell our apple cider brandy to some

pretty wealthy people that live here on the lake.

[Henry] Come on, baby.

-[engine revving] -[Tickle] There she goes.

[Henry] All right, boys, let's roll.

I'm gonna show y'all an island, blow your mind, Tickle.

It's a beautiful place to store this liquor.

Well, y'all just show me where to go, and we'll get

this stuff hid.

[Henry] Look at all those houses, man.

-[Tickle] Oh, you're right. -You're talking money.

[Paige] Yeah, it's some nice houses.

I mean, they should be wanting some good liquor.

[Tickle] You gotta have money to have a house on the lake,

especially some of these. -Big money.

You got money to live on the lake in a house like that,

Henry, you're right.

Up here's the first island I was looking at.

Y'all check it out and see what y'all think.

[Tickle] I'm not totally sold on storing our shine

on this public island.

Even though Henry's assured me it's safe, there's always risk

when you're transporting shine.

You want to just put them on the beach, I'll help you

tow them up in there, Paige.

You've got the boaters out here, the public.

You've also got lake patrol.

Yeah, right here would be good.

Yeah, baby. Hey, put them couple right here.

We'll be good.

[Tickle] Say, we need to make a few contacts and see if we can't

get some of this stuff sold. -[Henry] Sounds like a plan.

-Beautiful, let's catch that boat before it washes away. -[Tickle] Yeah.

Now that we've got all our shine hid on this island,

we're gonna come back tomorrow with some jars.

We're gonna start jarring this stuff up.

We're gonna start selling.

Hey, Henry.

See what this son of a bitch will do.

Oh, there you go. Yes, you got some power

-[Henry] Whoo-hoo! -[Tickle] Yeah!

This is your high-proof bumper right here.

This thing is freaking awesome.

[Kelly] Oh, yeah, this is the trick right here for making

your high-proof stuff.

You know, the first thing we're gonna do here

is a stripping run, and basically,

a stripping run is just running to get all the alcohol out of

the mash that we can so we can use it for

a spirit run later. -[Amanda] Here's what I brought.

-[Amanda] Cherries. -Sweet.

-[Amanda] And oranges. -[Kelly] All right.

So, it'll be a lot of the flavor for

our old-fashioned is right here.

So, the whole process here is I'm gonna use the alcohol

that we stripped today and make different flavor extracts.

Each one will be a flavor component of

the old-fashioned cocktail.

So, I'm hoping to extract the oranges,

the cherries, and the bitters separately.

And then we re-distill them together,

they should come out balanced and taste just like

an old-fashioned. -So, what you got?

These are...

all of our ingredients that we're gonna use to

make the bitters.

As we get the spirit off the still, we're just gonna

start adding these ingredients into the alcohol to actually

extract all these flavors.

Well, you done sold me on it, so I think we should just

get to it. -[Amanda] For this recipe,

the bitters are one of the most important ingredients,

and I need maybe close to

a gallon of bitters for a run this size.

We have nutmeg, chamomile. We have allspice.

Commercial bitters right now, for a small bottle,

a few ounces, is maybe $20,

which is like $500 for a gallon.

And then I have the wormwood.

The plan is to just make our own bitters

for a fraction of the cost.

This is our bittering agent.

This is what's gonna make the bitters bitter.

And then all these are gonna cut it down

and make it taste good.

I've read all different kinds of recipes on bitters,

and I've seen some of the old-fashioned recipes have

60 or more ingredients.

So, my idea is to just pick ingredients that I think taste

good and eliminate the ones that I really don't care for.

It should be ready.

It should be coming any time, because it's hot.

-Oh! -[Kelly].Look at that.

[music plays]

Oh, it's hot.

Yeah, it dries right up on your hands.

We can just get the first few gallons off of here

as a nice high proof.

That'll be perfect to make the bitters with.

This is gonna be my first time trying to make bitters,

so I really don't know how these flavors are gonna

mix together. Hopefully it turns out well.

If this doesn't all go as planned, we're out quite a bit.

The time it took us to do these extra runs, the money we spent

on additional ingredients, and we've ruined a whole batch

of corn liquor.

The higher proof this is, it's gonna immediately start

extracting all the nice aroma and flavor

from our ingredients.

So this is gonna make just pure orange extract.

Every old-fashioned needs cherries, so now we just gotta

put together all the dry ingredients to make

the bitters, add them together and see what happens.

