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[Jay Prater] 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 and 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, as 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 the year, they'd be cussing us, you know, those low-life moonshiners.

And to watch it evolve the way it has over the past five or ten years has just amazed me.

You know, you take these Appalachian Mountains and all, these Blue Ridge Mountains, that 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 and all is just perfect to make moonshine.

You know, ice-cold water.

All these mountains that you can hide in.

And, centrally located, you know, you've got to keep that in mind, too.

You know, we're right here in Virginia, so Philadelphia, New York, North Carolina, Atlanta, you know, Ohio, Chicago, we're right in the middle of it all.

As far as distribution is, we were set .

And for years I'm like, "Ah, damn, making all these sales with this liquor."

And then, you know, it hit me.

Yeah, we are.

We're right here in the middle of it all.

[Roddy Moore] When we're talking about moonshine, that's a term that a lot of people outside the region 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 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 them.

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 it's just part of the customs and the culture of this region.

[Bethany Worley] The 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 in 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 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-- 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 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 state it 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 with the people that settled the area.

And they came out of Ireland.

They came out of Scotland, England.

They 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 that they brought with them .

And it was established here.

It was established in most of the colonies of 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 it did not continue, but in this area it continued.

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 rail-- by boxcar loads here and unloaded, the amount of containers that were shipped in here, it was a real heyday for making it.

And after that, when Prohibition was over, it was legal-- legal to buy it, 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 really tied to families that had a tie going back generations into making whiskey.

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 whiskey 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 of going blind and selling bad whiskey just wasn't taking place because it was a business, and that's what people have to realize.

-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 stills, turnip type stills, steamers that we used to run from nothing?

I mean, from nothing.

Most people these days have to run out and buy, get online and try to buy the equipment.

We build everything that we've ever used.

And with that said, then you've got to get out and, you know, to set up a still site and hopefully make some money, you've got to find a place to put it.

In summertime, you've got all the leaves out so you can go under these big old white oaks and red oaks, and everything's fine.

But then, when wintertime comes and 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 county knew him.

So, we had no problem finding sites.

We'd give a landowner maybe a hundred bucks a week to come through his land.

He didn't care.

The local drank a good liquor.

And then, you got to have the water.

You've got to have enough water to supply that cooling system.

Not only do you have to fill these subs up, but when you go to run that liquor, you've got to have a stream of water that runs all day long.

You can't stop in the middle of it.

You've got to condense all that steam.

You've got to condense it down to your alcohol.

And you're talking about an all-day process from daylight to dark, days and days in a row.

So, you've got to make sure you've got plenty of water.

You've got to make sure you've got plenty of coverage.

You've got to be able to get in and out of a still 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 wintertime, 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 'cause you've got to-- you're going far, far back in the woods.

You're not working on the side of the road anywhere; you're working way back in the woods.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Setting up a still site has a whole lot more to it than most people think.

You've got to find some land.

You've got to have plenty of water.

You've got to have plenty of coverage.

The first thing we do is, of course, is find a piece of land with a nice-sized creek on it, and a 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 flues, and set your still.

The cinder blocks have to be full of dirt.

You put about that much sand or dirt on top of it to level up the still.

Set it.

That's too far.

-We're going to mash it in the barrel, not the still.

-Right, exactly.

-All right.

-You think about the climate 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 .

It's perfect for our grain.

It's perfect for the-- the water that we need.

And that's why our liquor's so good.

That's why our liquor's so good, just because of these springs you can see rolling down these rocks here.

And if you don't have good water, you might as well hang it up.

You can't-- we've-- we've worked out of-- off of rivers, and we've worked off of ponds .

[Austin Law] Y ou can-- so, you can taste it once the liquor comes out?

-[Henry] No, not that.

It just don't produce as much liquor.

[Austin Law] Oh.

[Henry Lee Law] When you turn, when you come off of these springs, like these come straight out of these mountains, you'll make a whole lot more liquor.

And that's what it's all about, good liquor and-- and-- and-- -[Austin] Good turnout.

