120-Year-Old Brandy Recipe Uses _Rotten_ Apples! _ Moonshiners

We're on a mission right now to resurrect Big Haley's apple brandy recipe. People are still talking about her apple brandy 125 years later. She suffered from elephantitis and throughout her life continued to gain a lot of weight, between 400 to 600 pounds, so she was kind of stuck in her cabin on the ridge. Her cabin is still existing today. It's been preserved by historical society. This is Haley. She moonshined inside. This is where her still was and this is where she would make liquor. You know, Big Haley, she was a very impressive lady. She really had it going on in a world that was dominated then by frontiers men. She was a frontier woman. Do you know the types of apples that she could have been using at the time? I do know that her husband, John Mullins, went around to different farms and gave apple seedlings to different farmers to start their own apple trees there, so that she would have a plentiful supply. It's kind of greenish, reddish with black spots all over it, so it was an ugly apple, but it was a delicious apple. These old rough looking apples, they do have great flavor. They've got plenty of sugar. These right here that's already rotting a little bit, you'd be surprised how much flavor they bring to the party. Yeah, that's why I wasn't afraid of those ones, because they're starting to ferment already for us. They rot a little bit there around the core. That'll mash up. That'll make them excellent, because they're already about broke down. It's a good one. You spit that bite out. Well, I'm just making a point. I was showing it. I was such a crazy bastard. He's trying to quit eating all of our apples. Put that back in there and it'll mash it. There's definitely wild geese living on these apples, because it's breaking down the apple and consuming it. It's converting the fructose sugar in the apples, and that's exactly what we want to happen for fermentation. That one's got sticky s*** all over it. Yeah, guys, we think, actually, we should use the wild yeast on the apples to mash that in then. I've been doing my research, and we're going to try to harvest the wild yeast off of these apples, because like most moonshiners back in the day, Big Haley really only had apples and water and natural yeast. And no sugar, right? I don't think she would have had sugar back then. Sugar would have been too hard to come by at that time. True 100% apple brandy. All that's left to do is take our apples into the woods and mash these in exactly how Big Haley would have. Good luck, get busy, get with it. Kelly, have you ever used wild yeast before to make a mash? No. Never? Nope. I use some kind of bread yeast because it's readily available and easy. Back in the day, they wouldn't have had access to anything. They would have just had apples, wild yeast, and water. So we're going to do everything exactly how Haley would have done it. And see how it turns out. Yeah, I just want to heat up a little bit of water. Get this like, lukewarm, 90 degrees or so, like body temperature. Body temperature. Yeah, I mean, this is try to like, wake that yeast up a little bit that's on the apples. Wild yeast live naturally in the environment, in the air, and it's kind of all over the place. So the idea is to make sort of a wild yeast starter by crushing up some of the really soft apples. These really soft apples probably have more yeast present on them because the yeast is consuming those apples and regenerating more yeast bodies. I'm not touching it. I'm going to let you be in charge. That way, if something goes wrong. Haley, you're slacking. Look at these big pieces in here. Speed up. Slow down. Mash it harder. This is a really long process to make apple brandy. Haley had about 14 kids or so. So I'm sure she put them to work when she was crushing up all these apples. Is there a reason that we have to shred them? Them being shredded helps us get all the sugars out of them because we're not really cooking the apples. Doing a cool mashing will definitely benefit our flavor. In cooking the apples, you let off a lot of the aroma and the flavor that the apples have in them. Ready? Yep. Oh, golly. Look at it. It fuzzed it right up, didn't it? It's hard to see, but if you look really close, there's some bubbles forming and popping. Oh, yeah. That is freaking awesome. Pretty soon, we're going to be back here running Big Haley's Apple Brandy. Good luck, little yeast babies. Do your thing. Big Manda's Apple Brandy Mash, a.k.a. Big Haley's. Let's check it out. I'm just... Yeah. It sounds like the cap might be gone. Yes, sir. Burned your eyes a little bit. Well, that means there's enough alcohol in it that we are to get us a pint or two anyway. Sour. It tastes like a bad wine. That's because it is right now. So we make it a good