And then this high-proof alcohol should do its job

and start extracting some bitters for us.

Very strong.

[Kelly] That looks like a dang snow globe,

they's so much stuff in it.

[Amanda] I know. I think this is enough.

We can pretty much strip the rest of the alcohol out

quick, get all the way down to the low tails and put it

in our barrels.

We want to bring over a lot of cherry, a lot of orange,

and then that bitters is just there to give it that

old-fashioned flavor, you know?

You know, here we stand with what should have been

a good run of corn liquor, and we've got two barrels of

fruity-looking stuff and a couple of jars

of funky-looking stuff,

and we're gonna mix all this stuff together,

put it back in the pot, and we're gonna hope that this

spirit run is the most enticing,

old-fashioned cocktail that you've ever put in your mouth.

Hey, look at this go.

-We're doing it. -Ha!

[Tim] You know, Howard, I don't love this whole idea.

Tim, this isn't a 10-gallon operation here.

This is 1,000 gallons we got to produce.

-Uh-huh. -And one of your friends, that you trust...

-Yeah. -...he's put us in the trust of some guy we've never met

in our lives. -You know, right now,

things are a little bit too hot for us in Virginia.

I got an old friend named Gary in Kentucky.

You know, Gary goes way back in the moonshine business.

He's open to help, but he can't physically help.

He says that he's got another guy that used to work for him,

and he would like to connect me to this guy, DJ.

I just hope this guy knows something about moonshine.

You know, know what we need. You know what I'm saying?

We got to have grain, right? We got to have corn.

We got to have sugar. We got to have stills.

We got to have a location. We got to have good water.

And hopefully this guy can keep his mouth shut about

the whole operation.

We need someone who can keep all this quiet.

We don't want no one to know that we are here.

All we want to do, get to Kentucky,

make 1,000 gallons of liquor,

and get it to Canada.

Let's do it now.

You know, this guy, DJ, I know nothing about him,

but I'm gonna have to go on my gut feeling when I meet him.

If it feels good, then we're good.

If it doesn't feel good, then it's gonna be no deal.

DJ?

-[DJ] Yes, sir. -All right.

Seems like we've got a mutual friend here.

-Yes, sir. -[Tim] Mm-hmm.

-Who's this guy? -[Tim] That's Howard.

[Tim] Howard's been with me a long time.

Well, how do you know our friend?

-Hey, I've worked for him. -[Tim] Then what kind of work?

-Concrete. -[Tim] OK.

Well, he recommended you.

He told me somebody was coming, but I didn't quite know

who it was.

Well, we're in a different kind of business,

so we probably don't say that too openly, you know?

What kind of business you thinking, sir?

Well, we in the liquor business.

-I understand that. -[Tim] OK.

We need a location, and we need some equipment.

Probably got one of those.

We got a location nobody else knows about.

We're gonna go far enough in the woods, that's all

I can say. -OK.

-I know you guys from Virginia. -Mm-hmm.

We in Kentucky now.

I don't know how you run things down there.

-It's totally different up here. -Yeah.

We up here in the heart of Bourbon country.

There's a whole lot of outlaws up here.

[Tim] Yeah.

I've been in the business a long time.

Not my first day. Yeah.

So we're gonna make this work...

or not. -[Tim] I'm in business.

I'm with you.

I can give you a location tonight if you want it.

[Tim] Yeah, I want to see it. We need it as soon as possible.

-All right. -[Tim] All right.

-Are you ready? -Let's roll.

I'm gonna tell you what, son.

You got us in the by-God backwoods of Kentucky mountains

right here.

[Tim] Well, I mean, I'm just following him.

So wherever he's going, I guess we can go.

Because of all the problems we've had, Howard and I,

we kind of made a decision to go to Kentucky.

I never made moonshine out here.

I don't know the lay of the land,

and I don't know the place.

But right now, I only got a few weeks to get this

tariff-free 1,000 gallons of moonshine to Canada.

You put us in charge of dealing with Gary,

and he's your connect here, and now we're with this

gentleman, and he's bringing us out to God knows where.

[Tim] My buddy Gary, he set us up with DJ.

Hopefully, he's got everything we need, a location and a still

and whatever we need to make it happen.

-This is the place? -Yes, sir.

Let's see what you're working with here.

-Looks good. -[DJ] It's all I can offer right here, right now.

