The Piscataqua Pedlar's Pass: Runners Who Worked the Seacoast Route
Rum, molasses, and grain spirits moved up from Portsmouth along the First New Hampshire Turnpike, and Dr. G. G. Wilkins follows the seacoast runners who carried them past tollgates, deputies, and the Concord crowd into the Pittsfield hill towns, while Barnaby the bear deals with a hired fire-setter. You'll hear about gundalows, lantern signals, hollow wagon tongues, and double-struck copper cents from Civil War era New Hampshire, alongside some real distilling science on thump kegs, hickory ash, and the blue-flame moonshine myth.
In this episode
- Portsmouth rum distilleries, West Indies molasses, and the Piscataqua River smuggling trade
- Gundalows on Great Bay and the First New Hampshire Turnpike route to Pittsfield
- Moonshine runner tricks: mackerel barrel caches, hollow wagon tongues, and tavern lantern signals
- The seacoast vs. Concord and Manchester rivalry over Civil War era bootleg spirits
- G. G. Wilkins' double-struck copper cent and the night Barnaby the bear stopped a fire-setter
- Clara Higgins on Chesapeake oyster-bed caches, nested casks on a coasting schooner, and old slang for rum
- Thump keg science: hickory ash vs. red oak, lye, tannins, and boiling points
- Why the blue-flame test doesn't prove your moonshine is safe
Dr. G. G. Wilkins follows the seacoast runners who carried rum, molasses, and grain spirits from Portsmouth up the old First New Hampshire Turnpike into the hill towns. He covers their gundalows, lantern signals, and wagon tricks, their feud with the Concord and Manchester crowd, and the night Barnaby tore up a hired fire-setter. Blue Ridge herbalist and slang collector Clara Higgins brings new stories of Chesapeake oyster-bed caches, nested casks on a coasting schooner, and the old coast words for rum. Wilkins also answers Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller's voicemail about hickory ash and red oak in the thump keg with lye, tannin, and boiling points, then knocks down the blue-flame myth between strikes on his anvil.
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Full episode transcript
♦ Audible wax cylinder surface crackle, slow drip of clear distillate into a glass jar
♦ Barnaby the black bear grunting and chain clinking outside log cabin window
Wilkins: Barnaby! Settle your carcass down. That is no deputy, that is the wind off the Suncook rattling the shutter. Lie down, you four-hundred-pound bag of wet hair and bad intentions, before I pull your eyeteeth and sell them to a Portsmouth sailor for a watch chain.
♦ Bear huffs, chain drags heavy across the frozen dooryard, then a long contented groan
Wilkins: There. He is chewing on a beef knuckle the size of a Methodist hymnal, and he will be civil until it runs out.
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth, swelling, then settling under the voice
Wilkins: Good evening, neighbors, and welcome to Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, broadcasting from the log fortress of Fort Wilkins on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. I am your host, Dr. George G. Wilkins: dentist, blacksmith, inventor, coin-stamper, keeper of the bear, and twice the guest of the Merrimack County sheriff, who serves a poor supper and charges a high price for it. Tonight we leave the hills and take the salt road. I am going to tell you about the Piscataqua Pedlar's Pass and the runners who worked the seacoast route, the men who carried rum, molasses, and grain spirits from Portsmouth up into the hill towns, and how a Pittsfield stillman stayed alive between two roads full of thieves.
♪ Theme flourishes and fades
Announcer: A quick word, friends! For a still built small enough for the parlor table and fine enough for a Portsmouth sea captain, ask after the Fort Wilkins 2-Gallon Tabletop Mini-Still in spun copper. Explore Tabletop Stills at moonshinestill.com. That is moonshinestill.com!
♦ Wax cylinder crackle, a log shifting in the stove
Wilkins: Thank you, sir. Now pull your chair up to the stove, because tonight's story begins at low tide.
