Everyone liked his bushy beard, rugged denim overalls, indispensable hat, and crude humor, heavily spiced with profanity. Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton was not the last moonshiner, as he often claimed, but was the most famous in Coke County, Tennessee – the most “drunk” county in the state. Moonshine “Popcorn” has become a legend.
This story began on October 5, 1946 in North Carolina, the day Marvin Sutton was born. He had to live surrounded by the mountains of the Great Smoky Mountains, in the district of Cocke, where residents have been engaged in moonshine brewing all their adult lives. For most families, this was, without exaggeration, a matter of survival. True, over time, this grew into the scale of an illegal business with big profits and related problems with the federal authorities.
Marvin began to drive his first distillate back in the 60s, when bootlegging was strangled in the United States in the bud. But not in Cocke County. For a long time, “Popcorn” (nicknamed, as I understand it, because of an incident in a bar where he smashed a popcorn machine with a pool cue while drunk) managed to avoid the feds, but his luck ran out quickly. The first arrest and probation overtook him in 1974. The next arrest took place in the 90s.
Sutton’s Marketing Genius
However, the persecution of the authorities did not frighten Sutton in the least, but only provoked him. The biggest departure from the standard popcorn brewing model was its overt marketing. At first there were souvenirs, and then the media drew attention to this colorful moonshiner. This first happened in 1999, when Marvin published the autobiographical book Me and My Likker (Likker means moonshine), a rambling, bawdy, and often hilarious account of his life and the white bourbon trade.
Jesus turned water into wine, I turned it into moonshine.
Popcorn Sutton
The book quickly gained popularity. Later, he made an autobiographical film called “This is the Last Dam Run of Likker I’ll Ever Make”, which was distributed on cassette and sold to tourists in a junk shop. The film quickly became a cult film, and in 2008 it was made into a documentary film with the shorter title “The Last One”, which eventually won a local Emmy Award. Prior to that, in 2007, Sutton was featured on the History Channel documentary Hillbilly: The Real Story.
But, unfortunately, everything ended the way it should have ended. A close friend, Mark Ramsey, once said to him: “Old man, you can’t be a movie star and make moonshine at the same time.” In March 2008, “Popcorn” Sutton was arrested by federal authorities for trying to sell an undercover agent about 1000 gallons of corn moonshine (more than 3,5 liters, by the way). The judge clearly did not like the defendant’s marketing talent, and he sentenced him to 18 months in federal prison.
At the time he was 62 years old, before that he was diagnosed with cancer. The judge did not respond to pleas to serve his sentence under house arrest. On March 16, 2009, 4 days before Marvin was due to go to jail, he climbed into his beloved green Ford Fairlane parked in the front yard, built an exhaust pipe through the back seat, and killed himself. The irony is that a few months after his death, moonshine was legalized (Yesterday’s Moonshiner, Today’s Microdistiller).
Even in death, Popcorn wanted to remain a rebel. A stone that Marvin prepared for his funeral long before he died.
He was a nice guy who spent his whole life doing what he liked to do. But his story doesn’t end there. Today, Newport, Tennessee is home to Popcorn Sutton Distilling, founded in 2010 by Hank Williams Jr. with the permission of Pam Sutton’s widow. The distillery launches Popcorn Sutton’s Tennessee White Whiskey, a white whiskey made to Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton’s family recipe. Fortunately, this recipe was mentioned in his book, and the production technology was filmed in detail in The Last One.
Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton’s Corn Moonshine Recipe
In the book Me and My Likker, the recipe is described as follows: “25 pounds of coarsely ground cornmeal, 50 pounds of sugar, 1 gallon of malt …”. If we adapt it to our realities and bring the proportions to 10 liters of wort, we get the following:
- 500 g coarse cornmeal
- 1 kg sugar (original recipe 1 lb/1 gallon water)
- 300 g malt (light corn, barley, rye or a mixture thereof)
- 9 liters of water
Moonshine “Popcorn” is something between a sugar distillate and corn whiskey. To understand the processes, we recommend that you read both articles.
Heat water up to 65оC, add sugar and malt to it, mix well. Add flour or crushed corn, mix well. Insulate the fermentation tank and leave exactly for a day (a very important point!). During this time, the starch should be saccharified. It’s time to add yeast – 10-15 g of fermented baker’s yeast of the Saf Levure type. We are waiting for the must to ferment to a natural clarification. We do the first distillation “to water”, the second – fractional, with the selection of heads and tails. If everything went as it should, then after the first distillation, you should get 1,3-1,5 liters of CC with a strength of 40%.
Marvin liked country music and played the banjo quite well himself.
It should be added that Popcorn never used yeast and was against it. He felt that wild yeast combined with malt was more than enough. In fairness, it should be noted that he mainly organized his “production” in the forest (for obvious reasons). Perhaps there “yeast” is more stable. I have seen on the forums attempts to make Sutton’s moonshine with wild yeast, but this, as a rule, ended with the contamination of the wort and its further disposal or the introduction of alcohol, stronger yeast cultures. But more often than not, the must simply refuses to ferment at the very beginning.
I think I’m the only one left who knows how to do it and do it right. Creating a high quality product is all I ever do.
Popcorn Sutton
Such is the recipe for “corn moonshine”, I’m not afraid of this word, America’s greatest moonshine. Rest in Peace, Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton. And we will continue to make your glorious likker out of “wine” …