CRESCENT Places: Dark Corner Distillery — Bringing Moonshine to the Sunshine (Part 1)

George Jones and Jimmy Buffett sang about IT.

Otis tried to get IT past Andy and Barney — only to be foiled as he rode a cow through downtown (though he did convince the Morrison Sisters that “National Potato Week” was cause for celebrating with IT).

Bo and Luke Duke faced the wrath of Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane because Uncle Jesse and Boss Hogg “ran” IT.

NASCAR was founded because of IT.

Now, with open arms, IT welcomes people to the north end of Greenville’s Main Street.

IT, you may have figured out by now, is bootleg, firewater, home brew, hooch, mountain dew, rotgut, white lightning.

IT is moonshine, and under a relatively new South Carolina law allowing microdistilleries, this traditional Southern liquor has moved from the light of the moon to a downtown storefront and in to a new era of legitimacy.

Dark Corner Distillery Co-Owner and Clemson engineering graduate Joe Fenten talks with CRESCENT about the time-tested processes he uses to put a moonshine still on the Main Street gateway of a city that’s on every magazine’s travel list today.

A MOONSHINER WALKS IN TO A MAIN STREET DISTILLERY AND WANTS TO COMPARE STILLS…

I told him we made a few modifications.  We wanted to keep the equipment and methods sort of time-tested.  So we knew there were basic principles we needed.

We needed a copper pot.  Pot stills are known for flavor and quality.  The Scots-Irish still use pot stills today to make Scotch whiskey or Irish whiskey.  So we knew we wanted a copper pot for flavor and quality.  We knew we wanted 100% copper.  Copper sort of has the ability to extract all flavors from the spirits so the more copper contact with the distillate or the spirits, the better your spirit’s gonna taste.  In the 1700, when the Scots-Irish moved down through the Shenandoah Valley into this area, they actually strapped their copper pots on the bottom of their wagon when they came over.  Sort of like taking your mixer or your waffle machine when you move from an apartment to a house.  That for them was a typical piece of equipment used on a daily basis to make whiskey.  So there are tons of copper pot stills you can see today whether it’s on a piece of land, a rusted copper pot, or whether it is in an antique store.  We knew that we wanted a copper pot.  The problem was that the price of copper was going up in the 18^th century and it was harder to come around copper as opposed to steel.

A steel barrel was easy to come by so folks began to use steel instead of copper which still doesn’t have the ability to extract out the off flavors from the spirit like copper does.  So the moonshiner said that his operation used steel barrels and four steel barrels welded together with the middles cut out. He pretty much had a 200 gallon process.  So that was the major difference.

He was used to using steel barrels while we were used to using copper.

And another thing was, his stills he built, which are reminiscent of stills you can still find in the Dark Corner, they didn’t have a head on them, so our copper pot has a head on it, which is the bulbous thing on the top.

It is really neat because it helps with reflux which cleans the spirit up, gives you a little more alcohol, makes it a little bit smoother.  So that was the major difference.

Now all the moonshiners used to use what they called “little man” or “thumper.”  We had built and sized a little man or thumper for our system and pretty much the idea is that, in between your cooling condenser and your copper pot, you’ve got a 55 gallon barrel of either oak, copper, or stainless steel, and it’s filled up with either water or distillate from the previous day and, ultimately, what you’re getting is steam coming off the still that heats the thumper, which is full of distillate or water, and you’re getting a re-distillation.  The more times you distill the spirit, the smoother it gets and the higher proof you get off of it.  That was another thing.  He noticed that we had removed our thumper.  We took our thumper out because you get some pressure problems with thumpers.  Pressure is not a really big problem with what we’re doing today because we hardly get any pressure.  The system is actually open on the end for the distillate to come out, but the pressure built-up in the thumper, let’s say, if you had some solids block the inlet to the thumper, you get some bad pressure build-ups.  There are plenty of pictures where moonshiners have blown up thumpers from too high a pressure.  We can’t have that.  So that was the two major differences in his system and ours.

IT MIGHT NOT TAKE AN ENGINEER TO MAKE MOONSHINE, BUT IT HELPS.

