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Note: I found these photos on my hard drive from a walk I did last August. It’s not really this green in February.

I decided to put that bold statement to the test one day: I drove around Franklin County, randomly picked a creek, parked on the side of the road, and just walked up the creek.

And I found three moonshine stills.

The area I picked was near the Smith River in a remote section of the county (much of Franklin County is remote.) The Smith River divides Franklin County on the south from Henry County and I’ve found many stills on the Franklin County side of the river, but few on the Henry County side. I drove until I found an area where there weren’t too many houses around and just parked on the side of the road next to a creek.

The first moonshine still I found was at the confluence of two creeks. The still was typical of most that I find: a twisted, rusting piece of metal. It’s interesting to note that I’ve found many stills where two small creeks meet. I think it’s because the terrain that’s created by two creeks meeting is typically flat – a nice area to place a moonshining operation.

I also found what appeared to be a perfect still furnace. It was shaped with rock on three sides and even had rocks across the top. It looked very much like the still furnace diagram in the Foxfire Book. When I looked at it closer though, I noticed water trickling out of the bottom of it. It was probably a spring box which is pretty common in these parts.

I continued walking up the main creek and I found two more stills. One was located high on the banks of the creek. It looked like that’s where it had landed after being blown up by the law. The third still was further upstream, lying in the creek, and hidden by weeds.

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For more information:
http://www.virginia.org/Listings/Events/PhilpottLakeRangerTalksMoonshine/

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The “XXX” signifies how many times the moonshine batch had been run through the still. Three X’s indicated that it had been run through three times and that the shine was pure alcohol.

In the old days, before the invention of more modern distilling techniques like thump kegs and reflux stills, moonshiners used a basic pot still – the simplest of all types of stills. It’s made up of two components: a boiler to cook the mash and a condenser to collect and cool the alcohol vapor back to a liquid.

While it is an effective device, you don’t get pure alcohol when you run a batch through the first time. The fermented mash, which is very similar to beer, starts out at about 5-10% alcohol by volume (ABV). When you run the mash through a pot still, the product coming out of the other end contains about 30-40% alcohol, the rest being mostly water. This is called “singlings.” (While the first run produces liquor at about 60-80 proof and is drinkable, you wouldn’t want to drink it since it still has quite a bit of off flavors carried over through the water from the mash.) To raise the alcohol content, you have to save up all the results of your first runs, and then run all of that through the still a second time. The second run raises it up to the 60-70% ABV range. Moonshine that had been run through the still three times was very close to being pure alcohol, above 80% ABV. The three XXX’s scrawled on the front of a moonshine jug indicated that it had been run through the still three times and that it had high, almost pure, alcohol content.

Now, with that said, I have never once seen a historic example of a jug with three X’s written on it. Any jugs like that would have to be quite old since moonshiners moved to half gallon mason jars many years ago. If any readers have an example of an old moonshine jug with the XXX’s still visible, I would love to see it and we could even post your photos here on the site.

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Today marks the one year anniversary of Moonshine Heritage. One year ago today I bought the domain MoonshineHeritage.com and published my first post (which had been written a few weeks before.)

In one year’s time site traffic has grown from just a couple of visitors a day to well over 2,000 visitors a day! In that time period the site has seen 134,252 unique visitors! Check out the graph above to see the web stats.

I want to thank each and every visitor to the site. I’m blown away by how many people are interested in what I’ve written here. Thank you for visiting.

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ShineFest featured muscle cars, bands, vendors, “moonshine” samples, and a distillery tour. There was also an appearance by moonshining legend Junior Johnson (who also apparently had something to do with NASCAR.)

NASCAR and moonshine go hand in hand. Many people don’t realize that the sport of NASCAR grew out of the moonshine industry. In the 30′s, bootleggers started modifying their cars in order to outrun the police. They developed advanced driving skills and created maneuvers to elude the authorities. One famous maneuver was the bootleggers turn, where the driver would spin his car around during a chase and drive straight at the police. When bootleggers weren’t running shine, the drivers would get together and race each other on dirt tracks, to test their driving skills. The sport of NASCAR grew out of this past time. Junior Johnson was one of these early pioneers of NASCAR – a moonshiner and a race car driver.  The first NASCAR track was built in his home town of Wilkesboro, North Carolina (which is known as the moonshine capital of the world – not to be confused with the other moonshine capital of the world, Franklin County, Virginia.)

