Barnaby's Sweet Tooth: Fermenting Corn Mash and a 400-Pound Watchdog
Alchemist G. G. Wilkins tells the tale of Barnaby, his 400-pound bear who guards the woodpile on a diet of cooled spent grain, and lays out the basics of copper stills, cuts, and fermentation safety. His guest is Captain Donald Vance, a retired federal revenue officer from Manchester, NH, who recounts a mule that slept through a raid, a Newfoundland dog that returned his clipboard with a ribbon, and a swarm of bees that made 'barrel-proof honey' famous at a county fair. A listener question from Cletus Miller about hickory ashes in the thump keg rounds out the show.
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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: Settle down, Barnaby, you great shaggy tax-dodging heap of fur. Settle, I say! Yes, I know the mash smells like Christmas pudding to you. It is not for you until the kettle cools and I say so. Sit. That is the best you will do, and the best any Congregationalist in this county has done on a Sunday.
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth
Wilkins: Good evening, good evening, and welcome to Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, broadcasting to you from the log fortress of Fort Wilkins, on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route Twenty-Eight, in Pittsfield, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. I am your host, tooth-puller, blacksmith, inventor, and the only man in the county the sheriff knows by his first name and his last warrant. Tonight we speak of corn, of copper, and of the finest woodpile guard God ever put in a fur coat. Stay with me.
Announcer: A quick word, friends! If you appreciate honest American craftsmanship, look to Moonshine Stills, proud home of the Flame-Flow still, protected by United States Patent 10,561,960. Heavy-gauge copper, built to last a lifetime. Order at moonshinestill.com. That is moonshinestill.com!
Wilkins: Thank you, sir, and do not stand too near the window while you say it. Barnaby takes a dislike to anyone with a clean collar.
Wilkins: Now to tonight's tale, which I call Barnaby's Sweet Tooth. Gather your children, or hide them, depending on your constitution.
Wilkins: Some years back I took delivery of a bear. Not delivered, you understand. Delivered is a gentle word. A trapper from up Pittsfield way owed me for six molars and a very ugly bridge, and he paid me in the only coin he had, which was a cub the size of a ham with a temper like a wet cat. I named him Barnaby, after a deacon I once pulled a tooth for. Both of them bit me before the afternoon was out.
Wilkins: Now here is the lore, and mark it, because it is the secret to the whole business. When a man runs a kettle of corn mash, there is a leavings. Spent grain. The hot wet corn left at the bottom of the kettle, cooked to mush, the alcohol boiled out of it and most of the sugar gone with it. Farmers across New England feed it to hogs and cattle, and a fine thing it is, providing it is cooled first and fed in sensible measure. Hot grain from the kettle will scald a mouth worse than a Methodist sermon on a hot day.
Wilkins: Well, Barnaby smelled that sweetcorn sweetness drifting off the kettle one fine October, and I tell you, that bear stood on his hind legs and sang. I do not mean sang, I mean he made a noise like a dying bellows and a rusty hinge in the same instant. I scraped a bucket of cooled grain from the kettle, set it down, and backed away like a man leaving a church. He put his whole snout in it, up to the eyeballs, and when he came out the grain was in his ears, his whiskers, and I swear, one kernel in each nostril.
Wilkins: After that, the bear was mine. A bear that has been fed does not forget the hand that fed him, nor the woodpile that hand sat upon. Every evening I would bring him his bucket, and every evening that bear would lie in the shadow of my woodpile, chin on his paws, eyes half-closed, a picture of contentment. Then a deputy would come creeping up the turnpike, and Barnaby would open one eye. And then the other. And then, gentlemen, the rest of him would follow.