I think a lot of people are very surprised by it (chemical process of distillation) and don’t really…you know, it’s almost hard for them to believe that we have to look at the elements of the process that we do.

If you take a typical moonshiner’s recipe, and there are millions of moonshiners so there are going to be millions of recipes, but a typical recipe would be where a gentleman would take, let’s just say some corn meal or cracked corn…about 50 pounds of corn meal and 50 pounds of sugar, they would put it in a 55 gallon barrel, they’d cover it with some lukewarm water, stir it up, pitch some yeast, some bakers yeast or bread yeast, cover it or not cover it, usually they would cover it to keep the bugs out, and they’d let it sit for 14 days and whatever they get when they’re done, that’s what they’d put in their still.  So they’d drain it off, throw it in the still, heat it up and cook it and keep most of what they get out.  And they kept a major portion of the whole run.

That’s where a lot of people went blind and got hurt.  The government started putting out signs saying, “Moonshine is dangerous. Don’t drink the moonshine.”

So comparing to what we do today, there is a lot of science involved.  Keeping in mind, we want to keep it a time-tested product but, at the same time, there are certain things we can do to make the flavor better or we can increase the time that we do it, just by simple things that are more science than techniques that were passed down from generation from generation.  So yeah, there is a lot of science involved and there are a number of elements of it that a lot of the moonshiners…some of them probably knew more about it than I’m claiming, but you have guys who don’t know a lot about yeast, that really don’t understand enzymes and why they do what they do.  They don’t understand the different cuts you make on the distillate to get a smoother product, to get more character for the whiskey.

So yeah, we get very, very deep into it.  We want to understand how the settlers did it but we also want to understand today how to make the process better and make the product more palatable for the consumer.

IT TAKES TIME TO COME UP WITH THE RIGHT RECIPE.

You know, I guess I came into the venture as a huge whiskey fan.  I had an idea of how I wanted the whiskey to taste.  I also had hundreds of whiskeys before to where 80% I pretty much said, “That was nothing great. I don’t really enjoy that.”  The other 20% I found qualities in it I really liked.

For me personally, I like sweeter whiskeys as opposed to spicier whiskeys.  And I have found that rye doesn’t really give me the flavor that I enjoy.  Now, a lot of present day shiners really enjoy rye.  I’m not crazy about it.  Your typical Bourbon recipe would be corn, rye and barley.  We chose not to use rye in our final recipe. We use red wheat, which we really like.

So to get to that point, we actually did 34 test batches and the first couple we did, honestly, were just not good at all.  I’ve got a sample in the back.  I think that’s typical for anyone that makes their first shine or product.  I think it’s that way with beer, as well.  Had to get over some humps and some learning curves, just like a lot of moonshiners do.  You taste it. You do the process and realize, “This is terrible.  Nobody is going to drink this.”  So we got up to about recipe 8 and 9 and we said “Wow, this is really starting to turn around.”

We started smelling recipe 1. We said “Gah, that’s a lot better than recipe 1.”  We found that every 5 recipes we did, the 5 before were not nearly as good as the one we’re presently on.  So it was like we evolved quick and fast.

We got better and better at what we’re doing and we’re homing in on what we wanted.  By the time we got to recipe 20, it came off the still and we had a couple of guys from Blue Ridge Brewery here, I had my best friend here, my business partner.  We’re all in still area getting ready for the hearts which is just the most magnificent portion of the whole run.  It tastes the best. It’s smooth.  Everyone wants to taste the hearts.  I pulled off a little bit for everyone, and the first thing everyone said on their face was, “It’s creamy. It’s buttery. It’s sweet.”

At that point, I knew we had what I thought we were looking for.  If you tasted the hearts of our recipe of recipe 22, it tastes like caramel or cotton candy.  It’s really nice, it’s different.

I use the word different because every spirit we make we try to be different.  It’s all about innovation.  If you want a 200 year old recipe, there are plenty of those out there. Just go get a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.  We didn’t want that, we wanted something different.

