October 14, 2006

 

 

 

 

Teeeeee                                                              

 

 

 

Tennessee Tea Party

The Union County Heritage Festival will be remembering the heritage of moonshine at the Tennessee Tea Party on October 14th.  People in costume will be demonstrating how moonshine was made by using a working still.  While many farmers had their favorite recipes for making mash, one recipe requires sprouting cracked corn.  The cracked corn was placed in a burlap bag and sprouted in spring water.  Then the sprouted corn was cooked with plain cracked corn and sugar to make mash, converting the starches to sugar.  Sometimes old mountaineers would spit into the mash, adding enzymes to help the conversion along.  The cooked mash was placed in burned barrels for fermenting. And sometimes the barrels were placed in the ground to help keep the temperature even and to help with the fermenting process.  This process would take a day or two - depending upon the weather.

The remainder of the process takes place in a still.  The mash is placed in a copper still to be heated and to start the distilling. Copper was used for purity and to avoid lead poisoning.  Steam then rises into what they call the “horses head” at the top of the still and then begins to travel through pipes where it is condensed.  Its next stop is into “thumper kegs” which catch the over flow of the mash.  Mash drops into the bottom of the thumper keg (and is now often referred to as “puke”). Heated alcohol vapors bubble up from this and these vapors travel through the condensation coil or “screw” and liquid alcohol can then be tapped through the cooler keg.  The longer the distilling process, the purer or higher the proof is.

The first part of the batch, which will come out clear, is the most potent – about 190 proof.   Moonshiners would catch that batch and put it in a jug. Each jug would then be a little weaker than the last. When the ‘shine started coming out a yellowish color, it was time to add new mash.  Then all the jugs would be emptied into a barrel for an even blend of the higher and lower proofs.

Come to the Roy Acuff Library and Museum in Maynardville on October 14th and learn about the moonshine heritage of the south.  For further information, contact Leon Graves at 992-9302.

 

 Moonshine

The rural regions of the Southeastern U.S. have a long history of small-scale whiskey production as part of the culture.  For many farmers in remote parts of the country, it was once a way to turn their corn into cash when grain prices weren’t all that high. Remote areas often had difficulty getting their corn to market before it spoiled. Moonshine was a way of using the available corn and earning some money. The imposition of a tax on whiskey was considered an unwanted federal intervention and was largely ignored. 

 

Around the early 1900s, there were distilleries in Union County:  Woods Distillery in Jack Woods Hollow on Hwy 61 between Maynardville and Luttrell and one on Walker Ford Rd.  Malcolm Walker’s daddy, Tim Walker, made legal whiskey in the Leatherwood area of Claiborne County.  Later on during Prohibition, Tim Walker’s brother Henry had a still in an old house up the hollow on the Sharps Chapel property where Malcolm Walker and his wife Laura Lou still live.  Henry Walker and Press Brewer made moonshine and would take it up an old road to the ridge.  There was a fence across the property that could be lifted up and laid down for the wagon to cross over.  Malcolm Walker later went to his brother’s house to saw some wood for him and was very surprised when Milas showed him that he had two stills in one room and another moonshiner was running two stills in a second room.  All the supplies for these operations were furnished by Brownlow Leach.

Now, you can smell a still if you get close enough to it.  There are many recipes for making moonshine, but the basic recipe calls for corn meal, sugar, water, yeast and malt.  This mixture is called “mash” and it is left to ferment in wooden barrels.  How quickly this process occurs depends upon the weather and the warmth of the mash.  When ready, the mash is heated to around 173 degrees – the point of vaporization.  It was this ripe smell sometime around 1925 that tipped off the Union County Sheriff’s Dept.

One Saturday night, Deputies George Stiner and R.T. Wagner hid up close to the house on the Walker farm waiting for Tim Walker to come home.  They laid low until he had put his team up and gone to bed.  The deputies then yelled at him that they wanted him to go with them to unlock the house up in the hollow.  It irritated Tim that they had waited until he was in bed before they let him know that they were there.  The deputies destroyed the still and wanted to take Tim Walker on to jail.  Tim replied that he was tired, had a sick daughter and he would come to the jail when it was more convenient on Monday morning to make bond.  There was apparently some discussion before the deputies finally agreed that Tim could report to the old Maynardville jail on Monday morning.  When he did so, he was incarcerated for 30 days and fined $250.  He never mentioned to anyone that the still really belonged to his brother Henry but when Henry came to jail to visit him, Tim Walker told him that Henry and Press Brewer had better pay that $250 fine or Tim was going spill the beans to High Sheriff Freed Bailey.  Henry and Press paid the fine and Tim Walker did the time.

Most people made their own moonshine and would sell it in quart or half-gallon fruit jars to folks who were from out of the area.  In those days, a half-gallon would go for less than a dollar.  Malcolm Walker remembers a time before the blight when everyone had peach trees and peaches were plentiful.  Folks would use the fruit instead of the corn mash to make their own peach brandy.  The literal meaning of moonshine is “the light of the moon” because this activity was usually done at night with as little light as possible.  The distillation process produces a considerable amount of smoke and steam, which can be seen during the day.  And the fire can be seen at night unless it is in a building or behind rocks or trees.  Moonshine has many other names, some familiar today and others not.  It has been called white lightning, corn liquor, rotgut, mule kick, panther’s breath, popskull, stumphole, wild cat, happy Sally and blue John, among others.

by Shirley Grapko