Wilkins: I will tell you plain what that woodpile looked like after a man tried to filch a stick of it. I had a fellow once, a hired boy from over Epsom way, who thought a few split birch logs were free to the first who needed them. He crept in at dusk, and Barnaby let him come. Barnaby always lets them come. A bear is a patient creature. The boy had one log under each arm when the chain went taut with a sound like a church bell cracked in half. The boy screamed a note I have only heard from a pig at slaughter, and his trousers, God rest them, came off in Barnaby's jaws like a banner at a county fair. The boy ran home in his drawers over three stone walls and a pasture of cattle, and the whole village learned that day what Fort Wilkins firewood costs. I have not had a stick of kindling stolen since 1861, and I have had two deputies stolen from the county payroll.
Wilkins: I want to be careful here, friends, because I am a man of learning and I say this as a sober fact. A bear is a wild beast. Feeding him makes him bold, not tame, and a chained bear is a danger to everyone within the reach of that chain and a few yards beyond. I would not give Barnaby to my worst enemy, and I have a good many of those, mostly in the sheriff's office. If you keep a bear, you keep a fire in your shed. Do not do as I do. Do as I say, which is to stay home and keep a dog.
Wilkins: Now, I promised you the craft behind the bear, and I shall give it. Corn mash. You take cracked corn, sweetcorn or field corn, and you cook it in water until it opens up like a boiled egg. You let it cool to blood heat, and you add your yeast, and you let it work for a week in a good wooden tub with a loose lid. And mind this, gentlemen, mind it more than any Revenue Act: a fermenting tub breathes out a gas that is heavier than air and will not warn you of its coming. It collects in a cellar, in a pit, in a closed shed. I have heard of men who went down to check their mash and did not come up. Keep the air moving, keep the door open, and never put your head into a tub of working mash. That is the end of that sermon, and it is the one I would most like you to remember.
♪ Short fiddle and banjo transition, antique warmth
Wilkins: Now, friends, I promised you a guest, and a guest you shall have. From the city of Manchester, in our own fair state, comes a gentleman who spent twenty-eight years hunting copper kettles through the White Mountains and the Green, and who by every law of nature ought to be my mortal enemy. Captain Donald Vance, retired officer of the federal revenue, welcome to Fort Wilkins. Kindly keep your hands where Barnaby can see them.
Captain: Thank you, Doctor. I'll keep them in my pockets. I have read your file, and I will say it is thicker than my mother's family Bible and a good deal more entertaining.
Wilkins: A compliment from the law! Sir, I am blushing like a Baptist at a barn dance. Now, you have crept through more thickets than a fox with a grudge. Tell the good people, what was the oddest thing you ever found at the end of a raid?
Captain: That would be the mule, Doctor. We came down on a hollow before dawn, eleven men, lanterns, a warrant in my coat. Everybody in that place woke up shouting or running except one fellow, a mule, who had gotten into a barrel of sour mash and was flat on his side in the straw, snoring like a sawmill. We fired a shot in the air. He never stirred. We stepped over him. He never stirred. I had to log him, as a matter of procedure, so I wrote it down plain: one mule, unavailable for questioning.
Wilkins: Unavailable for questioning! Sir, that is the only honest witness the Merrimack County courthouse has ever failed to hear from. A mule that sleeps through the law has a cleaner conscience than any deacon of my acquaintance.
Captain: He had a better night than I did, I'll tell you that. When he woke up I believe he had opinions, but he kept them to himself.
Wilkins: As do I, sir, as do I, for the most part. Now tell me, in your travels, did you meet many animals that took the work more seriously than the men?
Captain: One. A Newfoundland dog on a farm up in the Green Mountains, big as a hearthrug, with a face like a kindly bishop. I set my clipboard on a fence post while I measured a tub. That dog walked up, took the clipboard in his jaws, and strolled off into the woods like he had business elsewhere. Three days later I came back to that same gate and there he sat, the clipboard at his feet, slightly chewed, with a ribbon tied around it.
Wilkins: A ribbon! The brute returned your evidence with a bow on it like a birthday present!
Captain: Farmer swore he never taught him a thing. I have always suspected the dog had better manners than half my men. I kept that ribbon in my desk for twenty years.
