128. Moonshiners Donnie & Teresa, The Beattyville Hillbillies

Donnie is a super guy. He's got a great sense of humor and we get along really good.

I'm an ordained minister, so we can get this deal done today if you guys want to.

I don't know. We got a good thing going on.

There's nothing wrong with that.

It's getting hot in here.

Well, Teresa, actually, what the story is, Donnie, she found out I was an ordained minister and then I'm a giant guy. She's like, I need you to come bury us. This is what she said. No, I don't know that.

See my ring? He got me.

Look at that. That made it out of the copper.

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

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Hey, this is Big Chief from the Bourbon Road, and I'm coming to you from Beattyville, Kentucky. And I'm out here with a Beattyville Moonshiners, Donnie and Teresa. Guys, thanks for having me on today. Thanks for inviting us out here to your steel site and having a great time. You guys were on a couple of seasons from Moonshiners off Discovery Channel. What season was it, Donnie?

Season eight. Season eight. And we filmed another season that hasn't shown yet. All right.

Now, how did you guys get roped into that, Teresa?

Well, Donnie got a phone call one day. A friend of a friend had recommended us. They were looking for a couple to be on the show. And a friend of a friend recommended us. And they called Donnie up and said, we're from New York, producers of The Moonshiner Show, and we'd like for you to consider being on our show. Could we come see you sometime?

And I said, yell right. I thought somebody was joking with us.

Donnie seriously thought it was a joke, but we did a few Skype interviews and sent in some pictures and they actually came from New York and came here to the cabin and spent some time with us and like what they saw. Said it was a real pretty place and we signed a contract and the rest is history.

Away you went, right? So they said they wanted what some centers on the show or? Couple. A couple.

Well, it probably would match both descriptions, I suppose.

So your boyfriend and girlfriend, you're from here, though. You grew up here. This is your home, though. And I tell everybody, just so all of our listeners know, I'm sitting in their steel site. I don't even know how many steals are in here in this room. I'd say three to four. And I see tons of sugar and I see tons of green. And so and jugs of white stuff are clear liquid. So I'm I'm hoping it's moonshine. Throw those doubters out there. This is, is the real deal McCoy though, right? Oh yeah. Um, so, you know, the bourbon road we take like to take some side roads as we call them. And how can you not have a side road for moonshine? Uh, is the Scotch Irish would have been the first people here to make whiskey, making it just the way you're making it for personal consumption, right? Right, right.

Is that your heritage, is Scotch Irish? Yeah, I'm 47% Irish and 22% Scotch.

Wow, so you just from over there in the potato land.

Gotta be honest.

I don't even know if I can say that or not. We call them taters around here. And what about you, Teresa? What's your heritage?

I don't even know.

Now, so you guys was dating now. How, how long have you been making moonshine?

I've been making it for 25 years or longer, I guess.

25 years. Yeah. And, uh, how'd you, how'd you get into that?

My, my grandpa, that's how he raised his family was by making whiskey.

Really?

Yeah. But he never would show me anything. He always told me there wasn't no good in it. I didn't need to know. But that made me mad when he told me that, but I got to think about it later on. What's the best way to get somebody to do something is tell them they can't or not to do it.

Yeah, if you're a parent out there, you definitely know what Donnie's talking about. You tell your kids they can't date somebody, they're going to try to date them, right?

Absolutely. But I can remember, he would have us shelling corn all day long and grinding it. And I thought it was for the chickens, but chickens can't eat that much corn. He was having us do all the work. That's free labor right there.

That's right. Now, what about you, Teresa? Did you grow up in a family that somebody made some moonshine?

I had a great uncle that made moonshine. His steel site was behind where my parents still live today.

Really?

Yeah, we saw the well a few years ago and found some piping that he had used to pipe water down to the steel site. And it's still there at this time. Now, I never made moonshine. I never even helped Donnie really make moonshine until we filmed for the show.

Really?

And on the show he was my teacher. He was needing a new partner and he, I wanted to learn of course more about something that he had a big interest in. So he became my teacher and was going to teach me how to make it.

And now you're the master distiller. I wouldn't call myself that.

I'm the master learner, maybe.

Master learner.

There's still so much to learn. I mean, you can learn something new every time you run it.

I bet that's true. So people see you on a show, they see you carrying this steel down a cliff face. She's got cowboy boots on. You got this thing strapped to your back and you're carrying glass jugs down there and it's just all kinds of craziness. But that's, that's not really the truth. That's not where you make shine at. Right. We made it there for about a year, a year, but it's not, it doesn't seem feasible. That seems like a lot of work. Yeah. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Well, so we're going to get down to the skinny of that, but you guys pour some moonshine for me out of this. I think that thing's a gallon. That's the biggest gallon jug I've ever seen before in my life. Things are like a gallon and a half. Um, now where do you get these jugs from?

Uh, those are, it came from Wexton.

From Lexington. Yeah.

From the Liquor Bar.

From Liquor Bar. Sells those, huh? Or do they have wine in them?

No, they come clear just like that.