brandy. Go to it. Let's do it. Big Haley's Apple Brandy was known far and wide for its amazing flavor and how smooth it was. Are you ready, Amanda? Ready. It's coming at you hot. It's a legendary recipe. So I'm really hoping by the end of this day, we can put some of that in a jar and actually get to taste for ourselves what it may have been like. It's building up. It's hot right here now. So we're going to have liquor before long. This has to be something that we can get a little extra bang for the buck with because that's the only reason they even want to get into the market is if they can sell a high-end apple brandy. I really, really hope that Big Haley is going to look over us, give us her blessing and let us make some good apple brandy. Going to be running soon. I have brought Kelly on a wild goose chase. I've had Mark and Digger waiting all this time. I've really talked this recipe up. And if I don't come through, they're going to be pretty salty with me. Oh, there it comes. We've got liquor. I'm going to dial the flame way down because we want this to run slow, don't we? Yeah, turn it down a little bit. Kelly, we're going to dump out a lot more heads on this run than we normally would with like the standard run of the milk corn liquor. The fructose conversion plus that wild yeast is going to make way more acetone. When I make apple brandy, we tend to produce more acetyl aldehydes, which are the heads. Are you ready? We can use a sampling jar. Yeah, let's do a taste test. Every moonshiner knows there's a portion you throw off of your run. That's the four shots. So that has levels of methyl alcohol in it. And that's the poisonous part. I'll be honest, Kelly. I'm a little nervous. Even though I know all the effort we put into this. I'm pretty sure it will taste good, but I just, I don't want to let you guys down. Well, I got plenty run up for us to try. So, you know, I like to make things pretty difficult on all you guys. But in the end, it usually plays out in my favor. Feeding pretty good. Oh my God. We killed it. That is freaking amazing, right? Totally amazing. I'm drinking some more of this. I'm calling the head guys and telling them they need to come up here. You think they'll come up here and try it right now? You know, they're dying to know what this is. I love to hear what they think about it. Kelly and I both agree that we freaking nailed it. You're going to come and see me and Amanda. I can't wait to see their faces when they taste this. All this effort is because Mark and Digger challenged us to make the best possible apple brandy. The recipe hasn't been made in 120 years. I really hope we have not done all this on a fool's errand. Well, now we know how to bait shins in when we want something. You want us in the middle of a run, there's something usually bad wrong. Or something really good. Show them, Amanda. Well, this is what I've been waiting for. I see a hint of happiness on your pretty little face, Amanda. You picked up on that, huh? I did. Isn't that in there? That's a good sign. That's a damn good sign. Damn, that don't want your liquor. Ain't no man going to, is he? He wouldn't want. I'm telling you, that's a sweet jar right there. It's starting to pick up a lot of apple on that one. It's got a fine nose on it. Well, it gets down in the tails when we get her mixed together. You think it's good now? It's got way more apple flavor than regular apple brandy. Yeah, it's almost like it's got some of that syrup out of them canned apples. It's that good. This is outstanding liquor. And this is going to be the only run of it because there's no more of the apples. And with no sugar, it is very limited in the quantity that it makes. That's apple, hell-west, and crooked, ain't it? This is a top-shelf brandy, and it's going to bring a top-shelf price. I'm going to sit over here and watch a little more of this get run. I'm going to look at the still. I'm going to tell you something, Amanda. I mean, right down there in the right chandler, you'd be laying over there in them damn weeds. We still got a little work to do, so I haven't really tapped in too far into that yet. I was pretty impressed with how that come off the still just so smoothly. Couldn't believe it. I believe you're on to something. We're still running good. You know, usually, Puss, we ain't want to just sit around and drink a damn jar of liquor like that. No, we're usually over there humping it out. We won't get off this damn mountain before we get much deeper in. Yeah, we've been stuck on a mountain before. It ain't going to be like this. If we, if we... We'll cover you in zip. We've got a tarp. Let me have that again. Damn. Hey, big Haley. Thank you, sweetie. Jesus. I knew she was here the whole time. I guess you just got to drink enough of the brandy to be able to actually see her.