♪ A slow fiddle air, like a sea chantey played by a man who has never seen the sea
Wilkins: SEGMENT ONE. The Salt Road. Most folks who think of New Hampshire spirits think of corn and rye up in the hills, cider in every barn, and men like me sweating over copper in the woods. But this state has a mouth on it, and the mouth is Portsmouth, on the Piscataqua River. It is our only true seaport. For better than a hundred years the West Indies trade came up that river: molasses by the hogshead out of the sugar islands, and rum out of the Portsmouth distilleries that boiled that molasses down. When I was a boy you could smell a rum house in Portsmouth from the far side of the river, a smell like burnt sugar and a sailor's armpit.
Wilkins: The Piscataqua is no gentle river, either. She runs cold and quick with a tide that will pull a man's boots off and then come back for his breeches. Above the town she opens into Great Bay, and off Great Bay run the tidal rivers up to Dover, Durham, Newmarket, and Exeter. On those waters you will see the gundalow. She is a flat-bottomed freight barge, ugly as a mule's grandmother, with one great lateen sail on a long yard. Her mast and yard are counterweighted, so when she comes to a bridge the crew drops the whole rig down flat, slides under, and hauls it back up on the other side. A gundalow drops her mast to get under a bridge the way a deputy drops his principles to get under a jar: quick, practiced, and with no shame at all.
Wilkins: Now here is where it comes to Pittsfield. In 1794 they opened the Piscataqua Bridge from Newington over to Durham, and two years later the Legislature chartered the First New Hampshire Turnpike to run from that bridge inland toward Concord, through Lee, Barrington, Nottingham, Northwood, Epsom, and Chichester. Get out your map, or just picture my face. Northwood and Epsom are Pittsfield's own doorstep. A man coming up the turnpike from the salt water with a wagon of molasses could turn north at Epsom, follow the Suncook, and be pounding on my door before his horse had finished complaining.
Wilkins: That is the Pedlar's Pass. It was never a mountain pass or a gap in the rocks. It was a way of getting through: through the tollgates, through Northwood's nosy taverns, through the county's deputies, and through the Concord boys who reckoned every jug in New Hampshire ought to pass through their hands first.
Wilkins: Let me tell you about the runners. Seacoast men are a breed apart. They smell of salt cod and low tide, and they talk like they are paying by the word. A Portsmouth runner says 'ayuh' and you have heard his whole autobiography. In these war years they had plenty of cover. The Portsmouth Navy Yard has been roaring since '61. That is where they built the Kearsarge, named for our own Mount Kearsarge, the very ship that sank the rebel raider Alabama off the coast of France last summer. A town full of ship carpenters, caulkers, and sailors on liberty has a thirst like a dry well. Wagons went in and out of that town day and night with oakum, tar, salt fish, and molasses, and no sheriff living could poke into every barrel.
Wilkins: Here are some of the tricks. A runner named Jotham Brackett, out of Greenland, hauled salt mackerel, a whole wagon bed of brine barrels, and in every third barrel, under eight inches of fish, sat a stone jug of Portsmouth rum. A mackerel barrel is the finest guard dog in New England. No deputy alive will put his arm in to the elbow. One Rockingham constable tried it once, came up with a fish head hung on his cuff link, and resigned his commission by Thursday.
Wilkins: Another trick was the hollow wagon tongue. A runner bored the tongue out with a long auger, the way I would ream a rotten root canal, filled it with spirits, and plugged it with a peg greased in tallow. A wagon tongue sloshes a little going over a frost heave, but so does a teamster, and nobody bothered to search the tongue.
Wilkins: Then there were the signals. Along the turnpike, the seacoast boys used the tavern lanterns. One lantern in the gable window of a Northwood tavern meant come ahead. Two lanterns meant the deputy is drinking inside, so go round by the back road past the ponds. A lantern with a red flannel petticoat tied over it, and I will let you guess whose petticoat, meant a Concord man was in the taproom asking questions. Then you kept your wagon in the woods and your mouth in your hat.