Really? Yeah. Well, I say let's, let's taste this. I'm going to nose it, taste it a little bit. We'll see how, how you're running. How old is this?

It's two days old. It's aged a little bit.

So this is, this is old vintage whiskey. Yeah, this is old. Now I want to tell everybody why you're listening to me. Theresa here, she already poured her some, I guess I didn't pour enough. Man, she done filled that glass right up.

Yeah, she'll be naked after a while on the roof.

Now they get us the biggest gallon jugs in the world here. I don't even know if that thing's a gallon or not. It's got to be a gallon and a half. but, uh, they must've looked at my hands and said, let's find this man. The smallest Mason jar alive is right here. Um, I can concede this is for concealment, right? Can you see it? Well, let's, let's know this. I can smell that sweet corn on there. Now where's this corn coming from?

This is actually right.

Rye. This is a hundred percent rye. No way. It's got some other stuff in it. You won't tell me though, right? No corn. No corn. It's gotta be some malted barley. Yes. Yeah. So you got rye and malted barley. So this is a rye whiskey.

A little bit of caramel.

There's a couple other things. That'll make your nose hairs tingle a little bit, but not a bad, not what you would think you're going to get that bad, like an ever clear smell. It just kills you. It smells sweet. Right. It is sweet. And I'm sure since it's rye, it's a little sticky, isn't it? It's not bad. It's just, you just have to try it. Well, I'm talking about when you're cooking the mash down and stuff. You got to clean your steel out, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now what kind of yeast do you use?

That's an ancient secret too. Lately I've been using, it's called a professional distiller's yeast. Okay. Now it will not make as much as some of the other yeast, but it's, but it's a better taste and smoother whiskey.

I get all those sweet notes on that site. I don't know where that sweetness is coming from, depending on how much sugar you, I guess you put into it. How long do you let it ferment for?

Well, it depends on the weather, but normally it takes a week. I've seen it take two or three weeks, but I've seen it work off in two or three days also.

Now we're down here in the national boon forest, right? National forest dead center. We're up. It's up in the hills. Cause I got it. I drive a GMC pickup and that red truck, it was struggling a little bit coming up the hill. I was like, Ooh, this is, we're getting up in here and it lifts.

It's uphill both ways. Yeah.

Well, it is. I'm going to have to go back up the hill to get back home. Because I was driving down from Richmond, Kentucky. You get off the interstate there. And at first, I was like, man, this is kind of flat. Where is he talking about? There's no hills here. And then you get to the Kentucky River and cross it. And then you're like, OK, there's some serious hills here, the hills of Kentucky, I guess, the start of the Appalachian Mountains, right? And I was like, OK, I can see some moonshiners being back in here. And then my wife is like, no wonder they're back in here. Ain't no cops coming back in here. That's actually not bad at all. That's real smooth.

Um,

smoother, a lot smoother than I thought it was. So we were talking before, so you coming off the steel at about 170, which would be hazmat if you shipped it, right? That's dangerous, but you proof it down.

Yeah, we temper it down to a hundred proof.

A hundred proof, unless you think this is a hundred proof.

Yeah, it's a hundred proof.

Okay. It's not drinking hot. I get a slight Kentucky hug. I thought it would burn all the way down, but it's not at all. I could see drinking this. And my wife says it's good too. That's a, that's high praise right there. Cause she's not a whiskey drinker. Now, Teresa, you said you would rather drink the flavored moonshine. We're going to drink on the second half. But what about this? Have you drank a lot of this in your life?

I haven't. I like to taste it because I like to taste, you know, products that people make. So of course, when we go to festivals and visit our friends and other people who make moonshine, they'll want you to try their products. So I don't care to taste test, but as far as sitting and sipping on it, nah, just like to taste it, see how it turned out.

Well, the second sip of this was actually really, really sweet. I was trying to think of almost like a taffy to me, a saltwater taffy. I don't know the flavor I'm getting out of that, but just a sweet taffy without any flavoring on it is what I'm getting from it, that sugar.

It tastes almost like juicy fruit when it's coming off the steel at the beginning. I could get that.

This is a... Excellent whiskey. Man, you need to be making some more of this. I might drive all the way back up here and get some. It's a haul from Shelbyville, but it'd be worth it to me just to come see you fine folks. Wow, man, that's good.

So let's talk about your steel. How big is that steel and how much can you get off of it? Well, the one behind me here is 50 gallon. And it'll average six gallons before you temper it. You'll wind up with about eight gallons.

And let's talk about that whole process. How long does that whole process take you to go ahead and take me from the beginning to the end?

Well, once you mix your mash up, it takes, you know, normally a week, six or seven days for the ferment to work off. And then once you put it in the steel, it takes about six hours to run it.

And then you get six gallons from that. Now, what's a gallon of that whiskey go for? Can you tell me?

It depends on who it is and if it's around here or if it's somebody from out of town. What's out of towner? It's $80.

$80 for a gallon of that. So $80 a gallon. How many regular whiskey 750 jars will that fill up?

Probably about five, I would say. So five of those. Be right at it. Cause the cord is more than a 750 milliliters. Yeah.