-[Henry] Good turnout, exactly.

That's what I was trying to say.

Now, you're learning.

[motor pump running] Then you put your water in there.

You get your pump running, put your water in the still.

Get it boiling.

Well, so, we're here now to do a mash.

We mash it in.

Gonna have our certain grains.

We're not worried about our worm.

We're not worried about our thumper.

We're not worried about any of that right now.

Right now, all we wanna do is get this baby mashed in.

Get everything mashed in, boil the water, cook in our grains.

Get everything mashed in, cover it 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'll bring some malted-- we got that malted barley.

It's gonna be just like cornbread when you look in there.

It's gonna be thick.

Once that malted barley hits it and those enzymes in it, it's gonna break it up real thin.

And then-- then the whole trick is we're gonna have to beat the heat out of it.

There's a little trick to that.

You-- 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 some weird stuff, man.

It means it's ready for the water.

And by the time you fill a barrel up, the temperature will be exactly what you're looking for.

It works every time.

-All right, cool.

-Crazy stuff.

Old-timers, man.

You can't argue with them.

-Yeah.

-Don't argue with them.

You know, we like using-- you know, we use an abundance of rye, malt, malted barley, corn, wheat, and all from the 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 is grown right here.

And when you take those pure, fresh ingredients and you grind them up and you mash it in those stills, it's a good feeling.

It's a great feeling because you know there's nothing in it that can harm anybody.

There's no additives, no preservatives.

And we do the same thing with our-- with our peaches.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [Bethany Worley] Growing up in this area, you know, everyone, I don't care who it was, 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 were-- 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."

My grandfather, in 1935, paid 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.

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 have always found it an immense source of pride that people in this area, you know, were so, you know, creative and hardworking that, you know, look what they did with nothing.

And, you know, 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 stereotype, in that-- in that way.

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.

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 probably one of the biggest moonshine businesses this country's ever known.

And, you know, I grew up around it.

I used to take and pump gas for him, and he'd go out to still sites.

He used raw gas back then, came in tin cans, and-- and he'd give me a nickel a can to pump the gas.

There'd be bunches of cans.

Then the next day, those cans would be gone.

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 there'd be four or five guys around the kitchen table, and they'd be talking business.

Of course, at that time, I really didn't know what the business was.

But as I got a little older, he started taking and-- he would take a few pints of liquor and have me to hide it out in the woods.

So, when people come wanting a pint 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, he was 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, with working, working in the factories and all, there's nothing wrong with that.

But I wanted 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 of 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 liquor."

You know, I turned 18 years old.

I said, "I want to make liquor."

The factory up there is killing me, you know, going in at 5 o'clock, or maybe 6 o'clock in the morning, can't get out before 5 o'clock at night.

That just wasn't for me.

So, he said, "All right, son, I'm going to tell you now."

He said, "You go in there, you got to remember a couple of things.

You're going to have diamonds on your fingers, gold around your neck, but the biggest thing is you're going to have shackles on your feet if you stay with it long enough."

And he was right.

You know, you make that money, everything's great.

You've got them diamonds and that gold if you want 'em, but those handcuffs and shackles are definitely on the way.

You know, years of making liquor throughout the county, you sort of build a rapport with the agents and all.

You've got your ATF, which is federal, and you've got your ABC, which is state.

These guys, I mean, they do their job.

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 raid a still site, and they would know who you are.

But they wouldn't go swear out a warrant for you.

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 a still 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, and if you don't have any witnesses, you'd be hung.

And some-- a lot of the agents have done that over the years, you know, just to arrest whomever they wanted to, really, just because they thought they was there, because they must have been working a still site because they was on that road.

But, as time went on, another bunch of agents came around, and they-- I like to think there were much more men because they wanted to catch us.

They wanted to jump on our backs, slam us into the ground, and put the handcuffs on us like a real man.

And a lot of 'em really hated doing their job, I would say, because they did have so much respect for the moonshiners.

But, 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're talking generations of moonshining 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 tie on those recipes, too.