Wilkins: That brings us to the rivalry. On the other road, the Merrimack road, from Concord down through the Amoskeag mill country at Manchester, ran another crowd entirely. Concord is a fine town. They build the Concord coach there, the best stagecoach under heaven, and a Concord man will sell you a coach, a Bible, and a lie in the same afternoon, and charge you extra for the Bible. The Merrimack runners worked the river towns and the mill boardinghouses, and they smelled of mill grease and their mothers' disappointment. The seacoast boys called them 'lint-lickers.' The Merrimack crowd called the seacoast boys 'clam-diggers.' Both were right, which is what made the fighting so honest.
Wilkins: So why does a Pittsfield stillman need friends on both roads? Arithmetic, neighbors. My corn and my apples come from the hills. My molasses, when I want to run a rum, and my copper sheet, when I want to build, come up from the coast. My buyers are spread out every which way: mill hands down the Merrimack, ship carpenters on the Piscataqua, and every thirsty selectman in between. If the Concord boys hate you, your goods never reach the river. If the clam-diggers hate you, your molasses goes to the bottom of Great Bay. A stillman with only one road is like a man with only one tooth. He can still eat, but he chews mighty careful and smiles at nobody.
♪ Banjo bridge, quick and sly
Wilkins: SEGMENT TWO. Legends, outlaws, and the Wilkins Pass. Before I bring on tonight's guest, I owe you the story of how the Pedlar's Pass came to be stamped in copper.
♦ Wilkins sets a heavy iron punch on the anvil, a faint ring
Wilkins: When change got scarce in these war years, I took to stamping my name on coins: G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H. Plenty of folks have heard that much. What they have not heard is that one particular batch of large cents, stamped twice, once on each face, I gave only to seacoast runners I trusted. Show that cent to the right man behind the right tavern bar between Northwood and Epsom, and your wagon got waved on, the back road was told to you, and the lantern got lit. That double-struck cent was the Pass. A Concord man who forged one was found out, because he struck it with the letters upside down. Lettering a coin wrong side up is the surest proof a man has never read anything but a bill of sale.
Wilkins: Now, the Concord crowd did not care for this arrangement. In fact a fellow on the Merrimack side, whom I will call Ruel Dustin since every one of you knows his real name anyhow, took my seacoast trade as a personal insult. Ruel is the man I hold responsible for whispering in the sheriff's ear before my first arrest, though he swears he was home that night reading Scripture, which is a lie, because Ruel cannot read. When the law did not finish me, Ruel tried fire.
♦ Wind against the log walls, a low creak of the shutter
Wilkins: It was a January night with no moon. Ruel sent his hired man, Lafe Colby, a long, sour, chinless article who looked like a heron in a coat, with a lantern and a quart of lamp oil to burn my still-house to the sills. Lafe came up through the alders behind the woodpile in his stocking feet, so as not to crunch the snow. That was clever. What was not clever was coming up on the window side, because the window side belongs to Barnaby.
♦ Distant bear grunt from outside, chain shifting
Wilkins: You hear him? He knows the story. Now, Barnaby does not roar. People expect a roar. A bear that means business makes a sound like a cellar door opening slowly in a dead man's house. Then comes a click of the teeth, clack, clack, and then he moves faster than any creature that size has a right to. Lafe had just unstopped his oil can when four hundred pounds of black hair came out of the dark and took him by the seat of the breeches. And not only the breeches, neighbors. The meat under the breeches too. It made a noise like wet sailcloth ripping in a gale. Barnaby shook him the way a terrier shakes a rat. Lafe's lantern went one way into the snowbank, his oil can went the other, and Lafe himself went up into the air and came down about eight times, screaming in a key I had never heard from a grown man, not even in my dentist's chair.