Yeah. So you're looking at about 20 bucks, somewhere around in there for a bottle of that. Man, that's a good price right there. Yeah, I know.

It's way too cheap. Some good sipping whiskey. But there's so many people that makes it. Not down in Louisville, there's not.

So we're just a stone's throw from the headwaters of the Kentucky river, right?

Yeah. It officially begins here in Lee County. All the forts come together in town, the North Fork, South Fork and Miller Fork.

And then, um, so you get down on the Kentucky river and there's a lot of whiskey that's went down that river. Some say this is the beginnings of bourbon really. Um, and I don't, that's why I wanted to have you guys on so bad are taking our side road on the bourbon road. Um, because I, I think you gotta pay homage to moonshiners and that craft of actually making it. And it doesn't get no more truer than this right here. Getting to drink something like this is man, Um, I might need to take some of that back with me for my, uh, co-host cause he, he's the high ride guy. I'm a weeded whiskey guy, weeded bourbon guy. I pride myself on this, but this is super smooth. Jim, if you're listening right now, man, you missed out on this trip right here.

I will send him some.

So Teresa, what did you think about all this? Whenever you go, how long you done even dating?

Well, Donnie and I have known each other since we were in grade school, but we reconnected at our 25th high school reunion.

Did he have that same beard in middle school?

No, I can show you some pictures. He looked a lot different than, uh, all clean cut and, you know, he got a little rough around the edges as he got older.

That was the first boy to kiss her, supposedly.

We've been through that story before, supposedly. Yeah, it's all true. Um, ladies love outlaws, I guess, you know? But we reconnected at our 25th high school class reunion and started dating again a few years ago. You know, here we are.

All downhill after that. All downhill, uphill really. I mean, she's got to come uphill every time.

Donnie is a super guy. He's got a great sense of humor and we get along really good.

I'm an ordained minister. So we can get this deal done today if you guys want to.

I don't know. We got a good thing going on.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's getting hot in here. Well, Teresa actually, what the story is, Donnie, she found out I was an ordained minister and I'm a giant guy. She's like, I need you to come marry us. That's what she said.

No, I don't know that.

See my ring?

He got me. Look at that.

That made it out of copper.

So you do have just a plethora of copper laying around. So in the wintertime, you told me when it slows down, you make a couple other stills for some people. Beautiful, beautiful work, I think. I always talk about people's stills. We got a good friend that works at Vindome and she is actually the purchasing agent for all the copper that most distilleries use today is Vindome. Probably 90% of the steels in America come out of that Vindome here in Louisville, Kentucky. But man, you're making some pretty nice stuff here. You know what you do it looks like.

Yeah. I make the old style pot stills.

Yeah. Makes better whiskey. Makes better whiskey. Now you do have a somewhat of a, a gooseneck that comes off of their swan's neck, right?

Yeah. It's arms. What's it called?

Do you help him do that Teresa? I knew this in his work here.

I'll hit the clamp every once in a while. I'm polishing. I do shine them up.

Well, it seems like you wouldn't, we want to make it a bunch of steals for your competitors though.

They go all over the world.

Now, if you, if you look at, um, moonshiners, right? Um, and they try to betray it as, um, each one of those guys has a territory, I guess. Do you feel like you have a territory here for, for your shine? No. Or do you even call it shiny? Do you call it whiskey?

I call it mold.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what it is, right?

It's whiskey. It's not vodka. It's not tequila.

It's whiskey.

Yeah. It's the pierced, pierced form of whiskey and stuff. It's just not age. Now I didn't see any barrels in here. Have you tried them to make any aged whiskey?

Yeah. I had a barrel filled up and it disappeared. I don't know who got it. Somebody. Really? Yeah. I don't know if my brother drank it or where it went to, but something happened to it. Was it a small barrel? It was a small one. Yeah. But we got plans on doing that.

In the future. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that on the second half. Yeah. About, um, your future plans and we'll get into that. I noticed you got some, I'm guessing this is flavored moonshine.

Yeah, it's all fruit. It's got like six or seven different types of fruit in it.

Oh, good Lord. I love some fruit punch. So we can, we can try. I got the biggest sweet tooth there is. That's a bad thing for a guy my size, but there's nothing wrong with that right there. That's why I haven't got COVID yet.

Well, I think there's a lot of truth to that. They say it gets in your throat and stays there for like four days before it goes down and the whiskey will kill that.

Yeah, that could be true. I don't know. Seeing what my wife says about that. She actually had COVID, so she. She's not drunk enough. Yeah, probably not. So we're up here in Beattyville, Kentucky. Now, how often do you guys get around, you know, get to visit other moonshiners or other distilleries?

Well, all the moonshiners get together twice a year in North Carolina and Maggie Valley. In late February, they have a winter jam. And then in the summer, they have the summer jam. And all of them, all the real moonshiners will be there and all the fake moonshiners will be there. All the fake ones. Yeah. Trying to learn from the real ones.

Now, did you, who would you say that most famous moonshiner is?

Well, probably that's popcorn because he was the first one that come out with those DVDs and things.

