Fill'er Up - With Moonshine

In one corner of Hatchet Holler, Tenn., near Tullahoma, it looks a lot like the good old days.

CBS News correspondent Joie Chen reports Bill Sasher and his boys are cooking up some mash in a steel drum still and pouring out the time-honored Tennessee brew that Sasher says old-timers call moonshine or white lightning.

Just like brewmasters of yesteryear, Sasher is darn proud of his product.

"If you take a big sip you'd have about three steps where you'd have to sit down or fall down. We call it a three-stepper," he laughs.

But he doesn't want you to drink this swill. He won't even let you taste it. This is pure ethanol — grain alcohol made the old-fashioned way, to run in newfangled cars.

"You could easily save $500, $600 a year for one vehicle," he says.

With the promise of savings like that, Sasher's drawing crowds as big as prohibition moonshiners used to get. Some even take pictures.

"Ok - if you have 100 gallons, you're going to get 10 gallons of ethanol," he says.

The difference is he's not running from the "revenuers."

The state licensed Sasher to sell stills to anyone who swears to use them only for legal purposes. At $1600 for a complete setup, Sasher can barely keep up with orders. Customers come from all over, such as Scottie and Joanne Scott, who flew in from California.

Asked if they think other people are ready to make ethanol themselves, Scottie Scott says, "I know they are."

Around Hatchet Hollow, Tenn., most ethanol, like moonshine, is made out of corn. There's plenty of it, but it turns out you can make ethanol out of any number of crops: sorghum, fruit — one of the best is Jerusalem artichokes.

But most do-it-yourselfers, like Greg Vise, stick to traditional recipes. The basics: boil the corn and let it ferment a few days. Then cook the "mash" in the still. As the vapors cool inside the contraption, alcohol runs out.

Vise says you wouldn't want to drink it. At 190 or 200 proof, the brew has a bad kick and to make it even less appealing, the law requires distillers to put poison in their product.

It's time-consuming, but Vise claims he saves up to $200 a week in gas for his company's 15 trucks. So what if others mock his barnyard brew?

"If they want to pay $3.50 a gallon to OPEC or whoever's controlling those prices, y'all go right ahead. We're not gonna do it," says Vise.

Lest you get any ideas — distillers warn anything below 190 proof won't do the job. Sasher explains that you can't run your car on beer. You can't even run Jack Daniels. "It would just sputter and stop," he says.

And to a lot of people around Hatchet Holler, Tenn., that would be a waste.
By Joie Chen