Wilkins: By the time I got out with a lamp, Barnaby was sitting on his haunches licking his chops, and on the chain stake lay half the seat of Lafe's breeches, with a fair slice of the ham under it, maybe the size of a pie wedge and still steaming in the cold. Barnaby had molasses on his whiskers from the barrel he had been into earlier, and Concord on his breath, and he looked as proud as a deacon at a hanging.
Wilkins: I am a medical man, so I hauled Lafe inside, laid him face down across my workbench next to the tooth forceps, poured a gill of my roughest over the wound, which made him sing a second verse, and sewed his backside up with fiddle string, the way a dentist closes a gum. I charged him for the string, the needle, and the music. Lafe sat sideways in church for a year, and the minister took it as a sign of humility. Ruel Dustin never sent another man up my back road, and I still keep that pie wedge of breeches nailed over the door as a notice to the Merrimack Valley.
♪ A warm mountain fiddle phrase, a different tune from a different country
Wilkins: Now, my guest tonight has come a very long road. She is a woman of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, an herbalist and a collector of the old words, the mountain words and the coast words, that folks have used for spirits since before any of us were born. With the war over and the roads open again, she came up the coast to us. Please welcome Miss Clara Higgins.
Clara: Well, thank you, Doctor. I will say this is the first time I ever walked into a man's parlor past a bear, and I have walked past some mighty rough men in some mighty rough parlors.
Wilkins: Barnaby only eats Concord men, Miss Higgins. You are perfectly safe unless you are carrying a warrant or a ham.
Clara: I carry neither one, but I have got a twist of horehound candy in my pocket, and he looked at it like a preacher looks at a widow's pie.
Wilkins: Then keep your hand out of your pocket until we are done. Now, you did not come by the turnpike.
Clara: No sir, I came by water. I took passage out of Norfolk on a coasting schooner, three weeks of rolling up the coast with a load of molasses in the hold, and I tell you, by Cape Ann I was so sick of the smell of molasses I could have spit it.
Wilkins: Clara, you came north on a molasses boat, so you have already been more thoroughly sweetened than any Yankee in this valley.
Clara: Hush. But that schooner is my first story, Doctor, because it fits your Piscataqua tonight like a foot in a sock. The mate on that boat was a little bowlegged Eastern Shore man named Purnell, and every molasses hogshead he shipped had a baby in the cradle. That was his phrase. He would knock the head out of a big molasses cask, set a little keg of good apple brandy down in the middle of it, pack the molasses back in all around, and head it up tight. That brandy keg floated in that molasses like a pickle in a crock.
Wilkins: And when the Portsmouth inspector came aboard?
Clara: He came aboard with a brass tap and a long face and tapped near about every hogshead in the hold. And you know where a man taps a hogshead?
Wilkins: Down low, near the chime.
Clara: Down low, near the chime! And every single tap drew out pure black molasses, slow as a Sunday sermon, because the baby was riding up high in the middle. That poor man had molasses on his boots, his cuffs, his whiskers, and his good name, and he signed us clean.
Wilkins: That inspector tapped forty hogsheads and found forty hogsheads of honest molasses, and a man has never been so sticky and so wrong at once.
Clara: Purnell said a man who keeps a Bible in his saddlebag and brandy in his molasses has his soul and his supper both well provisioned.
Wilkins: I like Purnell. Now, you are a collector of words. What did the coast folk call the stuff these seacoast runners carried?
Clara: Oh, Doctor, the coast has the oldest words of all, older than our mountain words by a long way. Take kill-devil. That is what they called the rough rum out of Barbados and the sugar islands two hundred years ago. It was rum so raw it would kill the devil, or kill the man trying to keep the devil out. Then there's blackstrap, which up here in New England means rum sweetened with molasses, dark and heavy. A sailor in Portsmouth told me blackstrap will put hair on your chest and then pull it back out by the roots.
Wilkins: It will. I had a bowl of it in Dover once and lost the use of my Latin for a week.