But you were talking about some other people that you knew that like junior Johnson, the NASCAR racer back in the day. And I guess when I was growing up, I thought of those guys as moonshiners. I kind of grew up in the Ozark mountains a little bit with my grandparents and stuff. And I thought of moonshiners that way. And I always wondered if my grandfather was sneaking a little hooch or something. I'm not sure if he was or not. never seen you drink before, but maybe he was right. He didn't, he only had one eye. So you couldn't tell if it was going on there. So, but neither one of you turned blind yet. So that tells me that something's You're doing something right, right? Right. So we're talking about four. How much do you have to, everybody, everybody knows what the heads and the tails are. Right. Those are poisonous. Right. Right. Do you have to get rid of those?

Oh yeah. It'll make you go blind for sure. If you drink, it's methanol actually comes out first.

Have you ever gotten sick from your own stuff? No.

Never. Clear moonshine will not make you sick. So what do the tails look like? Well, you get, you'll smell the tails and you can see it, see them. It'll start when it starts running in. You can see it just mixing with the rest of it.

Now, if you shook this, could you tell me about the bubbles in it? If I just took something in a bottle?

I can normally guess it pretty close. Really?

Yeah. What if you went into a whiskey store or liquor store and you shook it? Can you tell me what the proof is?

Yeah, as long as it's not flavored, I can.

In the second half, I'm going to test you on it because I've got two bourbon bottles I'm going to pick up, and I want to see the proof to the pudding. I won't tell you what the proof on them are, but they're two different bourbons and stuff. Yeah. So coming back, everybody, um, we'll, we'll hear what Donnie and Teresa have to say about the future of their, uh, operation here is, uh, we'll take some of their flavored moonshine and we'll get back to some laughs.

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All right, listeners, we are back and we're here in Beattyville, Kentucky, and I'm with the Beattyville Hillbillies. Is that a term of endearment for you?

It is. I think we wanted, Donnie always watched the Beverly Hillbillies. So he liked that show. And you know, we wanted to associate it, whatever we decided to brand ourselves with, we wanted to make sure it kind of was associated with where we're from. And of course we're from Bethel and give our little town a little exposure. We hope some positive exposure, not all negative. So call ourselves the Bethel Hillbillies and not all hillbillies are bad. They're pretty resilient.

Best people in the world.

Exactly.

Just down home good people.

Exactly.

Probably some of the best cooking you can cook too. I think down home people, when I think of fried chicken and some good gravy and some mashed taters, man.

Some people get a little sensitive about the whole hillbilly image because a lot of times the pictures you see are people with no teeth and barefoot and 12 toes or whatever. But I love it. Yeah.

You got 12 toes?

No. To me, their survival, you know, they can. make do with what they have and make the best of what they have and live off the land and creative and resilient. Like I said, so he'll be, these are good people.

And there's some lady talented people around here that can play music, make things with their hands. It's just amazing.

It started with that stuff kind of becoming a lost art, I believe. And, um, in America, it's so fast paced and they want it now. Right. Everybody wants something now, but. You really can't just have everything right now. Sometimes stuff does take time and art takes beauty. And I think whenever you make a steel, there's beauty in that to me. That's true craftsmanship, true art, artistry. It just doesn't happen overnight. How long does, let's say a 50 gallon steel, how long does that take you?

It'll take me and Brad probably six or seven days to make one.

Seven days. Yeah. With a lot of copper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you, but we do it all by hand.

We don't have no fancy tools or anything. And then you make trees come in here. Somebody's got to polish them up. Polish them up.

Shine away.

Shine away. So do you sip on moonshine while you do that?

Yeah. Sometimes, you know, just to make it a little fun. Dance around the steel, you know, shower blessings upon it.

Is that how, is that how Donnie got those 12 toes? Well, you see what was happening here was, uh, I drink a little moonshine and just another coat popped out. Nah, I think that's a term of endearment, you know, and when you earn that and people do live up here.

They're true hillbillies.

I mean, they really are. When I want to make fun of somebody, I call them a hill Jack. Yeah. That's a, So the second half here, we drink your straight up just moonshine proof down to a hundred proof, right? What are we drinking in this two days old, just the baby whiskey? What are we drinking in the second half?

I think she made some olive fruit. It's got six or seven different fruits in it. What kind of fruits are in here? It's a secret.

He's not going to let me tell. Lips are sealed.

Well heck, I'm going to pick them out of here if I can get this mason jar open.

It's sealed. That's something that we do that I've never seen the way else do. We put it in there while it's still boiling and it cans it. It seals it. Really? So it preserves it. I've never seen anybody else do that.

As whiskey may be preserved.

Well, if you use real fruit, it will go bad or can go bad.

And you're using root real fruit. You're not using the additives or anything. Um, so you chunk all that up. Now what gives us this color? Do you pour the shine over the fruit? Yeah. And let it set for how long?

No, we, we, we, she recooks it on the stove and adds it to it. Okay. That's there.

