ANNOUNCER: This is how we make the moonshine.
I think we ought to go and cap it off.
It's been steaming for a few minutes now
All right. She's hot.
Let's go with it. - All right.
All right.
Slide them on up and on.
Here you go, Brian.
You need you some paste up yonder?
Yeah.
All right.
There you go.
Y'all got enough over yonder?
Money, money, money.
Come on.
Coming across the bridge. - Hold!
Hold it! Don't run.
Don't run.
Son of a bitch.
NARRATOR: In Franklin County, Virginia, Josh,
Tickle, and the Laws make their first run
of the season on foot.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[PANTING]
I thought, when you were behind me with the damn camera,
I thought it was the law.
That's why it took me so long to slow down.
You were right on my heels, man.
Did you make it?
Did you could tell anybody got away?
CAMERAMAN: I just ran.
You just ran.
It's an unwritten rule for moonshiners--
when you get raided, it's every man for hisself.
It's on me to get away.
It's on my buddies to get away.
Right now, I'm just going to take my time,
try to work my way back up a little bit further.
I've got to sit in these words because I can get out
on the main roads or anything yet because they
might be waiting for me.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I don't want to get turned around here.
But I think if we pick up this little trail right
here, it should keep us in the direction we want to go.
Stay in the woods.
We just keep humping it until we get back to the shop.
It'll take us a little bit of time,
but I think it's best to do that instead of trying to get back
to the main road and catch a ride or call
anybody to come and get us.
A lot of times, they'll get on the main roads in a straight
away and they'll park a car.
If you try to cross that hard-top road,
then they'll nail your butt.
I just hope my buddies got away.
We'd also like money, but I don't care about the money
as long as nobody goes to jail.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All right, Jerry.
Let's try to get this bad baby fixed.
Grab have our new core.
Got our new core.
I got her at a dump.
What you think?
Damn, I hope it does, bubba.
I don't want to blow my damn self up no more.
NARRATOR: In the Haywood County, North Carolina,
after an explosion derailed their first attempt
at building a wooden still pot, Mike and Jerry
start over from scratch.
We're making a snail out of a charred wood barrel.
Hopefully that's going to transfer
the aged flavor into a clear alcohol,
which is what we're wanting.
Best of both worlds.
That just still amazes me, man.
Keep that for a souvenir.
We're trying to build another core.
What happened last time, son of a gun
like to blow it up and blow my damn head off.
I'm going to solder it from the inside.
Oh!
Damn.
Oh, god.
Barrel blowed up with alcohol in it.
There was alcohol vapor in this barrel.
We can't put fire to a barrel that's
got alcohol vapors in it.
Putting some water in the spirals
try to get all the alcohol vapors out
to where we can at least put a fire to it
without blowing ourselves up.
I tell you what, man, I'm a little damn gun
shy of this barrel.
That's got to help it some.
Oh, yeah.
We'll throw some fire to it and see what happens.
So we've got to take them precautions.
I ain't fixing to get my ass burned up again.
Let it cook, Jerry.
We'll see what happens here.
We're going to put a fire in there
just to see if it's going to burn.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Bang!
You got me.
No flames.
That's a good thing.
It means we are ready to put this core in and solder it up.
Let's get something accomplished.
You know me and Jerry, we done had
a tough start to our season.
We lost a lot of liquor.
We're broke and we ain't got nothing started yet.
We'll see she's going to fill up here.
Oh, yes.
You know, this still should have been done by now.
I feel like I'm spinning my wheels.
We've got to get this thing in the woods
and get some liquor making.
Pulling down there nice and tight, ain't it?
Ain't it.
Get the bottom side done, we'll
be ready to roll to the woods.
You know, this barrel we're using,
it's going to be both our mash barrel and our still pot.
We've got to make sure we've got a way to access
and clean this thing out and get our materials into this barrel.
So we're going to cut about a 4-inch hole in the top of it.
There will go.
This hole right here is actually going
to be our cap where our alcohols don't condense
and work over to our condenser.
Also, it's going to serve as our port to get our ingredients in,
get it stirred up, because we've got
a mash in inside this barrel.
Probably the smallest damn cap in history, son.
Got this built that fits like a glove.
I'll be surprised if we even had to put and paste around it.
It's one hell of a unique cap, ain't it?
Damn right.
It'll work.