My father always told me, he said, "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 the way it's done.

Don't change anything.

Do it exactly the way that we've been doing it."

And who am I to argue with that?

[♪♪♪♪♪] Get everything mashed in, boil the water, cook in our grains.

Get everything mashed in, cover it 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 piping and tubing that we need to line all that up.

Ready?

-[Austin Law] Yeah.

[Henry Lee Law] 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, you know, you listen to it, and when it quits sizzling and you taste it and it's good and bitter, then you know she's ready to run.

It's not sweet.

All the sugar's done worked out of it.

Put it right there.

Now, you talk about people using hydrometers, some things like that.

You know what a hydrometer is?

[Austin Law] It tastes pretty bitter.

-Whoa.

Yes, it is bitter.

-Yeah.

-No sugar left in that.

Come in.

You bring-- then we bring our propane in with us, and we bring our proofing barrel in with us with a filter.

So, once you dig these flues in, get everything in, all the equipment in, and the beer's ready to run, we come in that morning.

We put our mash over in the still.

We throw the fire to it.

We use propane with no regulators on it.

Come in straight off of the propane tank.

With a regulator, you don't get enough heat to heat a still that size.

So, we always take the regulators off, which is very dangerous.

And once we throw that fire to it, you've got to keep it stirred.

Constantly got to keep it stirred.

If you 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 and 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 starts to boil, you cap the baby.

So, you've got no methanol in your system at all.

It's gone.

Once you cap that baby, when it starts to boil, the steam comes out, which is your 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.

Now, the first place we want to take it is to the thumper or the doubler.

That doubler will have-- usually has chargers in that doubler to where it will increase the alcohol after we get it run.

It also strips it of impurities.

A lot of impurities go through that doubler.

The alcohol travels from the still to the cap, over to the doubler.

Now, it goes from the doubler over to the coil worm.

Now this coil worm, we call it sitting in a water box.

We've got the pump running, cold water is 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-- as it starts to condense, the alcohol starts to condense, the hot water will rise just like heat in any given thing.

Any time you throw heat to something, the heat's going to rise.

So, we've 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 two or three coils, 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 liquor's good and cool.

Because you don't want it too hard, it'll be a little hot.

And once it starts running, it's real high proof.

You see a lot of people grab it right out of the-- right off of the worm and start drinking.

You can't do that.

That stuff is so high proof, I mean, it'll eat the skin off your lips, believe me.

So, that's why we got a proofing barrel.

And we got a filter.

So, as it comes off, we start catching it.

A bucket at a time, we pour it 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 the 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 say at 90, 95 proof.

If you're running brandy, peach brandy, 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 that jar and hit it, if it don't have that big bead on it, you might as well just forget it.

And as far as hydrometers and proofers and all that stuff, we never knew what any of that was.

None of it.

I never saw a proof in my life.

We always did it by eye.

That's the way we were taught.

I tell people that we weren't-- we weren't taught how to make liquor.

We were told how to do it.

And we never changed a thing.

Anything we do, we do it exactly the way my father did it, his buddies, my grandfather did it, and we stick straight to that.

Why change something that's been tweaked 100 years ago?

And that's the-- that's the way we look at it.

[Bethany Worley] I think just the misconception, the stereotype, the big one is that, you know, it's the hillbilly.

It's the hillbilly doing this.

And, you know, if a hillbilly is-- has a lot of ingenuity, they're hardworking, call me a hillbilly.

You know, I'm a hillbilly then.

It's fine with me.

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, you know, it'-- 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.

[Kevin Tosh] You know, moonshine is a big factor in our tourism here in Franklin County, but it's also somewhat in its infancy, which is hard to believe.

It's been around for a very long time.

But here recently, we've started to see the families that have opened up the legal distilleries.

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 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 to Franklin County to experience authentic moonshine.

-And it smells real good.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [music fades out] Thoughtful, functional, beautiful.

Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen.

We focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years and now the New River and Roanoke Valleys.

This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society advancing the interests of women in the arts in Virginia and beyond.