During ShineFest, moonshine samples were handed out by Piedmont Distillers, a local distillery founded in 2005. A few years ago they partnered with Junior Johnson to create Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon, the only legal “moonshine” made in North Carolina. Midnight Moon is actually the Johnson family moonshine recipe.

The Carolina ShineFest is one of a number of festivals around the south that celebrates the history and culture of moonshine. Check out the photos from the event below. If you didn’t get a chance to attend this year, you should check it out next year. It’s a pretty big deal.

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So you’ve found a rusting heap of metal in the woods and you think it’s an old moonshine still. But how can you tell?

Since most moonshine operations are decades old, you’ll typically only find rusting, decaying piles of sheet metal, bits of wood, jars, and containers. Because there is so much garbage in the woods, it can be difficult to tell the difference between an old moonshine still and an illegal dump site. Take, for example, the photo to the right. Is it simply a piece of garbage, or is it a moonshine still?

The first thing you need to realize is that you’re not going to find an intact copper still. Since copper is such a valuable metal, you won’t find the classic copper moonshine still like those pictured in the header of this website. Those are long gone, removed by either the original owner or seized by the law.

You will however find sheet metal stills which were much cheaper to build and much more common in the later part of the 20th Century. But these can be decades old and most will be unrecognizable. When you find what you think is an old moonshine operation, you might have to piece clues together, like a forensic scientist, to determine if it really is a still.

Here are 5 things to look for to determine if that pile of junk you’ve found is really a moonshine still. (Click the pictures below for the larger versions.)

Is It Near Water?

Cool running water is absolutely essential to make liquor. The hot alcohol vapor coming out of the still contains quite a bit of heat energy and you need a constant source of cool water to condense it into moonshine. The heat from the condenser, or worm, will quickly boil the cooling water if it’s not continuously refreshed. That’s why the vast majority of moonshine stills were located next to creeks. If they weren’t next to a creek, then the moonshiner would have to pump water to the still. I have only found one still that wasn’t located directly next to a stream. It was a couple of hundred feet away from the nearest creek and the operators must have pumped the water up to the still. Most stills are found right next to the creek, almost in the creek itself. So the first thing you need to consider when determining if a pile of scrap is a moonshine still is its location: is it located very close to flowing water?

Supporting Cast of Characters

What kind of trash is in close proximity to your alleged moonshine still? Think about what other materials might have been used to make backwoods whiskey. Mason jars are a dead giveaway. Rusting barrel hoops from long gone mash barrels are another clear indication. Some modern moonshiners used plastic milk jugs. (Supposedly there’s and old still site not far from my home where the trees are littered with plastic milk jugs from the revenuers dynamiting the still.) You might find buckets around an old still site, especially old galvanized buckets. Look for pipes. Also, look for large wooden boxes, the flake stand which held the condenser and wooden tables which might have held parts of the operation. This type of trash found next to a suspect still is great supporting evidence that will help to establish if your trash is actually a still.

The Still Furnace

The other major supporting cast member is the still furnace. The boiler sat surrounded by a rock furnace which was usually “U” shaped. Rock from the creek was mostly used to build the furnace, but sometimes the moonshiners would haul cinder blocks or bricks out into the woods. The remains of a still furnace are a clear indication that the pile of rusting metal you found is a moonshine still. In fact, if you find a “U” shaped pile of rocks next to a stream, even by itself, then you can be certain that someone was running moonshine at that spot.

Axe Marks

When revenue officers discovered a moonshine operation, they would “cut down” the still. Everything was destroyed or made unusable. The revenuers would chop holes in the still with an axe. Mason jars were shattered. They smashed the flake stand. All of the copper – the cap, the pipes, the worm – were all seized and later sold for scrap.

If you find a rusting piece of sheet metal in the woods with axe marks in it, that’s a sure sign that it’s an old still.

One other way that the law destroyed stills was to blow them up with dynamite. If you find a large piece of sheet metal that looks like it was ripped apart, then it might be a still that was blown up by the revenuers.