Clara: Then there's flip. Now flip, I purely love. You take beer, you take rum, you sweeten it with sugar or molasses, and then you take an iron called a loggerhead and heat it red in the fire, and you plunge it in the mug. It foams up and hisses and smells like a burnt Christmas. And stonewall, which is hard cider and rum together, because after two mugs you walk into one.
Wilkins: Have you got a story with the flip, Miss Higgins? I can hear one in your voice.
Clara: I have one with the flip and my aunt Tabitha. Now during the war, the legislature down in Richmond put laws against stilling grain, because they wanted the corn kept for bread and for the army. So the folks in Patrick County, my aunt among them, went over to apples, every one, and swore before God their stills had never seen a kernel. Then one day a grain inspector come up the hollow to look. He was a pinched little man, fussy, with a book.
Wilkins: They all have a book.
Clara: They all have a book. My aunt sat him by the fire and made him a mug of flip, red loggerhead and all, and when he finished she made him another, and another. By the fourth mug he was singing 'Lorena' with the dog. When she showed him the door, he sat on the step and wrote in that book in great big letters, 'No corn on the premises, only weather.' Then he slid off the step and slept in the leaves.
Wilkins: 'No corn on the premises, only weather' is the best government report ever written, and I would have it framed over the Treasury door.
Clara: My aunt kept a copy. She wrote it out herself and stuck it on the springhouse.
Wilkins: The seacoast runners lived by their signals. What did your mountain people use? You have no taverns to hang lanterns in up those hollows, I expect.
Clara: Not many taverns, but plenty of stumps and plenty of cows. If you saw a churn dasher stood straight up in a stump at the mouth of the hollow, that meant law was about, so turn your mule around and go visit your cousins for a spell. And if you heard a cowbell with the clapper wrapped in wool, that dull little tunk, tunk, that meant come in quiet, all's well, but the baby's asleep. A wrapped cowbell carries in a fog better than you'd ever believe, and no stranger knows it's a signal. He thinks it's just a sad cow.
Wilkins: A sad cow and a red petticoat. Between the two of us we could run a railroad.
Clara: Now Doctor, I have got another one for you, from the Chesapeake side. My uncle Absalom tonged oysters on the bay, a hard old man with hands like pine bark. He'd run jugs for the folks inland, and when the revenue boats got thick, he'd sink his stoneware jugs right down in the oyster beds on a cord. On the top end of each cord he'd tie a gourd float he'd painted up to look like a dead gull, gray and white, with the head lolling.
Wilkins: A dead gull.
Clara: A dead gull! Because, Doctor, no revenue boat ever rows toward a dead gull. They smell it in their minds before they ever smell it in their noses. Uncle Absalom had a dozen dead gulls bobbing around his oyster beds one whole summer, and not one officer laid an oar near them. One inspector told the harbor-master there must be a sickness amongst the birds, and they ought to post a notice.
Wilkins: God bless your uncle. And did you learn any words on our own Piscataqua since you landed?
Clara: Yes I did, from a widow who used to work the ropewalk in Portsmouth. She was a tough old woman, she smoked a clay pipe and could cuss in three languages. She told me that when a runner comes in light, delivers less than he promised and then lies about it, they call him 'a gill short of a gundalow.' I've been saying it every day since. The schooner cook was a gill short of a gundalow. The stage driver to Epsom was a gill short of a gundalow.
Wilkins: A gill short of a gundalow is what I call any sheriff who comes to Fort Wilkins expecting a warm welcome. Miss Higgins, you are a credit to two coasts and a mountain range, and you are welcome back by the stove any night of the week.
Clara: I'll come back, Doctor, as long as that bear keeps eating Concord men and leaves Virginia women alone.
♦ Bear grunts outside, as if in agreement
Wilkins: He accepts the treaty. Now hold your seats, friends, here is a word from our sponsor.