Now that we've got our still built, all me and Jerry's
got to do is figure out how the hell are we going
to put a fire under this damn thing
without burning the wood up, and make damn sure
we don't blow ourselves up no more.
We got it-- we got it ready to heat.
Now we just need a way to heat it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Nothing in the last two or three hours.
Nobody at all?
There's no way you can check to see
if the feds brought anybody in for them
and give me a call back?
You know, we got connections all over the county.
First thing I did was make a couple of phone calls trying
to find out what's going on.
Holler back at me, all right?
Didn't bring anybody in up to county jail.
No.
I tried to call Josh, tried to call Tickle.
I don't have Brian's number.
No answer.
He and I, we made it back to the shop.
But Tickle, Josh, Brian, you know,
I'm really concerned about them.
I hope the feds ain't got them.
It's obvious that something went wrong, you know.
We don't know what.
It's time to take a drink my nerves are tore all the pieces.
And you were the first one who spotted them.
I heard you yell somebody's coming across the bridge.
I knew I had the feeling when we got out of the truck.
What'd I tell you?
I sat here and I said got a bad feeling.
Damn almighty, man.
They might run him to death, ain't it.
Man, what the hell?
Oh, man.
God.
Jesus.
It is good to see you.
Took you long.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
You know, I had to find my way back, man.
- I got goosebumps on me, man. - Look at that.
Look at that.
What are you talking about?
When I looked up and these guys was hollering freeze,
first thing that went through my mind
was I ain't going back to jail.
You got a shot of liquor around here or something?
I might got a shot of liquor.
I need one of them.
We've been talking to Tickle for the past couple of years.
We've been working together.
We've been drilling in his head how to get away,
what to do if you get raided.
Tickle, you got away.
Evidently, the stuff that we put in his head,
he listened and he listened real well.
I know you was going to sort it outside,
but Josh and Brian was in that middle, right behind me.
Right in that hole.
They was hung up.
They was tied up.
And that guy that ran by me, he was focused.
He done zoomed in on them.
Didn't even look over our way.
He never even turned toward us.
All I can say is if one of them
did get got, first run of the darn season, bail money
ain't going to be easy to come by.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We got a little project we're working on here.
Me and Mike is going to build a rocket elbow.
So basically we're needing some four by four square tubing.
And then on our legs, we'll find some room
inch and 1/2, inch and 1/4.
So we'd like to do is to maybe drop some like 3-inch circles
here maybe, some 4-inch circles on the bottom,
we just weld on to keep it from sinking up in the mud.
We can do it.
Do you got plasma cutters? [INAUDIBLE]
Mm-hmm.
If we use the normal propane burner on a wooden barrel,
I think it would just catch fire and burn.
Rocket elbow, what it's going to do
is to be able to heat this core from the inside out.
NARRATOR: A rocket stove burns wood
at extremely high temperatures with near-total combustion
and almost no smoke.
The secret to its efficiency lies in its elbow design, which
draws a large volume of oxygenated fresh air
through its intake tube and into direct contact
with the burning fuel.
As heat from the fire rises into the heat pipe,
a strong upward draft is created, causing more air to be
pulled into the intake pipe.
Its name comes from the rocket sound caused
by the air quickly rushing through the intake tube
and stoking the flames.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You know, this design, we're using this rocket elbow,
basically it just works on an old technology.
And most people call it the chimney effect.
So everybody knows that the heat rises.
So if you get a fire built and you channel it one direction,
it has nowhere else to go but up.
It actually creates a vacuum.
Well that vacuum is going to actually add oxygen to a fire
and make it hotter.
So there we go.
There's our burner.
Our wood feed here.
This is going to be our fresh air income.
Our actual flame and our heat will take place right here.
It'll travel through the tube and then up to the flue.
This kind of reminds me a lot of our column still.
You know, it's something that's never been done before,
at least not that we know of.
Perfect.
I think we're about ready to sit her on the legs, ain't we?
All right.
You know, I'm damn well hoping this works.
I know it's going to get hot.
It's going to burn, but I'm worried we're
going to burn something down.
That son of a bitch ought to burn hotter
than a nanny goat in a pepper patch
picking six rows at a time.
That's pretty damn hot, son.
The next step all we gotta do is
set this thing up on the stand, mash it in, we're done.
We're ready for the season.
Oh ah!
[LAUGHS]