The Still Design

And lastly, what does the still look like? Like I said earlier, you will not find the classic copper moonshine still sitting in the woods. Just like the value of the modern day metal, copper was a very expensive commodity. A 50 gallon copper still today will cost close to $1000 to build. It would have been just as expensive to build forty years ago, relative to inflation of course. The point being that copper is not going to be left in the woods. If a moonshiner built a copper still and ran it successfully without getting caught, he would certainly take it back home with him when he was done running it. A copper still was much too valuable to just leave sitting in the woods. Many of the earlier copper stills were used for decades, passed on from generation to generation. And if the revenuers found a still in the woods, the law would take all of the copper and sell it for scrap. Even just the copper condenser would fetch $100 at the scrap yard in today’s dollars. So, you’re not going to find any copper stills sitting out in the woods.

What you will find are sheet metal stills. During Prohibition the demand for moonshine increased dramatically and moonshiners started mass producing hooch in large sheet metal stills, capable of distilling hundreds of gallons at a time. Most of the stills built in the later part of the 20th century were of the sheet metal variety.

There are two main types of sheet metal moonshine stills: the submarine still, and the groundhog still. Both use a combination of sheet metal, wood, and nails. Submarine stills, like this one found in Virginia, have wooden sides. Groundhog stills, like the one in this video, have a wooden top and bottom.

So what do you look for? If you find a piece of sheet metal that has hundreds of nails along the edges, then that is most likely a still. If you find bits of wood or boards still attached then that is even more proof that you’ve found a moonshine still.

Putting It All Together

So let’s go back to the example from the very first photo. Is this a moonshine still? Yes, it is. It’s actually the first still that I found. You can see more photos of it here. If you read the post and look at the pictures, you’ll see that 1) it’s located next to a creek, 2) there’s quite a bit of “supporting” trash – mason jars, buckets, pipes, and barrel hoops 3) it has a distinct still furnace 4) everything is axed – the still and even the buckets 5) the sheet metal has wooden sides nailed to it.

What Have You Found?

I’d love to hear about any stills that you’ve found in the woods. Please leave a comment below describing your find!

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Here’s a great video about the history of moonshine in the Appalachians. It’s actually from the DVD bonus features included on The Last One , the documentary about Popcorn Sutton and Appalachian moonshine. This video is a great introduction to the history of moonshine in America that started with the Scotch-Irish bringing their distilling knowledge with them from Ireland.

The last part of the video (8:22) really sums up the reason why so much moonshine came out of Appalachia. It’s also the reason why the South is the last bastion of freedom in the entire world. (I’ll have to do a post on that topic soon.)

If you don’t own The Last One you need to get it. The Last One is the best documentary on moonshine – ever. I have watched it over 20 times now and will probably watch it again soon. It’s such a great documentary and if you are at all interested in moonshine, it needs to be in your DVD library.

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Jordan Creek is a large tributary of the Smith River. It runs through the town of Fieldale before dumping into the Smith. Jordan Creek would be a great place to locate a moonshine still since it’s surrounded by large tracts of woods. It’s a relatively inaccessible creek, but located close to town which means the average person won’t stumble across your still – and its close enough to civilization to get materials back and forth.

The history of the area is interesting. The region was originally settled by George Waller, a Revolutionary War Colonel who operated a plantation there. Years later, after the Civil War ended, freed slaves (who took the names of their former masters) founded the community of Waller. In 1817, the Marshal Fields Company purchased 1800 acres on the old plantation site, built a textile plant, and created the town of Fieldale. Thus began the industrialization of Henry County (the furniture factories in the nearby town of Bassett would come next.)

Snowbird Mill was located near Waller on Jordan Creek, and operated at the turn of the last century. It actually operated up until 1958. The mill was then lost to time as the woods grew up around Jordan Creek. Though it’s not that far from Fieldale, the old mill is rather difficult to access, especially in the summer. I had to climb down a steep, overgrown bank to get to the creek – using poison ivy vines as hand holds. Then I had to walk up the creek itself (since it’s steep along that stretch), and then through a field of tick infested brush.

The history of Waller and Fieldale.

The mill is still sitting there on Jordan Creek and it’s in remarkably great shape for being 100+ years old. It looks just like the old pictures. You can climb up into the structure and the old mill stone is still in place.

After checking out the mill I headed upstream to look for old moonshine stills. To me, Jordan Creek would be an ideal place to set up a still. I walked quite a ways up the creek, but didn’t find any signs of old moonshine operations. Heading back I noticed a side creek running in, so I decided to walk up this tributary to see what I could find. This little creek looked like a great place too. The ravine was steep sided, but offered many flat level spots along the creek to set up a moonshining operation. I walked and walked but didn’t find anything. I have the odd habit of talking to myself when I’m alone in the woods. As I walked, I thought out loud to myself, “if this creek were in Franklin County, I would have found five stills by now” and as soon as that last word slipped off my tongue, I looked up and saw an old still.