Man, that's a big, old building,

like a warehouse, man. -[DJ] Yes, sir.

It's a huge, old barn, way back in the woods, sitting right on

a creek bank.

I mean, it's almost, like, too perfect to believe.

[Howard] Damn. What we got here?

[Tim] You got some submarine still.

[Howard] Holy smokes.

-These are your rigs? -Yes, sir.

[Howard] The barn is magical.

I mean, everything we need covered,

sheltered, off-the-beaten path. Hidden, gates locked.

Look at yonder.

-[Tim] Oh, that's the caps. -There's the caps on.

Stills.

We mash in right here. We got our worm right here.

Truck there. We're out the door.

-Yeah, can I drive in? -Yes, sir.

This is a miracle.

I feel like this man has everything we need but the mash.

Yeah, what about cornmeal, sugar, and all that

kind of stuff? -Yeah, I set that up.

We can get it, too. I'll figure out and talk to

one of the farmers around here.

This whole plan is coming together.

Great location. Good-looking stills.

DJ's like, "I got you."

Let's see what's going on in this creek.

Like I said, the spring's about

three-quarters of a mile up.

Oh, yeah, that's good water right there.

The water is a little bit low, but then again, it's running.

All you got to do is dam it up, and you'll have plenty of water

in no time.

-[Tim] Oh, yeah, that's clear. -Yeah, that's good.

[Howard] We're running through limestone.

That's cold, too. That's good.

That's filtered. That's good.

Kentucky limestone water, I mean, world famous.

It's just perfect for making alcohol.

The minerals and the pH level, it helps with fermentation.

It's gonna allow us to make a better product

and more of it.

I mean, we can work with that, but we got one other thing

we got to do.

We got to put some cameras up here.

Looking at the barn, looking at the stills,

you know, everything's great, but then again, I'm thinking

about what has happened back in the past, back in Virginia.

We had some problems with other still sites.

Yes. What you got in mind?

So I'm thinking here, we need to set some

game cameras up here, too, because, you know,

you just never know.

[metallic tapping]

All right.

See, I got it tilted down a little bit.

It's gonna cover a whole lot right here.

It's like we just won the lottery.

All I need is some ingredients, mash in.

Hey, we got it made.

First thing, we need some sugar and cornmeal.

-I have a drop spot tomorrow. -All right, let's do that then.

Love it. How about that?

-Let's get out of here. -Oh, thank you so much.

-Good deal. -Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

[music plays]

What do you think, Paige? Where we at?

Looks like we keep going straight,

we should be all right. -[Henry] Cool.

[Tickle] Now that we've got our brandy hidden on this island,

Henry's arranged a potential sale with a wealthy customer

who is really interested in our good apple cider brandy.

[Henry] We make this sale today, boys, we're gonna make some

big money. -[Tickle] Big money.

-[Tickle] That's what I'm about. -We're gonna rock and roll.

I'm not totally sold on storing our brandy over here on

this public island.

There's a lot of dangers out here.

[Henry] Got us, Paige?

I mean, are the risks really gonna be worth the rewards?

Now we're getting somewhere. I just hope nobody stole

that liquor while we were gone. -Yeah, for real.

[Tickle] I feel like a pirate, Henry, you know that?

I feel like, "Aye aye, Captain."

-[laughing] -Aye, matey.

[Tickle] What do you think, Henry?

[Henry] I hope the liquor's still here.

I think that's it over there, ain't it?

-[Henry] Oh, yeah. -[Tickle] So far, so good.

Now, we're not just gonna sell this stuff by

the five-gallon bucket.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna break this down

into quart jars.

Oh, ain't that pretty? There it is.

-Liquid gold, boys. -[Tickle] Good and clear, too, ain't it?

Because we can get a higher price selling it like that than

I can by the gallon jug or by the bucket.

[Henry] All right, boys. Let's make some money.

While this lake is a public lake,

these personal docks are not.

And we're gonna go meet Henry's friend Tony right here

on his dock.

Henry, how do you know this guy, Tony?

We met a long, long time ago, and he just got beaucoup money.

He got a huge-ass house down here, keeps his mouth shut,

and he don't buy nothing except the primo stuff.

If it's not the primo primo, don't even pull up to his dock.

Tony's house is up in a small cove.

Makes it much more private.

Tony, what's up, buddy?

[Tony speaking]

[Henry] So how you doing, buddy?

[Tony speaking]

[Henry] Been a while.

