When my great-uncle Wally heard that I wanted to restore his dad’s homemade still, he said, “Why? You want to go blind?”
That was my first clue that making potable liquor wouldn’t be so easy. The second indication came when I saw the actual contraption. “Contraption” is probably not the right word, since it implies a larger piece of equipment. I had envisioned something along the lines of the setup Trapper and Hawkeye had on M*A*S*H; what I found was a 10-gallon copper kettle speckled with green patina. Its joints—and a bullet hole near the bottom—had been brazed with lead. Maybe Uncle Wally was right.