The remains of the still are nothing special – typical of what you find in the area. Most of it is disintegrated and to the untrained eye it just looks like a rusting pile of trash in the woods. Part of it lay rusting in the creek. As far as old moonshine stills go, it’s not a significant find (unlike this one on Salt House Branch.)

It is significant to me, though because it’s the first moonshine still I’ve found in Henry County. I’ve looked for stills in Henry County in the past, but never found any. I know that they are here, just not as prolific as in neighboring Franklin and Patrick Counties. In Franklin County, you can walk up almost any creek and find an old still. I’m going to spend a little more time searching Henry County now that I’ve found a still.

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I parked, walked down the hill and almost immediately found the remains of an old groundhog still. Most of the moonshine in this area was produced in submarine stills. This is the first groundhog still that I’ve found in the area. Groundhog stills are circular, with a wooden top and bottom. They sit on the ground and the fire is built around them. You can see one being built and run in the Hamper McBee video. This particular still had been repaired at some point in its history by being patched and riveted on the sides. This still was probably cut down by the revenuers, and then repaired and put back into service.

After snapping a few photos of the still, I continued up Machine Creek. A lot had changed since my last visit in February. The woods in June are an impenetrable mass of mountain laurel and thorny vines. Walking in the creek in winter was easy, but in summer it’s a complete bushwhack. I walked way up the creek, but if there were any stills I wouldn’t have seen them. The woods were so overgrown that I couldn’t see anything at all. I snapped a photo of the “trail” that you can see in the gallery below.

I’m going to have to re-think my summertime still hunting technique. Walking up the creeks will work in the winter and spring, but doesn’t work in the summertime.

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Before the Internet, if you were a city boy and you wanted to learn how to make moonshine, you went down to the library and checked out The Foxfire Book. In the late 60′s, in the mountains of North Georgia, a high school English teacher and his students produced a magazine as a class project. They interviewed their relatives about the old mountain ways of living. Attempting to preserve the mountain culture that was quickly disappearing, they wrote about topics such as log cabin building, curing meat, planting by the signs, and soapmaking. They called the magazine Foxfire for a luminescent plant that grew in the mountains of Georgia. In 1972, the articles were compiled into a book and over the years many books were written. While the original Foxfire stands on it’s own as a great book, there’s one chapter that we’re interested in: Moonshining as a Fine Art.

I got my hands on this book when I was in high school. With the knowledge in the book, a friend and I built a small pot still. It was literally a pot we converted into a still that we had set up in his bedroom on a hot plate. We had a couple of buckets of fermenting mash in his closet. The finished product was quite horrible, but very strong. One day his mom walked into the room while we were running a batch. She asked what we were doing, and without missing a beat, my friend told her “it was our science fair project.”

It was July.

Somehow she believed him. Over the next couple of weeks we went on to make about a gallon total of moonshine (like I said it was a small operation.) Our moonshine was the hit of many parties – mainly because of its mystique – and I still get asked about it today by old high school friends.

Up until recently The Foxfire Book was the how to manual on making moonshine. Today there’s quite a bit of information that can be found on the internet, but 20 years ago this was it. The book is still a great storehouse of knowledge. The students that wrote this book interviewed over 100 people for the chapter. It’s amazing, but they got most of it right. The chapter is packed with 44 pages of information on moonshine history, multiple moonshine still plans, a step by step process of how to make moonshine, and an authentic mash recipe. The book is worth the price just for that recipe.

The one problem with the chapter, and it’s a minor one, is that it was written by non-moonshiners. Don’t get me wrong, the kids did an amazing job of collecting information and putting together a moonshiner’s guide book. It’s probably the single greatest first hand account of how to make moonshine that’s ever been written. However there are a few small problems with it. They mess up a few terms and there are a few sections where they should have explained things in more detail. Some parts are a little confusing.

Even with these few problems, the book is still a great starting place if you want to learn how to make moonshine. I know quite a few people that have used the information in the book to build their first moonshine stills. The picture above is my friend’s copy of the book – the same one he used 30 years ago to build his still. You can take this book and start moonshining right away. This book belongs in every moonshiner’s library.

If you’d like to purchase The Foxfire Book, you can pick it up on Amazon.