When we hit recipe 22, it was different, it tasted good and it was on the sweeter side, which is what I was looking for.  Now tasting a lot of the competitors’ clear whiskeys, it’s (DCD’s product) a sweeter whiskey.  I have yet to have one which is as quite as sweet as ours is.  Not to say they can’t make a sweeter whiskey, it’s nice and sweet.  So 22 was perfect for us so when we went to 23 and we tried to sort of perfect 22 and make little minor modifications to see if it made it a little bit better.

So by the time we got to 28, we were actually working in the wrong direction.  We went to 28 to 34 for a few more tries and at 34, we said, let’s back up.  22 is our best. Let’s cut it there.  So out of 34 recipes, 22 was by far our best.

THINGS A SHINER MIGHT DRINK IF HE’S NOT DRINKING HIS OWN PRODUCT

I like…just keep in mind that when someone comes to the tasting bar and the first thing I start talking about is settlers’ whiskey and I talk about the Scots-Irish settling the area, I never had a 1700s whiskey, obviously, but after reading, doing research, talking to families that settled the area back then, the descendents of the families and listening to the way they drink their whiskey and the qualities they enjoyed in the whiskey, it was clear to me that I wanted us to produce a whiskey in that style.

There are a couple of words that really jump out when I say that.  I’m looking for a full-bodied, oily whiskey.  Oily, fatty.  Both of words work out really, really well for me.  A lot of people hear it and say “I don’t want fat in my whiskey.  I don’t want an oily whiskey.”   But, honestly, once you’ve had an oily or fatty whiskey, you realize that’s where all the flavor’s at. It’s in the oily whiskey.  It really coats your mouth. It’s not thin. It doesn’t feel like it evaporates. It hangs around when you drink it.  That’s the type of whiskey we wanted to make.

Now, as far as in the industry, who makes a whiskey that’s similar to our moonshine right now?  I got hooked on Red Breast.  It’s an Irish pot-distilled whiskey.  It’s very, very, oily.  Coats the glass well.  Has very thick legs if you look at it in the glass.  Just a great whiskey.  That’s probably my personal favorite that I’ve had thus far would be the Red Breast.

It’s very good.  Sometimes it’s hard to come around.  You’ve got Red Breast and Green Spot, two Irish whiskeys that are known for their oily character, being a full-bodied whiskey.

Just keep in mind, the idea of being different is really, really cool for me.  Change is not always the best thing in the world, but right now, in the spirits industry, I like the idea of change because we’ve got some guys who have been producing the same stuff for hundreds of years.  Same recipe.  They’ve got rick houses, and by “rick houses,” I mean a place to store all their barrels. They’ve got rick houses that are as big as a Lowe’s and they’ve got them lined up one after another so you’re talking about millions of barrels of whiskey lined up to be bottled.  So I’m all about being different.  I like the idea of different.  And with that, one thing I’ve learned is that the palates of people in general, not just Americans, the palates of people in the world that drink spirits and beer have lightened.

And by that, I mean, you’ve got a lot of us drinking Bud Light, Miller Light, Pabst Blue Ribbon for beer and then you’ve got a lot of people drinking blends.  They love these blended whiskeys.  Every guy in the world is like “Just give me a bottle of Crown for Christmas.”  That’s a blended Canadian whiskey.   Over the past hundred, hundred and fifty years, our palates have lightened and manufacturers have realized it’s much easier to water-down or blend a whiskey than making their own whiskey and not adding water than it is to make a quality product the way we’re doing it.  So people automatically go into that mode where they think, “Give me a Bud Light,” or. “Let me get a Crown on the rocks,” because that’s what they’re used to.

They taste our whiskey and they’re a little bit shocked because it is…it’s mouth-filling.  It’s very oily.  It’s a full-bodied whiskey.  There’s not many of them you can actually buy in the store. and if you consider the fact that most packaging stores whether it be Green’s or Total Wine, I challenge you to go in and ask for a micro-distilled whiskey. You’d be lucky to get one at any store.  They just don’t carry them.  So, unless you’re in the area where there is a microdistillery which, obviously, they’re hard to come buy lately, you won’t get a chance to sample something like that.  Like a full-bodied whiskey like we make.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 Next Week.