Man, we got some stuff for you today, Hoss.

-[Henry] Hand me one of those jars. -Yeah, sir.

The costs are really adding up on this.

This wasn't a cheap shine to make.

We're gonna have to get $150 a gallon on this brandy,

or we're gonna find ourselves underwater on this.

[Henry] You know, I don't come with anything but the best.

-[Paige] Coming in. -[Henry] Why don't you try that out?

Henry said you only drink your best.

[Tony speaking]

[Tickle] Now, these wealthy customers, they have a pretty refined

taste when it comes to alcohol.

I really hope this customer likes this, or it's gonna be

a long time before we turn a profit on this brandy.

What do you think, buddy?

[Tony speaking]

[Henry] Thank you, big guy. Two boxes, right?

[Tony speaking]

Getting our first sale of this season done, it feels great.

-Good to see you again, buddy. -[Tony] Yeah, yeah.

If you need any more, just holler at us.

-[Tony] OK. -And we'll fix you right up.

We charge this guy $150 a gallon at six gallons now.

Now, that's a pretty doggone good $900 tax-free payday.

See you, buddy.

[Tony speaking]

[Tickle] First sale down.

[Henry] Whoo-wee, what do you think, Tickle?

-Tell you what -- -That was a good sale, wasn't it?

Yes, it was.

Henry might be on to something here.

If we can keep making sales and stay out of trouble,

the potential for earning on this lake is limitless.

If we keep going like this, we'll be sold out in no time.

[Tickle] You got that right, man.

[Henry] Now let's get these few jars off here, get them filled up,

make us another sale.

Sales are going great here on this lake, and Henry, he's got

another potential buyer for us.

It won't be too much longer. We're gonna have to

make another run, ain't it?

All we gotta do is fill up a few more jars and be

right on our way. -All right, guys.

We got two more of these bad boys left.

All right, let's roll.

Sale here. That's gonna be it.

Damn, somebody's coming up to the island, y'all.

[Tickle] Get this stuff on the boat.

[Henry] Get it on the boat, Paige.

[Tickle] Get it on the boat. Quick as we can.

[tense music plays]

[Tickle] Throw it to her, Henry.

We have no idea what these guys saw or why they got

so close to this island and then turned around and really sped

off the other direction.

That was just a bad luck right there.

One thing's for sure, this island here is burned.

Only thing we can do now, make our final sale for the day

and get out of here.

[Kelly] Everything looks intact, Amanda.

[Amanda] Well, that's good. I was worried about that.

Today, we're going to try to take typical, Appalachian,

corn liquor, and we're gonna try to turn it into a premium,

clear, old-fashioned cocktail in a jar.

If this works, we can market this to high-end premium

customers, people who aren't in the market to buy $15 a jar

of crap liquor.

On the other hand, if this fails, we're out twice the time

and money we could have spent doing something else.

This is our bitters.

-Oh, God. -Oh, that burns.

I don't know if I'm gonna sneeze or puke.

[Amanda] I feel like it's way too bitter.

It's not very balanced, and the flavor is just really off.

I was kind of winging it.

I've never done this before. I don't know

what a good ratio is of some of these ingredients

are very intense, like wormwood and nutmeg.

And the whole idea with wormwood is it tastes

bitter, right? So everything else is there

to improve the flavor of it, but I just don't think we have

enough of the positive flavor ingredients.

So maybe we make another tincture of more of

the good flavors and mix it to cut back the really

overpowering flavors.

So we're gonna use a cooking technique to essentially

rapidly extract these better tasting ingredients

and balance out the bitters.

I'm glad we didn't use all of this.

We're gonna put these ingredients and the alcohol in

the jar in a pot of boiling water and basically cook it

like a tea to rapidly extract this flavor.

Hopefully by making individual extracts of all these flavors,

we can kind of isolate.

If any of these are giving an off flavor, we're gonna

know when we're done, and we can blend something back

that tastes the way we want it to taste.

[Kelly] Whoo! That's hot already.

This is our last hope.

If this doesn't work, then we've ruined our chances

of creating a clear, old-fashioned moonshine.

The alcohol actually has a lower boiling point than

water does. This is still boiling,

and you can actually see it

extracting, even though it's not even in

the water anymore. Pretty cool.

Science.

So we're gonna add a little bit of chamomile.

I know I want to taste more ginger in there.

