The Flame-Flow Copper Heat Invention: 1860s Metallurgy at Fort Wilkins
Alchemist G. G. Wilkins explains why hand-hammered electrolytic copper makes a cleaner spirit by capturing sulfur compounds, then walks through the four cuts of a run, with firm safety and legal warnings. Guest Junior Vance, a retired North Wilkesboro bootleg runner, shares how he learned to read heat from copper's glow and a hen feather, and how he won a bet by boiling coffee on his engine manifold. The show also answers a listener question about hickory ash and closes with the Flame-Flow Still ads and the course announcement.
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Full episode transcript
Wilkins: [SOUND: 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: Settle down, Barnaby, you great black cannon of hide and appetite. That is the sound of money and mischief, and you will not be wanting a piece of either. Sit. SIT. Good bear. There's a ham bone in it for you after the program.
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth
Wilkins: Good evening, good evening, good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Suncook Valley and every hamlet this wax cylinder can crawl to. Welcome to Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, broadcasting from the log fortress of Fort Wilkins, right on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, in Pittsfield, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. Tooth-puller, blacksmith, inventor, and all-around public nuisance, at your service. Tonight we talk copper, and I mean to talk it until your ears bleed brass.
Announcer: A quick word, friends! Whether you distill for essential oils, herbal tinctures, or the sheer honest love of the craft, the Flame-Flow Still, protected under United States Patent 10,561,960, is hammered from heavy-gauge pure copper right here in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. Visit moonshinestill.com today. That's moonshinestill.com!
Wilkins: Thank you, sir, and put your hat back on, you're frightening the bear. Now then. Tonight's subject: the Flame-Flow Copper Heat Invention. Hand-hammered, twenty-four ounce electrolytic copper, and the plain truth about why a copper pot makes a sweeter spirit than any iron kettle ever bolted together by a Concord tinker. I am about to explain the alchemy, and I will do it in words a mule skinner can follow.
Wilkins: Let us begin with history, because every proper lecture begins with someone getting taxed. In the early 1860s, Mr. Lincoln's government came up with the Revenue Act, and suddenly every kettle in New England was a matter of federal concern. Distillers who had been quietly turning cider and grain into spirit since before the Revolution found themselves the subject of paperwork, inspectors, and men with ledgers and bad attitudes. Now, did that make anybody quit distilling? It did not. It made them hide the still better, and it made them care a great deal more about the quality of what came out of it, because a customer who buys a poor jar once does not come back, and a customer who does not come back does not pay your fine.
Wilkins: Copper was the answer, and copper had always been the answer, long before any of us knew why. The old Scotch and Irish and French distillers swore by it. They said copper made the spirit sweet. They said iron made it sour. They said a still without copper was a crime against the palate. And they were right, though not one of them could have told you the chemistry. They only knew what their noses told them.
Wilkins: I am an alchemist, which is a fancy way of saying a man who is curious and does not know when to stop. I took the old rule and I asked the question the old men never asked: why? And here is what I found, standing at my anvil with a sample of sour spirit, a strip of bright copper, and a great deal of patience.
Wilkins: When you heat a mash, the yeast does more than make alcohol. It also throws off a little sulfur. Sulfur compounds, friends. Mercaptans, which are the most foul-smelling vapors known to man. Rotten egg. Boiled cabbage. A burning tire in a barn. A Concord politician's breath after a long committee meeting. That is mercaptan, and it rides the steam up out of the pot like a drunk on a stagecoach, and if nothing stops it, it ends up in your jar.
Wilkins: Now here is the marvel. Copper stops it. When those sulfur vapors touch bright, clean copper, a chemical reaction takes place. The sulfur bonds with the copper, forming copper sulfide, and that stays behind on the metal. The vapor continues up and over, and what comes through on the far side is sweeter, cleaner, and purged of its stink. The copper is not merely a pot. It is a working chemist, standing sentinel inside the apparatus, catching the villains as they pass. I call that the Flame-Flow Copper Heat Invention, and I will not be denied the credit.
Wilkins: Now, why hand-hammered, and why twenty-four ounce? I will tell you. Hammering work-hardens the copper and gives you a dense, even sheet. Twenty-four ounce is heavy gauge. It holds heat evenly, it does not scorch, and it will outlast a stack of cheap tin kettles the way Barnaby will outlast a deputy. And it must be electrolytic copper, which is refined by an electric current to a very high purity. Cheap copper, salvaged copper, copper with lead and arsenic and who-knows-what hiding in it, that is a poisoner's metal. I will not touch it. I have pulled enough teeth from men who thought they could save a dollar to know that cheap is the most expensive word in the language.
Wilkins: And a word on the joinery, because I would rather bore you than bury you. Never, ever use lead solder on a still. Lead is a poison that sickens and kills, and lead contamination from sloppy joints is a documented hazard of every illicit run that ever went wrong. Silver solder, or proper mechanical unions, and nothing else. And do not make a still out of a salvaged radiator or any scrap of metal you do not know the history of. I have seen what that does to a man, and it is not pretty, and I will spare you the details because you are eating supper.