Oh, you cook that fruit down. Yeah. And put it in here. Yeah. Man, I can't wait to taste this. You going to drink some of this? You don't like it? Give me some. Give me some, he said. Give me a drink.

There's your drink.

I can't wait. Well, I say cheers to you guys and thanks for inviting us up here.

Glad you came.

I get the fruity nose on there for sure. Almost like a fruit Kool-Aid that my mama didn't have enough sugar for.

I've seen people come up here and drink this and they just keep drinking it. And the next thing you know, they're passed dead out.

Yeah. Now what's the proof on this?

It's only about 45 proof. 45 proof. Yeah. This here is not bad. No, no.

You can, you can rank this easy. This is flavored white claw then. Yeah.

You can actually sit very easily on this and it will knock you dead out.

Yeah.

That's pretty good. That is a, I'd say fruit punchy. Um, it's definitely cherries in there.

It's not our favorite one, but we were just something we had left. Some hog, hog plums in there.

I don't know what a hog plum is, but I don't think there's any in there.

That's a wild plum that goes down in, uh, in Texas. You'll find them on road sides and stuff. So usually you gotta know where that hog plum tree is and stuff. But yeah, My mama used to make us go pick those and mulberries and stuff like that. Straight up country folk right there. Wild grapes. But heck, this is pretty good. This gets you in trouble. I'm going to have to take some of this home with us and see if I can get my wife naked on the roof.

Yeah, it'll work.

I'm really not a heavy drinker, but now we had some neighbors up a couple of months ago and we popped the top on one of those jars and we drank one and it tasted so good. We decided we'd open another and you know, we had drank a couple of quarts before the night was over and I don't remember exactly what happened the rest of the night.

You don't remember the whole next week?

No, it took me a few days to recover and I swore off drinking after that. I said, I'll never drink again.

Yeah. We've all had stories like that. I don't, I don't know. It takes some time to recover, right? Um, definitely. So whenever you are, you know, you see people on a show, um, and they're making their shine and they're, some of them are drinking a lot. And I can't imagine that's the safest thing to do.

No, you never want to be drinking while you're running a steel.

Yeah.

There's so many things that can happen, go wrong.

That, that right there just doesn't make sense to me. Some of the safety stuff on there that it seems that it is a, to me, it's just a big bomb you're making.

Especially you got an open flame and if you get a leak, you gotta be really careful.

You can blow yourself up. Would anybody hear that explosion up here though?

Probably not.

So we're talking about your steel.

Plus his neighbor is probably a mile away, I guess.

A mile away. Yeah. I will tell you, we're driving up there. There's not a lot of houses or anything like that.

You can go this way. There's no neighbors for 10 miles from me.

You're telling me like turn, turn left here at the Y and take a, take a ride at the blue gate and drive a mile down that deal. I'll be down there by the steel. If you hear banjos, you're running down the wrong road.

Let him tell you the story of when he was in school and they asked him where he lived.

What'd you tell them?

Oh, we moved to Laxton one time for about a half a year. And you talk about fish being out of water, you know, I just didn't fit in at all. But I never forget, went to school that day and the teacher, she introduced me to the class and I'd tell them my name and they asked me where I lived at. Well, instead of telling them the address and everything, how to get there, I told them how to actually get there. I told them, I said, I said, you go over yonder past food town, go across that big road right there, go down there to the first road to the left and it's the last else on the left. Well, that's some way to tell directions right there. Over yonder. They was all laughing at me. I didn't know what the hell they was laughing at.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that. Some, some people just don't know, uh, Common sense. You got to have some common sense for those directions, right? I got, I got here cause I, I showed my wife the texts and I said, Hey, read these off here for me. And we sure enough, we found it. Didn't we had it back up about 10 feet. Not this big boy right here.

Good job.

If there's water nearby, I'm going to find my way. If I didn't know you were right this close to the Kentucky River, I'd probably just swam up it. Well, we've actually gotten calls for up here in my office. We get the state of Kentucky sends out these search and rescue messages. one of my bosses, he is new there and he doesn't, I won't say he doesn't know what he's doing, but he, he said, uh, you need to call Beattyville, Kentucky, the County there and see if they need any help. Cause somebody had fell and fallen on the river. And I said, Hey, uh, I don't think we can get no coast guard boats all the way up there. I don't know what we can do. We couldn't get our radio towers, wouldn't reach up here either. I was like, they're kind of up there in them foothills. There's a guy missing right now in the river.

I bet that's who he's talking about. Is that a recent call that you got?

No, that was about a year and a half ago. That guy's gone and he's working out in California now. So yeah, but we do get calls for up here. This guy was just last week.

Yeah, they're doing search and rescue for him. They were on the river yesterday, Christmas day.

The river's a bad thing. Yeah, oh yeah.

You went missing Christmas day.

I say that if you go inside a river, um, one of the big rivers, there's a possibility you're not coming out of that thing. So don't drink too much.

We had a party here. What? Two months ago.

It was when we were filming for that documentary.