I think the vanilla is gonna help sweeten it up a little bit

and hopefully cut back some of that bitterness.

Hopefully, if we just increase the good flavors, we'll be able

to counteract the bad flavor.

It's like three parts of the new one

and one part of the old one.

That smells a lot better.

I'm getting to smell all the other things now, right?

Like I can smell that orange, I can smell the ginger, I can

get that chamomile and some vanilla bean in there.

[Kelly] I mean, that's bitter without being offensive.

Right, well, that's what we're going for.

So then let's uncover this, get all this going,

and get this run going then. -[Amanda] OK.

So, I think we got the bitters balanced back out,

and it's actually tasting pretty good.

The only tricky part now is to see if all these flavors,

the orange and the cherry and the bitters, are going to

marry together and actually taste like an old-fashioned

when it comes out the other end of that still.

-[Kelly] Oh, there it goes. -[Amanda] All right.

-[Kelly] Man, that smells so citrusy. -It does.

I definitely got that orange right up front.

That's strong on there.

I mean, there are some flavors that's coming through there,

and it's reasonably aromatic.

I'm dying of suspense.

[music plays]

Ooh.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

-I think it's a home run. -Wow.

This is blowing my mind.

We're tasting this, and it's just like

the old-fashioned that she made for us.

It's just like a bartender mixed this, and it's clear.

There's no reason this won't sell good.

-No [bleep]. -Good job.

[Amanda] That's old-fashioned, I'll tell you what.

So what all do you know about this guy we're making this sale

to today? -We dealt with him years ago.

Haven't saw him in a long time, but when we made this top-notch

brandy, I figured I'd reach out to him.

Name is John. But he's gonna meet us

out here, up here around the s-curves.

He's got the money, and I know he's straight-up.

I know he's a cool dude.

I really hope John buys the rest of this brandy.

After that surprise visit from the boat and these guys that

saw our moonshine, I really don't feel like having anything

illegal out here on me.

Supposed to be waiting for us off this main channel.

Should be on a pontoon boat.

-What's up, John? -[John] How you doing, Henry?

[Henry] We got some good stuff for you today.

-Do you? -[Henry] Whoo-wee.

I've been waiting for it because I'm running low.

[Henry] I heard that.

[John] All right, let me grab onto that thing.

You're driving around like Steve McQueen in this.

Yeah, well, I'm not that good of a captain, you know.

-Good seeing you, big guy. -Good to see you.

I'm telling you. We got you a little sample.

-You all got the sample? -[John] What'd you bring?

We've got some very rare apple brandy that we made

with apple cider. You're gonna love that.

Oh, yeah.

-That is some good stuff. -[Henry] Man, what do you think?

-That's delicious. -All right.

How much you bring me?

Brought you a whole box, whole case.

[John] All right, that's what I need.

John loves our brandy, and he's taking all we got.

Let's get this on.

Considering how this day started, I feel like we made

a great sale. -[Henry] All right, buddy.

All right, man. Great to see you again.

[Henry] Good to see you again, too, man.

-Enjoy that liquor. -Now all we got to do is

get back to the dock and figure out our next move.

We done 'bout got rid of everything, ain't we?

Everybody else is scratching and scrounging.

-[Tickle] Uh-huh. -We all got already run brandy, man.

[Tickle] Yeah, people can't even find corn hardly yet.

-We running brandy. -[Henry] I love it.

[chuckling]

Make that money, honey. I'm telling you right now.

[Tickle] That's right.

Yeah.

[theme music plays]

We probably need to make it look like somebody's

living here. -Not a bad idea.

We did bring that little tent in, though.

[Tickle] You want to set this tent up that you were talking

about, Henry? -[Henry] Stretch it out, Paige.

Just get the bottom. Don't worry about that top.

There you go.

You can tell we haven't been camping in a long, long time.

[Tickle] No kidding, Henry. Hop right here.

[Henry] We don't have too many rods on it, do we?

Maybe it takes one rod per thing.

They're connected together.

-[Henry] They are? -[Tickle] It's all one piece.

-No, I think Paige has got it. -[Henry] OK.

-Yeah, stick it back through. -Yeah.

That goes through this little hole.

[Paige] All right, all right, all right.

OK, let me get out of the way.

Damn. Wee doggy.

[Tickle] Well, it looks like somebody's camping here now, don't it?

Let's get some of this trash up.

[Tickle] Well, let's see what we got going on in here, Henry.