Wilkins: Now, the cleaning. A copper still that is never cleaned is like a Methodist's conscience: shiny on the outside, green and crusted where nobody looks. After every run, rinse that pot and scrub it bright. The green crust you see, that is copper sulfide and verdigris, and it dulls the active surface, and worse, it can flake into your product. Keep your copper clean, and your copper will keep you honest. Now, let me bring on a gentleman who knows something about keeping a machine honest at speed.
Wilkins: [MUSIC: Short banjo sting, quick and lively]
Wilkins: Ladies and gentlemen, my guest tonight comes from a good deal further south than Pittsfield. He is a retired Wilkes County bootleg runner, out of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, who drove modified Ford coupes down out of the Brushy Mountains to Charlotte and was known up and down those hills as the fastest hand on a mountain road. Mr. Junior Vance, welcome to Fort Wilkins.
Junior: Thank you kindly, Doc. Fine place you've got here. Nice bear. Does he bite?
Wilkins: Barnaby has bitten two dentists, a surveyor, and a man selling lightning rods, and he was perfectly polite to all of them. Sit down, Junior, and mind the chain. Now, tonight is about copper and fire, and I am told you learned your heat long before you learned to wring speed out of an engine. Where did a rascal like you pick that up?
Junior: My granddaddy's forge, Doc. He'd stand me at the bellows and say, watch the color, boy. Copper glows cherry-red first, then straw, then silver, and every one of them means something different. I figured I was smarter than the old man and guessed at it. Ruined a whole batch of barn hinges. Every one of them come out wrong, and he never let me forget it.
Wilkins: A whole batch of hinges, murdered by pure vanity! I am surprised your granddaddy did not hang you from one of them. But a man who learns his color the expensive way never forgets it. Was there a gentler teacher in the county?
Junior: A neighbor down the road, Doc. He'd hold a hen feather up near the metal. If that feather curled up like a question mark, you were ready. Too soon and it just lay there, too late and it was a puff of smoke and a bad smell. Cheapest thermometer in the Brushy Mountains, and it never once lied to me.
Wilkins: A hen feather! The most scientific instrument in all of poultry and the only one that lays its own replacement. I intend to steal that, Junior, and I intend to take credit for it by Tuesday. Now, I am told that heat followed you onto the road as well.
Junior: It did. Fella bet me I couldn't have a hot cup of coffee on a long run without ever stopping. So I set a tin of coffee on top of my engine manifold and put my foot down. By the time I came roaring through Statesville that tin was boiling like a kettle at a church supper. Collected every dollar of that bet, and the coffee was fair, too.
Wilkins: Sir, you brewed breakfast on a runaway engine and called it a wager! I take it the mountain road was less forgiving than the manifold. Any wisdom for the young men listening?
Junior: Just the one, Doc. "If you hit the ditch at eighty, boy, make sure you duck below the steering wheel."
Wilkins: Amen, brother, and there is more sense in that than in the whole Concord legislature. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Junior Vance of North Wilkesboro. Barnaby, give the man a nod. Good bear. Now friends, a word from our sponsor, and then I will tell you how to make your cuts.
Wilkins: [MUSIC: Banjo flourish into a bright pitchman fanfare]
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, gather round, for a marvel of American craftsmanship, born right here in the granite hills of New Hampshire! If you appreciate honest metalwork, if you've ever held a hammered copper vessel and felt the weight and warmth of a craft done right, then lend me your ears, for I speak of the one, the only, the incomparable FLAME-FLOW STILL, proudly protected under United States Patent 10,561,960!
Announcer: Engineered from heavy-gauge, high-purity electrolytic copper, with precision CNC-machined brass unions, the Flame-Flow Still is designed to maximize convective circulation and deliver unmatched purity for essential oils, herbal tinctures, and traditional distillation demonstrations! No lead solder, no scrap metal, no shortcuts, just the clean, bright copper that has served the craft for centuries, built to last you a lifetime and then outlast the grandchildren besides!
Announcer: Whether you are a seasoned hand or a curious beginner, this is the still that earns its place on your workbench, and at only eight hundred and ninety-nine dollars, it is a bargain beside the price of lesser metal! Stop by the showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, and see it with your own eyes, or order your setup direct at moonshinestill.com! That is moonshinestill.com, friends, moonshinestill.com, the Flame-Flow Still, handcrafted pure copper, the finest apparatus in the Republic! Do not delay, do not dither, order today!
Wilkins: [MUSIC: Banjo and fiddle return, warm and steady]
Wilkins: Thank you, sir, you could sell a snowshoe to a shark. Now let us come to the craft proper, because I promised you the cuts, and a promise to my listeners is worth more than a promise to the sheriff, which is to say a great deal.
