mitchshrader
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2006
- Messages
- 146
When I was seven, we returned from Germany. My dad was stationed within driving distance of my granddad for the first time, and I got to spend some weeks with him.
This may be stretching it some, to try to explain to urbanites..
My grandfather was 100% illiterate, and made moonshine in the same county for several decades...
without being arrested for it.
It was good whisky. Lots of folks went to jail, but somehow, the sheriff and the preachers who drank his likker forgot to include his name on any reports of evil bootleggers.
Now, as a seven year old, I had no clue this was illegal. I knew it was SECRET.. but that's a game to kids, so morality wasn't involved.
Granpa took me to his stillhouse. It was about a quarter mile up the hill (not much of a hill, in lone grove oklahoma, more a little rise, with brush all over it.
There were 10 barrels, hogsheads he called em, fat ones. Those were the mash barrels. There were two catch barrels, and a slobber box, and he caught the raw stuff in one, and the finished product (from the 3rd stilling) in the other one.
He made one kind of whisky. It was sprouted white corn, dried with blackjack oak, dead limbs.. he had a sprouting shed that was about six feet by 15 feet, and a cob & stick firepit at one end. the bottom of the sprouting shed was split oak.. hard to believe there were oaks in Oklahoma, big enough to split.. but there used to be..
The only wood he'd use was oak. He stilled with it, he dried the malt with it, he used it in barrels, and he burned it in his stove at home. Stillin' he used dried on the tree, squaw wood, and I helped him gather a truckload of it, nearly.
We ran off one full run, and it took a WHILE. That's 1000 gallons of liquid mash, and his runs made 9 gallons of hundred proof, 36 full quarts, per barrel. It was clear as water, and would run a bead all the way around the jar, if you jiggled it. It drank like warm tea with honey, it coated your mouth with an oily feel, a bit sweet and syrupy.. and kind of menthol or mint, like some sort of liquid candy.
It wasn't the best booze I've ever tasted, not even close. But, it was for sure the best moonshine I ever did, and the best NEW whisky.. and I didn't try it when I was seven, I had *a* taste about 8 years later when that fit better.
His recipe was real simple.. he sprouted white corn, and ground it twice. He never put sugar in it, called that stuff 'preacher whisky' and would spit when he said it..
He stilled with a wood fire and a copper kettle and a copper coil.. 'pot still' like irish.. and 3 times. Ran off everything, and then refermented the mash, and ran it again, with all the drips and extras from the first batch..
and mixed em and ran a third time, for the 'real thing'..
He sold it colored, or uncolored, according to his mood. Colored was a couple of weeks over blocks of charred white oak.. not filtered through, just poured over, and steeped long enough to get a tinge to it. Added some charcoal taste, a bit maybe, but not much.
I never drank the colored stuff, he did that to impress yankees. Anyway, in that time and place, the greatest praise you could get was to make a living and stay out of jail.. that took social approval. He owned hound dogs, ate corn bread, was missing most of his teeth, and never asked for a thing from anybody his whole life long. And made whiskey that a few Real Old men in Lone Grove Oklahoma will still admit was mighty good drinking likker. One of em's a Pentecostal preacher..
Well, the reason I told this was I found out today I'm a grandpa. My first, my only son's first..
This may be stretching it some, to try to explain to urbanites..
My grandfather was 100% illiterate, and made moonshine in the same county for several decades...
without being arrested for it.
It was good whisky. Lots of folks went to jail, but somehow, the sheriff and the preachers who drank his likker forgot to include his name on any reports of evil bootleggers.
Now, as a seven year old, I had no clue this was illegal. I knew it was SECRET.. but that's a game to kids, so morality wasn't involved.
Granpa took me to his stillhouse. It was about a quarter mile up the hill (not much of a hill, in lone grove oklahoma, more a little rise, with brush all over it.
There were 10 barrels, hogsheads he called em, fat ones. Those were the mash barrels. There were two catch barrels, and a slobber box, and he caught the raw stuff in one, and the finished product (from the 3rd stilling) in the other one.
He made one kind of whisky. It was sprouted white corn, dried with blackjack oak, dead limbs.. he had a sprouting shed that was about six feet by 15 feet, and a cob & stick firepit at one end. the bottom of the sprouting shed was split oak.. hard to believe there were oaks in Oklahoma, big enough to split.. but there used to be..
The only wood he'd use was oak. He stilled with it, he dried the malt with it, he used it in barrels, and he burned it in his stove at home. Stillin' he used dried on the tree, squaw wood, and I helped him gather a truckload of it, nearly.
We ran off one full run, and it took a WHILE. That's 1000 gallons of liquid mash, and his runs made 9 gallons of hundred proof, 36 full quarts, per barrel. It was clear as water, and would run a bead all the way around the jar, if you jiggled it. It drank like warm tea with honey, it coated your mouth with an oily feel, a bit sweet and syrupy.. and kind of menthol or mint, like some sort of liquid candy.
It wasn't the best booze I've ever tasted, not even close. But, it was for sure the best moonshine I ever did, and the best NEW whisky.. and I didn't try it when I was seven, I had *a* taste about 8 years later when that fit better.
His recipe was real simple.. he sprouted white corn, and ground it twice. He never put sugar in it, called that stuff 'preacher whisky' and would spit when he said it..
He stilled with a wood fire and a copper kettle and a copper coil.. 'pot still' like irish.. and 3 times. Ran off everything, and then refermented the mash, and ran it again, with all the drips and extras from the first batch..
and mixed em and ran a third time, for the 'real thing'..
He sold it colored, or uncolored, according to his mood. Colored was a couple of weeks over blocks of charred white oak.. not filtered through, just poured over, and steeped long enough to get a tinge to it. Added some charcoal taste, a bit maybe, but not much.
I never drank the colored stuff, he did that to impress yankees. Anyway, in that time and place, the greatest praise you could get was to make a living and stay out of jail.. that took social approval. He owned hound dogs, ate corn bread, was missing most of his teeth, and never asked for a thing from anybody his whole life long. And made whiskey that a few Real Old men in Lone Grove Oklahoma will still admit was mighty good drinking likker. One of em's a Pentecostal preacher..
Well, the reason I told this was I found out today I'm a grandpa. My first, my only son's first..