Oh, my God. Yeah, this is damn sure one person.

My wife ain't gonna get up in this with me.

She's gonna want a whole lot more room than this.

Damn, that tent ain't made for old folks.

[Henry] Yeah.

We do a little fishing, knocking around a little bit.

[Henry] Well, we're locals.

We got a place over the lake here.

What are you doing, fishing?

[woman speaking]

[Henry] One thing, if you find out fooling with liquor or anything

illegal, you've always got people out there that's gonna

stick their nose where it doesn't need to be.

We don't know exactly what this woman seen or what

she knows, but it sure does seem like those guys from

the boat this morning might have been talking.

[Henry] Come on, son, grab that rope, there.

Let's get out of the way. This woman's crazy.

[Tickle] I mean, really.

-[Tickle] I mean, damn. -[Henry] What the hell?

God dang it.

We had a really good thing going on this lake.

[Henry] She knows we've been at that island.

-[Tickle] She damn sure does. -Yep.

But I think it's best we pack up and leave before we draw

the attention of the law.

[Tim] All right Howard, well, you know, we got to get

in this barn, unload all that stuff.

Since I got to Kentucky, it looks like it's just

falling together. Gary connects me to DJ.

DJ shows us the location. We got a barn.

It's on a creek bank. Nice, clean water.

We got stills. We got sugar.

We got corn.

All we need to do now is get back and mash in.

There we go. There we go.

I got some lanterns set over there if you want to

light one, buddy. How you doing, Mr. Tim?

[Tim] All right. All right.

-I'm gonna shut this door. -[DJ] Yeah.

Well, you know, tonight is a night to where we're gonna

actually level these stills up, get them ready.

I'm gonna put some water in them and get mashed in.

It's all we got to do tonight.

Easy with it, Howard. Easy.

Easy with it, Howard.

[suspenseful music plays]

[Tim] Cut the lights off, guys. Somebody's coming.

Cut the lights off. Cut it off.

[suspenseful music plays]

[motors revving]

Maybe they're just riding by.

Well, there you go.

[DJ] Nope, they're coming back across.

[Tim] Coming on the other side.

Uh, OK.

-[Tim] I don't know. -[DJ] What do we need to do?

[Tim] I don't know. Uh-oh.

Uh-oh, they're getting ready to come.

Uh-oh. There ain't no way out.

-[man] What's going on in here? -[Tim] What are y'all doing?

[DJ] Gary gave us permission to be here.

Yes.

[DJ] They're good guys. Gary introduced them to me.

[Tim] So what's the deal then?

[man speaking]

But he told us we could come set up the stills.

OK.

-[man speaking] -Yes, sir.

That's it.

Yeah, 100%.

That means we're on the same side, I guess, somewhat.

[Tim] So what, what, what do we gotta do?

[Tim] It looks like we ain't got no choice.

There's no damn choice in this matter.

Right now, we're in someone else's house,

someone else's property,

and, you know, there's no way we can fight this thing.

And I really need to make the deal and finish the deal

in Canada, so I have no other choice.

[man] All right, fellas, let's go.

[maniacal laughter]

I lost everything I had in Virginia.

I come here, I'm starting all over again.

I really need this opportunity,

but, you know, it is what it is.

I've got to work with him.

You know, he wants us to do a favor for him,

and then he does a favor for us.

DJ got to communicate better.

Well, DJ, you got to get on board with us, man.

Not that it was your fault, man.

This is a whole, big misunderstanding that should

not have happened at all, because this puts us behind

time again.

I'd rather have these guys on my side than be against me.

[DJ] Yes, sir.

There ain't nothing going as planned.

No, this is far from planned now.

Well, I'm getting out of his way.

We're mashing peaches and pumping juice,

Kelly'll get you in a bind,

and he'll get you out of it, too.

Ah, you asshole.

[Mike] You ready? Well, she's a nice one, ain't she?

We're trying to construct a still within one run

we can produce an aged whiskey that tastes like it's been in

a barrel for several years.

-[Jerry] I like it. -[Mike] I do, too.

If this thing works and produces the aged whiskey

that we're looking for here today, we've changed the world.

This is a dadgum warehouse, aint it?

All the illegal stills I ever run was always

in the backwoods.

Getting caught in this large-scale illegal operation,

you know, this could put me in prison for a long time.

You heard that, didn't you?

[Howard] Uh, we just lost power.