Wilkins: Friends, a run is not one thing. It is four. They come off the still in order, and the whole art of the matter is knowing where one ends and the next begins. First come the foreshots. These are the very first vapors, and they carry methanol and harsh volatile compounds, and I will tell you plainly and with all the weight of a man who has pulled teeth for forty years: foreshots are poison. They are discarded. Never drunk, never rinsed in a mouth, never given to a friend. You throw them out, and you do not argue with me about it.
Wilkins: Next come the heads. Still harsh, still carrying volatiles that smell like solvent and will give a man a headache you could hang a hat on. Heads are also discarded. Some distillers keep them for cleaning or for lamp fuel, and that is their affair, but none of it goes in a glass.
Wilkins: Then come the hearts. This is the prize, the clean, sweet center of the run, where the copper has done its work and the sulfur is gone and the spirit comes over smooth. You judge it by smell, by taste in the smallest quantity, by patience and by experience. A beginner will want to collect too much. A master knows to stop early and to start late.
Wilkins: And finally the tails. As the run winds down, heavier compounds come over, oily and bitter, tasting of wet cardboard and old sweat. The tails are cut off and set aside, and in a proper operation they are saved to be redistilled with the next batch, to recover what good is left in them.
Wilkins: That is the discipline. Foreshots out. Heads out. Hearts in. Tails out. And I repeat what I must repeat: making distilled spirits for drinking without a federal permit is illegal under United States law, and everything on this program is for historical and educational purposes only. If you wish to practice the craft lawfully, you will seek the proper permits, and you will follow the law, because a bear cannot pay your fines for you, though Barnaby has offered.
Wilkins: Now a word on the fire, because I have seen a good many fine stills end up a bad pile of cinders. Alcohol vapor is flammable. A leak, a loose union, a spark in the wrong place, and you have a fire you cannot put out with a bucket. Keep your fire low. Keep your joints tight. Keep a wet blanket and a clear head and a clear exit. A distiller who is careless with fire is not a distiller for long, and not much of anything afterward.
Wilkins: [SOUND: Steel punch clangs on copper coin]
Wilkins: There, you hear that? That's G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H., stamped fresh onto a good copper cent, right at my anvil. Hard money was scarce in the war years, and a man who stamped his name on a coin was telling the world that his word and his copper were both good. Now then, I have a tape here, a letter in voice, from a listener down in the Carolina hills, and it is a fine question. Let me thread it up.
Wilkins: [SOUND: Wax cylinder crackle, a click, a distant tinny voice]
Wilkins: Here we are. A gentleman by the name of Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller from Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Let me read what he says. '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: Well, Cletus, Rabbit, my friend, there is a thread of truth in it, but your uncle has tied it into the wrong knot. Let me untie it. Hickory and oak are hardwoods. When burned to charcoal, they make a fine adsorbent. Charcoal has a vast surface area, and it will pull some harsh and oily compounds out of a finished spirit when you filter through it. That is true, and old distillers did it for good reason. But that is charcoal filtration of a finished product, not ash dropped into a boiling pot.
Wilkins: Ash in the thump keg? Ash in the pot? That does not remove methanol, and it does not fix a bad head. Methanol boils over early, and no handful of hickory ash will catch it. The only cure for bad heads is to make your cuts properly, to throw them out, and to keep them out of the jar. Your uncle's ash does no harm, probably, but it does no good either, and he has been fooling himself for forty years. Tell him I said so, and tell him I said it with affection.
Wilkins: Now, Cletus, your uncle's hickory ashes and the Suncook Valley Turnpike have this in common: both look like the cure, and both lead you right back to the same ditch. A thump keg without proper cuts is like a Concord lawyer without a retainer: plenty of noise, nothing of use at the end. I thank you for the question, Rabbit, and I hope the hills of Wilkes County are treating you kindly. You have my respect and my regards.
Wilkins: [SOUND: Steel punch clangs on copper coin]
Wilkins: That one's for you, Rabbit. Now, friends, before I go, a word about education, because I have spent this evening telling you what I know, and there is a great deal more where that came from.
Wilkins: I teach, ladies and gentlemen. The Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Distilling Course, held right here at Fort Wilkins on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, Pittsfield, New Hampshire. You will learn copper and craft, the history of the art, the chemistry of the cuts, the care of your equipment, and the law of the land, because a man who does not know the law is a man waiting to be taught it by a magistrate. Barnaby is not part of the curriculum, but he is available for demonstrations of what happens to the uninvited. Inquire at the fort, or at moonshinestill.com, and enroll today.
Announcer: One last quick word, friends! The Flame-Flow Still, protected under United States Patent 10,561,960, handcrafted of pure electrolytic copper, and available now at the Fort Wilkins showroom on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, or at moonshinestill.com. That's moonshinestill.com. Order yours today!
Wilkins: Thank you, sir. That is all the time the wax will allow. I have been Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, your host, and I thank you for your company, your questions, and your kind attention. To Mr. Junior Vance, safe travels and a level road. To Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller, mind your uncle. To the sheriffs and revenue men of Merrimack County, I wish you clean paperwork and no bears. And to every one of you listening: keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♪ Banjo and fiddle theme fades out with antique warmth