Wilkins: Well, sir, I will tell you that my Barnaby, who stands four hundred pounds in his stockings, would have returned your clipboard with your hand still attached to it, and no ribbon. There is a difference in breeding. Now, I hear tell a barrel can turn up a surprise or two. Did nature ever outdo the law in your experience?
Captain: She did, up in Vermont. An abandoned mash barrel behind a barn, long since empty, and a swarm of bees moved right in and set up housekeeping. The owner was not a man to waste an opportunity. He went on to sell what he called barrel-proof honey at the county fair, every September, for ten years running.
Wilkins: Barrel-proof honey! There is a man who understood commerce better than the Secretary of the Treasury. Did you buy a jar, Captain, or did you arrest it?
Captain: I bought a jar every year, Doctor. Best evidence I ever collected, and I ate all of it. Never had to testify.
Wilkins: Now, here is a thing I would ask of you, sir, for the people at home. You have chased the cheats and the poisoners for twenty-eight years. How did a man in your trade tell an honest still from a dangerous one?
Captain: Copper told us most of it, Doctor. A man who builds clean, with good copper and tight joints, takes pride in his work, and I respected that, even when I had to do my duty. The radiator outfits, lead solder and scrap metal, those poisoned people, and those I shut down without a moment's sorrow. As for finding them, we could smell a smoking pine-knot fire three miles upwind on a November morning.
Wilkins: Three miles! Sir, you have a nose that would shame Barnaby. And you speak sense, which I admit is rare in a man of the revenue. Honest copper, honest craft, and a long day of regret for the fool who uses a radiator.
Captain: That's the whole of it, Doctor. Respect the metal, and the metal will respect you.
Wilkins: Well said, Captain. Well said. I have been called many things in this county, but I do not believe I have ever before been given sound advice by a federal officer in my own parlor.
Captain: Well, thank you kindly, Doctor. It's been an honor, and I'm glad to leave with all my fingers.
Wilkins: The honor is wholly mine. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Donald Vance of Manchester, New Hampshire. We shall return after a word from our sponsor.
♦ Wax cylinder crackle, brief fiddle sting
Announcer: Friends, neighbors, citizens of Merrimack County and points beyond! Hear me now! Are you weary of thin, tinny pots that scorch your herbs and spoil your tinctures? Do you long for a vessel worthy of the old craft, built by honest hands from honest metal? Then step right up and behold the FLAME-FLOW STILL, flagship of Moonshine Stills, protected by United States Patent Ten Million, Five Hundred Sixty-One Thousand, Nine Hundred Sixty!
Announcer: Engineered from heavy-gauge, high-purity electrolytic copper, with precision CNC-machined brass unions that seal tight and never weep. The Flame-Flow still is designed to maximize convective circulation, delivering unmatched purity for essential oils, herbal tinctures, and traditional distillation demonstrations. It heats evenly, it cleans easily, and it will outlast your grandchildren and their grandchildren besides!
Announcer: Imagine the pride of owning a copper masterpiece, gleaming on your hearth like a sunrise in a bottle! Imagine the envy of your neighbors, who still brew in rusty kettles and wonder why their lavender oil smells like a boiled boot! The Flame-Flow still is yours for just eight hundred ninety-nine dollars. Eight hundred ninety-nine dollars for a lifetime of craftsmanship!
Announcer: Stop by the showroom at Fort Wilkins, on Route Twenty-Eight in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, where Dr. Wilkins himself will demonstrate the apparatus, bear permitting. Or order your setup direct at moonshinestill.com! That is moonshinestill.com, or visit the Flame-Flow page at moonshinestill.com slash products slash flame-flow-copper-still. Do not delay, do not dither, do not let another season pass with inferior copper! Moonshinestill.com!
♪ Banjo flourish, antique warmth
Wilkins: Thank you, sir. Now to the craft itself. This is the segment where I put on my apron and talk copper.