♪ Brisk brass-band fanfare, a patent-medicine wagon flourish
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♪ Fanfare button, then crackle
♪ Low, deliberate fiddle drone, like a forge bellows breathing
Wilkins: SEGMENT THREE. Copper and the craft. Since tonight is a seacoast night, let us talk about rum, and how a molasses run goes in the copper. Before I say one word: making distilled spirits for drinking without a federal permit is against United States law, and everything on this program is for history and learning only. Now. The seacoast runners did not only carry finished rum. Half the time they carried raw molasses, because a hill-town stillman could make his own and cut out the Portsmouth middleman.
Wilkins: Step one is the wash. Molasses is too thick for yeast to work in. The old rule of thumb is about one part molasses to four or five of warm water, stirred until there are no streaks. You pitch your yeast when the wash is warm to the hand, not hot, because hot water kills yeast the way a hot poker kills a conversation. Then you cover it loosely, never sealed, and keep it warm and in an airy place for a week or more, while it bubbles and stinks and turns sour-sweet. Some of the West Indies makers kept back dunder, which is the spent wash left in the pot after a run, and put a measure of it into the next batch for body and bite. A Portsmouth man swore by his dunder pit the way a farmer swears by his manure pile, and they smelled about the same.
Wilkins: Step two is the copper. A molasses wash is thick with all manner of sulfurous mischief, and you all know from past nights what copper does to that, so I will not preach it again. I will tell you a different thing. Your still must breathe out at only one end, through the worm. Never seal a still tight, never stopper it, and never let the worm clog with mash or ice, because the vapor has to go somewhere. If the way out is blocked, that pressure builds until the cap jumps off like a cork from a champagne bottle, with scalding mash on everything and everybody. I have seen a Barrington man wear his still cap as a hat, permanently.
Wilkins: Step three is the fire, and I will put it plain. Alcohol vapor is heavier than air. It does not rise politely up the chimney like a gentleman. It crawls along the floor like a revenue man looking for a dropped coin and pools in low places, and when it finds your firebox or your lantern, whoomp. Every joint must be tight, the still-house must be aired, the fire kept low and steady, and the man never leaves a running still. Not to piss, not to court, not to chase a deputy. Keep sand and water within reach.
Wilkins: Step four is the cuts, and here a thermometer will teach you more than any old-timer's tongue. Methanol, the wood spirit, the poison that blinds and kills, boils near one hundred forty-eight degrees by Fahrenheit's scale. Good grain or cane spirit, the ethanol, boils near one hundred seventy-three. Water boils at two hundred twelve. So the poison comes over first. That is why the very first runnings, the foreshots, go straight on the ground or into the lamp, never into a mouth. On a small run of five gallons of wash, throw away the first half-pint at the least, and more is better, and do not be stingy. After the foreshots come the heads, which smell sharp like a varnish pot and give you a headache like a mule's kiss. Set those aside. Do not drink them. Then come the hearts, sweet and clean, the part a man is proud of. When the run goes flat and oily and smells of wet dog and old cardboard boxes, those are the tails, and you set them aside. A rummer is cutting by nose, by tongue, and by the thermometer, and when in doubt he cuts early and throws more away. Better a short jar than a blind customer.
Wilkins: There is a reason I am a dentist and a stillman both. Pulling a tooth and making a cut are the same art. Go in clean, know where the root ends, and do not get greedy at the bottom.
♪ Playful banjo, plucked like a telegraph key
Wilkins: SEGMENT FOUR. Myths, slang, and the call-in tape. We have a voicemail on the recording cylinder from down south. Let me crank it up.
♦ Phonograph crank, scratchy cylinder hiss, a distant voice
Wilkins: This is Cletus Miller, called Rabbit, of Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Here is what he asks.
Wilkins: (reading) 'Alchemist, my uncle swears old-timers used to throw hickory ashes or red oak shavings into the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Is there any truth to that, or was he just making swamp medicine?'
Wilkins: Rabbit, your uncle is half right about two things, which is the most dangerous way to be right. Let us start with the ashes. Neighbors, here in New Hampshire our grandfathers cleared these hills by burning the forest, and they did not waste the ash. They poured water through it in a hopper, and what dripped out was lye. They boiled that lye down into potash and pearl ash and shipped it off for soap and glass. Half the stone walls in Merrimack County were paid for in potash. So when your uncle shovels hickory ash into a thump keg, he is not cleaning his spirit, he is starting a soap factory. Lye is caustic. It will burn the skin off your hand and blind an eye if it splashes. Put enough in the keg and you will not get whiskey, you will get a clean mouth whether you wanted one or not.
Wilkins: Now the red oak shavings. Oak gives tannin and color. That is why whiskey turns amber in an oak barrel, and a handful of shavings in the thump keg will tint the spirit and give it a woody taste. But it does not take the poison out. Remember your numbers. The methanol boils off early, at about one hundred forty-eight degrees, and it comes over at the front of the run whether there are shavings in the keg or a hymnal. Red oak shavings in the thump keg will give your spirit a fine Sunday coat, but you cannot dress a corpse up and call him a groom. The only cure for bad heads is the cut: throw out the foreshots, set the heads aside, and keep only the hearts.
♪ A sudden comic fiddle sting
Wilkins: And since we are on myths, let me kill the one I hear most on the seacoast road, the blue flame. The old-timers say take a spoonful of spirit, set it alight, and if it burns a pretty blue it is good and safe, and if it burns yellow or red there is something wrong. Hear the anvil, and hear the truth.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: One. Methanol, the wood poison, burns blue too. A pale blue so faint that in daylight you can hardly see it at all. A man can be burning poison on his spoon and not know there is a fire at all, which means the flame tells you nothing about the poison and makes a fine way to burn your fingers.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Two. A flame cannot find lead. If some jackass soldered his worm with lead or built his still out of old salvage, a spoonful on fire will not tell you. That lead goes into your blood and stays there.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Three. Lighting spirits in a still-house is how still-houses burn down. Methanol burns blue, ethanol burns blue, and the barn burns orange, and the barn is the only one that tells you anything useful. A man who judges his spirit by the color of the flame is like a man who judges a tooth by the color of the patient's hat. Honest cuts, a thermometer, clean copper with no lead in it. Those are the only tests worth a damn.
♦ A final ring of the anvil fading
Wilkins: Rabbit Miller of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, this coin is yours, fresh struck, still warm from the punch: G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H. Tell your uncle he can keep the ash for his soap and the oak for his barrels and his cuts for his health, and give him my regards and a wide berth. Thank you for writing, Rabbit. You are a gentleman and a scholar, and that is more than I can say for anyone in Concord.
♪ Theme returns softly, banjo and fiddle, slower now, like the end of a long night
Wilkins: SIGN-OFF. That is our salt road, neighbors. Gundalows dropping their masts, mackerel barrels with rum underneath, petticoats over lanterns, and a Concord man's backside on my chain stake. The Merrimack road has the sheriff and the seacoast road has the sea, and of the two I would rather drown, because the sea does not file paperwork. But a Pittsfield man needs both roads, and he needs friends on both of them, and a bear for the ones who are not friends.
Wilkins: If you want to learn this craft properly, the cuts, the copper, the fire, and the history, all of it honest and all of it within the law, enroll in the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Distilling Course. I will teach you more in one season than Ruel Dustin learned in his whole sorry life, and I promise not to sew you up with fiddle string unless you ask.
Announcer: A quick word before we go, friends! Botanical waters, floral oils, and parlor demonstrations that will make the whole county jealous: the Fort Wilkins 2-Gallon Tabletop Mini-Still in hand-riveted spun copper. Explore Tabletop Stills at moonshinestill.com. That is moonshinestill.com!
Wilkins: Thank you to Miss Clara Higgins of the Blue Ridge, to Rabbit Miller of Wilkesboro, and to Barnaby, who is snoring now like a sawmill with the croup. Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♦ Wax cylinder crackle runs out to silence