Yeah. It's been about two months ago and there's a guy that fell off this cliff back up behind us here and nobody could get to him. And of course everybody kept saying call 9-1-1 and, but I went up there and talked to him and he wouldn't hurt. So I said, no, we'll wait. I know a guy, a rock climber and we called him and he come and climbed up her and had to repel him down. But he wasn't hurt that bad. No, he wouldn't hurt at all.

It seems like those things happen every time we have a party.

But if he'd been three feet to the right or three feet to the left, he'd been dead.

That's the truth.

I don't think I've ever had a party where somebody's climbed up a cliff and fell off.

Well, everybody here was drunk. That's why I didn't want to call 911.

True story.

That's not a crime, is it?

And the fellow that fell off the cliff, I think he probably been drinking too and maybe doing a few other things.

Yeah. I didn't even know the guy. He just over here visiting. Yeah.

What?

He came with one of the guys singing here.

Was it last year that we had the party and the guy passed out? Yeah.

Yeah. They spent two or three people. We've got some Indian carvings up here on the cliff. Really? And these been two or three people will go up to that and pass that out right there. I don't know.

Don't make any sense. Too much of that shine. I don't know. Are you letting them drink the hunter proof or just straight up 170?

I don't know what they're drinking.

Thankfully, everybody survived our parties, but we've had a few people get sick and some strange things happen.

We had a guy that was here from Tennessee. This fell over. Well, he died. He died. Well, I thought he did. He just, these eyes rolled back in his head.

And I mean, I've never seen anything like that. And well, I wonder why.

And we finally, finally got him up and he didn't know what happened.

And he took four or five steps and done it again. Donnie. I mean, I'm, I'm going to tell you just cause of the shine.

And I said, I said, come on, we're going to the hospital because I didn't know him or anything else. And. Well, actually had a steel set up. We'd run it at the party.

Now people are drinking straight off the, off the steel. After you had to run it.

Come to find out. I think he was eating mushrooms or something like that.

That's not good right there. You can't be missing shine and other stuff together.

I didn't know him either.

Well, heck. So your steals you make, you know, they're all different sizes. I mean, you're, you are sending them out to people and we talked about that. So it's not illegal to own a steel.

Not in Kentucky. Every state has different laws.

But in Kentucky, you could own one. You just can't use it.

I think in North Carolina, you can own one if it has a hole in it.

Oh, and that's why the Reveneres used to shoot holes in them. Well, they used to shoot holes in them where you can't use them anymore. Well, couldn't you just plug the holes? Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's common sense. I'd be like, I got to plug that hole up.

But in Kentucky, you can own a steel cause you can just steal your own water.

Now where are you getting your water at to temper or proof down your whiskey?

There's a spring on the side of the mountain down here. That's where I get mine. It's all limestone. And it's some of the best water that I've found anywhere.

It's just a pipe sticking out the side of the mountain with water shooting out, right?

It's been there for years and years and years. Yeah. On the way here, we passed that thing and we've seen,

wells or springs like that, where people will find a natural spring and they'll stick a pipe in water, especially up in Michigan. Um, there's a lot of them up there. People still use them today for drinking water. And I knew that saying in Kentucky, actually on our road that we live on at the end of our road, um, right at the, I guess where the city starts. There's a big place where a big truck can pull up to and buy water. They pull that valve and it fills up the truck and then they take it back and people actually have, still have cisterns here in Kentucky. When we were buying houses, we were looking for buy house. We found a house and it had a cistern. We were like, what the heck is that? Those are still used today, but people still use them. People still put them in and stuff.

You can go back, what, 10 years ago and most people around here didn't have running water. But when they had running water, you had to run over the hill and get it.

Run, run over the hill and walk back, right? So this is actually where you grew up. It was right on the side of this mountain right here. Yeah. In a holler right in behind us here. And what's the holler called?

Well, it used to be called powder mill. Supposedly they made gunpowder down there in some of those caves during the battle of New Orleans. That's where the gunpowder came from. But it's called Benton road now. That's where my mom and dad still live. And what'd you call this hill now?

You had a name for it.

This is called old land in Kentucky.

Old land in Kentucky. Yeah. Well, it's definitely beautiful drive out here. And, you know, um, I was teasing about the banjos playing and stuff, but I didn't hear none of that. But, uh, I did smell whiskey when I drove up, but I got a quite the sniffer on me. Yeah. And, uh, over the hill in the break, uh, I brought two bottles of bourbon in here and I want you to shake each one of them for me. I don't want you to look at the proof on there. I want you to tell me what it is.

I don't know. I'll try. I'm used to a jar. That's not real high proof. Really? It's been a long time. I'm going to say, I'm going to say 120 proof.

God, Lord. Give me that thing back. What is it? 96 proof. Oh, okay. And that's a weeded bourbon. And it might be hard inside that.

Normally, it's got a little thing in there. Normally a hundred proof when you shake it, it'll make a one little bridge. But this is just all over the place.

See, that's done.

But in a jar, it won't do that. So I got to see what you say off that big bottle right there. Most bourbon is semi proof to a hundred proof, but I can't tell.

I did bring the most two awkward bottles in here. Yeah.

Yeah. It's got a deal up in it too.

I can't tell. What I brought him was a redemption and an iron root bottle. Yeah.

It's, it's bound to be about the same.

I'd say that's a little bit more. Yeah. That's 107. Yeah. 107. That's some cash strength.

Let's see how it's got. the dip in the bottle, you can't tell. But if you shake it and it makes a little bridge, it connects from one side to the other. It's a hundred proof.

And that's how you tell if you, you can look, if it makes a ridge on it and stuff. Cause I'm sure a lot of people see people do that and where, how, what they're looking at or how many, I was like, there ain't no way they're counting on them damn bubbles.

No, no. The quicker it flashes away, the higher the proof is too.

I mean, that's like a, what does it call it when people grab them sticks and they looking for water?

Oh yeah.

I don't want water, which water, which I don't, I've seen people do it.

I've done it with the pop bottle and cold hangers before.

Really? Yeah. I've seen somebody do that before. You can find a water line. Yeah. I've seen people do it before. I don't know how it works or anything like that, but, um, now is that proof down right there? Well, that's brandy there. I don't know what this is.

So you make brandy too. I buddy mine did.

Okay.

That's not. Yeah, that should be a hundred proof.

And what Donnie is doing, he's shaking a Mason jar full of, uh, I guess his brandy. Yeah. Yeah. That's pineapple there. Pineapple brandy. Yeah. And that sounds good. It seems like that so good in Hawaii.

I didn't like it at first, but it changes. That's the thing about brandy as it ages, it changes even the clear.

Well, I'll tell you what, you guys definitely have it going on here. Um, So in the future, what's going on with you guys? Um, right now, technically you're making legal whiskey, right? Right. Right. And you're selling it, but we sell jars, whatever's in it.

We give away these other jar. Yeah. Yeah.

And take jars. Hey, that's sounds good to me. Common sense, right? Yeah. Whatever comes in, it's free. Whatever's in is free. Yeah. Hey, it's expensive mason jars.

They're hard to find, too, so that's the prices going up.

Well, I know. My wife cans a lot. We had to drive all the way up to how much place to buy cans or mason jars, because we needed some more. And usually we'd just run up to Ruel King, but they were sold out. And we'd ask around, hey, where can we get those? And if you go to Ruel King, you'd get a whole bunch of sugar and stuff like that. So what's the future look like for you guys?

Well, we're actually working on a legal label. Uh, we should have it out hopefully by this spring. Uh, but I don't want to give too many details away till it happens. It seems like it's bad luck if I say something before it happens.

So you don't have a name for it or is it just going to, is it going to say Beattyville Hillbellies on it?

Probably.

And you think it'll be just sold in the state of Kentucky?

Uh, you know, well now you can ship worldwide. I think they just changed the law on that. Okay.

But we want to keep it unique to where we're from and this area if we can.

Is that going to be a rye whiskey? Yes, it will be. Yeah. So you are listeners out there. You think by this time next year, um, or at the end of this year, maybe you'll have something out there. They can look for the Beattyville Hillbellies, a true moonshine. I'll tell you what, folks, if you're listening to us and you're wanting some moonshine and you can wait that year, I tell you, Donnie and Tracer are the real deal. They're making their own shine and you're going to make it, right? You're not going to contract it out or anything like that.

They're actually going to let me come into the stillery and make it.

Okay.

That say that me, that's, that way I can control the ingredients, water, control it all in a bigger batch.

You'd be a super cook. That's what I always buy. You know, master distillers to me, they're, they're kind of cooks, you know, and they got their own recipes and they know what they're doing and they don't know how to cook their mash off. And I guess you could, you could burn it like a cake, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. You can scorch it if you don't strain it. Can you taste if you've, Have you made bad, bad batches before? Oh my Lord, yeah.

But I can walk in a distillery and look at their stills and tell you if the whiskey is any good for ever tasted.

Really? Yep. And every distillery, every distillery. Good Lord.

Some of them things are pretty complicated.

Yeah. A lot of complicated piping going on. Yep. Could you taste their beer and, and, and, uh, their mash? Could you taste that and think, Hey, something's wrong with this?

No, I don't know about that. Uh, but I can definitely do it by looking at the stills. Really? Yeah. A lot of them using their own kind of steel.

I gotta hear that. So why do you say it's the wrong kind of steel?

Well, especially the new distilleries, they have these column steels and they strip all the flavor. They strip everything.

It just makes neutral grain whiskey. Just making kind of vodka.

Vodka is all it is. Like they do in Tennessee and they call it moonshine.

By this time next year, you guys will be legal.

You'll be having your own distillery or your own whiskey label and stuff.

bottle or jar you're going to sell it in.

We haven't decided that yet.

You haven't decided, man. I'll tell you that's marketing to me is everything and the labels, everything. And, um, sometimes you see some ugly labels out there.

We have a couple made up, but we haven't decided.

We're tweaking a design right now that we done about a year ago. Donnie and I have tried our very best to go legal. We've talked to several distilleries. We met for an entire year with a board and tried to develop an Appalachian moonshine trail. that would go through all of Appalachia. And some things happened with people higher up, of course, than we were, and it fell through. And that was kind of disheartening. So, you know, then COVID happened and there was a delay with that. And thankfully we hadn't opened a distillery because if we had opened a distillery here, I don't think it could have survived. You know, no tourism coming to the town, nobody coming here. I mean, we would have had to pretty much shut down. So I guess everything does happen for a reason. And this opportunity come up with a good friend of ours who already has a distillery and going to open up one close to here where we live. And Donnie's, you know, going to make a deal for them and we're looking to get a label approved with them. They've agreed to do a label with us.

So that's a, that's a start. You know, you're going to start somewhere and, um, and what's good is we can control it.

It's going to be real. It's not going to be.

I always say that, um, Jack Daniels and Jim Beam weren't always the largest distilleries in the world. They started somewhere. The dance, I think, started, they said, in the log steel. So everybody starts somewhere.

Even Jim Beam started with the steel about the size of this one.

Yeah. It's not a gigantic operation. They are giants today. Yeah, they're huge. By the late 1800s, you had places like E.H. Taylor. just producing massive amounts of whiskey, but everybody had to start with something like you're starting one now and you got a dream. That's an American dream. I'd say until you're legal though, you know, listeners, um, I'll tell you how to get here. Okay. You cross the creek, you drive down a Gabba road, uh, through the woods and then you climb a hill over the rocks. Um, and around, around the, fourth tree, you'll find them. Um, it's a big tree. It's an oak tree. Can't miss it. Can't miss it. Um, just smell the shine and then, uh, hear a little music playing. Um, and you come get some Donnie and Tracy's moonshine. Well guys, where can we find you on social media?

We have a Facebook page called Moonshiners, Donnie and Teresa, the Betable Hillbillies. So we are on social media and we both have personal accounts, but we direct everybody to the Moonshiners page because we're on there pretty regular. If you send a message, we're going to get it right away.

So make sure you get on there, give them a like. No Instagram?

We don't have, well, we have an Instagram, but we don't use it very often.

What's your Instagram?

Moonshiners, Donnie and Teresa.

moonshiners, Donnie and Teresa hit them up, follow them.

I've got another page called ask a hillbilly anything.

Ask a hillbilly anything.

What's that about? Well, used to people would send me questions in and I'd take a drink of whiskey and answer the question, but I had to quit doing that. Was he going blind? No, I was drinking too much. I don't really don't drink. I don't drink that much. But it was getting out of hand.

Yeah, it was.

Well, so don't send your questions to that page. Oh, I might.

But down there, it's a lot of just funny things.

Anything moonshine related, hillbilly related. Well, everybody check it out. Donnie and Teresa, I can't thank you enough for letting me and my wife come up here. You're welcome anytime. Up here on the mountain top and trying your whiskey. Much appreciated. Even your flavored whiskey is damn good right there. Both of them were just amazing and stuff. I think you're a true artist and a craftsman, not only just with a whiskey, but damn, make any steals or just I'm telling you people some amazing work he's doing in here. Super beautiful. You guys have been great. So if you're listening to us, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. We have a private Facebook group called the bourbon roadies. You want to get on there. We're about 1400 strong right now. Um, the things we don't tolerate in there is we don't talk about politics. We don't talk about religion. Um, we don't talk about social issues. You gotta answer three questions to get in. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? Damn, doesn't everybody like bourbon? Um, And they agree to play nice. Um, so that means, um, as we always say, we don't tolerate rating of rudeness or moderators. They'll, they'll go ahead and just kick you on out of there. Um, but if you want to come into a group that has master distillers in there, good folks like Donnie and Teresa and they're, uh, answering questions, talking about the real way to make whiskey, uh, the truth about whiskey. What's your favorite whiskey is? If you've just bought a bottle of Jim Beam and that's what you can afford, then we want you to talk about it. We want you to tell the world about it. Nobody's going to give you a hard time. We also have a website. You want to check that out, the bourbonroad.com. We have our swag on there. You can find our whiskey glasses. You can find our bourbon bullshit t-shirt on there. $25 plus shipping and handling. Or if you want to pick it up local from us, you can go ahead and forgo that shipping. We got shirts all the way up to 5X now. Check us out. We want everybody wearing one of those shirts. If you do buy one of those shirts or buy one of those whiskey glasses, please take a photo of it and post it up all over social media. That gets us exposure and tagged to bourbonroad.com. We would really love you to do that. So if you have any ideas, you can shoot me and Jim a email at team or info at the bourbon road.com. If you have any ideas for shows, if you have questions of us, send us an email. We'll, we'll help you answer that. Or if you got an idea just about a new t-shirt idea, heck tell me, let me know. And we do two shows a week. We do a craft distillery show on Mondays. or we'd review a whiskey, and then we'd do an hour-long show, like the show today with Donnie and Teresa, where we bring a guest on, we talk to them, we drink their whiskey, or we'll drink some of our whiskey, just sit down and shoot the bull with them. You can find me at OneBigChief, you can find Jim at JSanta63, and we'll see you on down the bourbon road.

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