Wilkins: A still, my friends, is a pot, a head, and a worm. You heat the wash in the pot, the vapor climbs into the head, and it runs down the worm, which is a coil of copper cooled in a trough of water. The vapor turns back into liquid, and out of the end drips the spirit. Copper is the metal of choice, and I will tell you why. Copper reacts with the sulfur compounds that rise in the vapor, and pulls them out of the spirit the way a good pair of forceps pulls a rotten tooth. Without copper, the spirit tastes of rotten eggs and regret. With copper, it is clean as a Quaker's conscience.
Wilkins: Now the cuts. This is the part every young distiller wishes to skip, and the part that matters most. When the first spirit comes off the still, it is the foreshots, and then the heads. These carry the harsh stuff, the methanol and the nasty volatile oils, and a man who drinks them is asking for headaches, blindness, or the grave. Foreshots and heads are thrown away. Never drunk, never used as a rinse, never sold to a friend you like. After the heads comes the hearts, the sweet clean middle of the run. After the hearts come the tails, which taste of wet cardboard and old socks, and are set aside for another day.
Wilkins: I will say this plainly: the law of the United States forbids making spirits for drinking without a federal permit, and everything I say on this program is for history and education. I do not recommend and I do not advise. I speak of how the old ones did it, as a man speaks of the Crusades or of Mr. Napoleon's retreat.
Wilkins: And a word of warning, gentlemen. Never use lead solder on a still. Never use a salvaged radiator. Lead is a poison that sickens the blood and kills the brain, and I have seen men go mad from it, drooling by the fire like a wax figure left too near the stove. Keep your fire low, your joints clean, and your metal honest.
♪ Brief fiddle and banjo transition
Wilkins: And now, friends, the postcard hour! I have a tape come in from the Carolina hills, a voicemail, as we call it in the wire trade. Let us hear it.
♦ Wax cylinder crackle, a distant voice
Wilkins: This is from Cletus Rabbit Miller of Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He says, and I quote: 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, your uncle is a good-natured fellow and a poor chemist. Hickory and oak are hardwoods, and their charcoal does adsorb some of the harsh compounds in a spirit, the same way a charcoal filter strains a muddy creek. That much of his tale is true. But ashes thrown into a boiling thump keg do not remove methanol. Methanol is a cousin of ethanol, boils at nearly the same heat, and goes right along with the vapor no matter how much oak you toss in. The only cure for the bad heads is to cut the foreshots and heads and throw them away, and no amount of shavings will do that work for you. Distillers have sworn by the ash trick for a hundred years, and swore for the wrong reasons every time.
Wilkins: A man who tosses ashes in his thump keg and calls it medicine is the same fellow who calls his wife's cooking rustic. Now, Cletus, I thank you and your uncle, and I send my regards to every holler between Wilkesboro and the Yadkin.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: There, that is Cletus stamped and sealed. G. G. Wilkins, Pittsfield, N.H. I have stamped worse men and better coin.
♪ Banjo and fiddle swell, antique warmth
Announcer: One last quick word, friends! Make your home the envy of the valley with the Flame-Flow still, protected by United States Patent 10,561,960. Heavy-gauge copper, honest craft. Visit moonshinestill.com today!
Wilkins: Thank you, sir. And now, friends, a word of my own. If the old craft calls to you, if the history of the copper and the kettle stirs your blood, I invite you to enroll in the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Distilling Course, held at Fort Wilkins on Route Twenty-Eight. You will learn the history, the metallurgy, the science of the cuts, and the safety of the craft, taught by a man who has pulled teeth from deputies and been arrested twice by the Merrimack County sheriff, and thought it all a fine joke. Apply at the showroom. Barnaby will greet you at the door, and I strongly suggest you bring a ham bone.
Wilkins: That is all the time we have tonight. My thanks to Captain Donald Vance for his company and his tales, to Cletus Miller for his question, and to you, dear listeners, for keeping the copper bright and the lamps lit. Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar