p.m. eastern. this is american history tv, only on c-span3. announcer: in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by televisionublic companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. week, american history tv's american artifacts takes you into archives, museums, and historic sites from around the country. , located about three miles from george washington's mount vernon estate in virginia is a whiskey distillery. american history tv visited to learn about washington's distilling business on a day when the staff was making apple brandy.

>> my name is dennis pogue, i am the vice president of preservation here at vernon and we are standing in front of a reconstruction of washington's distillery. not only -- most people have no idea that washington was not only first in war, first in peace, but also owned the first distillery. this was a very important part of the plantation economy. historians have known this for a long time, but about 10 years ago, we decided we wanted to explore that. we came out here with archaeologist, excavated the distillery were the had been located, did about five years of excavation and research, and decided we had a wonderful opportunity to bring this back and show what it would have been like. you can't see this anywhere else in the country. relate tothese two each other? >> washington already had a

gristmill that was a major part of the plantation. he made lots of money off it over the years. in 1797, at the end of his second term as president, he was getting ready to come back to mount vernon and he hired a plantation manager who knew how to distill. on the job, heas lobbied washington and said, if you are ok with this, i can make you a lot of money by distilling whiskey. washington initially said, i don't know much about that. we have letters he wrote to friends asking their advice. they said as long as he could make a good product, there was no doubt it would be successful. he agreed. in a97 they started here small way, using an existing building. by the end of the year, they

were convinced it was going to be successful, so washington agreed to build the building behind us. they set it up, and by the early spring of 1798, it was up and running. >> this is a large building. it looks expensive to build. how did you get the funding, and how did you decide on the architecture of a? >> again, we have great records. took ahaeologists footprint of the building. when you go inside, you can see where the cells are located. one is located where the archaeologist found evidence for it. these are remnants of the brick base of the furnace or heavily burned, read in soil where the fire had been. here -- reddened soil where the fire had been. we have two coup here. we found evidence of a brick

a boiler, water for the mashing, and a stone floor that archaeological evidence. that gave us a footprint of the building and allowed us to place and position different parts of the process. documentary evidence gave us all sorts of other information. we knew the size because we had boughtord of when he them. we know the stonemason spent a certain amount of time raising the walls. we had all sorts of records from the carpenters and other workmen. we were able to put all that together to get a good picture of what she intends to still he would look like. -- what washington's distillery would look like. i think it's very accurate. we know there were two doors and windows. there are records of that. there is a lot of information about it. the building seems to have

burned only about 15 years after it was built. the support we got for this was very important. mount vernon could not have done it on our own. but the distilled spirits council of the united states, the folks that represent the liquor industry in the country, .ame we got in touch with them very early in the project and told them we have a wonderful educational opportunity to tell a great story about george washington that's also a good story about the heritage of spirits in american history. they supported that and came up to support2 million the research and reconstruction of the distillery. was aashington was making right whiskey. we know his recipe was 60% right corn,-- ride grain, 35% and the rest barley. that was a typical, popular recipe from the time.

e is different from the whiskey most people drink today, which is made mostly out-of-court. ye is spicier, sharper. it was a popular grain at the time. is take would do this all those different grains and mix them in these large barrels mashed up. they would put them in and add boiling water. behind us is the boiler where the water is heated up. you would have to dip that out, bring it over to one of these and deposit the grain in here, put the boiling water in contact the smash rake, -- water in, put the mash rake in, and stir it. you would continue to do that until this is filled up. essentially, what

you are trying to do is cook the grain, to turn the starches in the grain into sugars. once that happens, you introduce east, which works on the sugars to produce the alcohol. that takes 3-5 days, and then you are ready to distill. the still, over to and the idea there is you are separating the alcohol from the liquid, so you end up with a concentration of alcoholic spirit when you do that. >> my name is steve bayshore, i manage the historic trade department at mount vernon, and includes the distillery as well as the blacksmith shop and other sites. we take care of the living history elements of mount vernon. making apple cider brandy. the apples would have been grown in an orchard on the property.

the type we are using are the newton pippin's and two other fridays we know washington group. knowirst -- varieties we washington grew. to press thep is apples, to crush them. they would have to be handcranked, to squeeze all the apples. the pulp is basically what you are squishing, and from that, you get the juice. from that point on, you're going to ferment that juice. we are fermenting a large barrel called a hog's head. 6% alcohol when you're done. the fermentation for apples is longer than for whiskey, which

was also made here, which was the main commodity. you are looking at 14-30 days for fermentation, depending on the type of yeast used. at this time, we are fermenting champagne yeast, which is a little faster acting. time, they did not know a lot about the science of the yeast. everything,ll you but they will not tell you what type of yeast they are using. in washington's day, the orchard had naturally occurring yeast. he may very well have let that naturally occurring yeast get in there and do its job over a time of weeks. 6% is at the end of fermentation. we are then going to distill it,

which will get the proof too much higher alcohol content by volume. by running it through the stills we are now, we are going to get 80, 90, maybe 100 proof. right now, we have all five stills charged with the fermented apple juice. it might get to 50, maybe 60. we will collect fat and then run it through on wednesday, double everything, run everything we make the first two days a second time through. each time you distill, you gain proof, but you lose folly them. our goal is to get 50-60 gallons in the process. was this something a lot of farmers would have done to make apple brandy or was that unusual? >> a still is a piece of farm the 18th century,

even 19th century, so if you are a small farmer, you are probably going to make a little whiskey on the side, applejack, as they call it, or brandy. a lot of alcohol is also legal tender at this time. you could sell that cider for a pretty good price, trade it. there are small commodities involved even if you are a small farmer. we have a number of staff here that work for me. a couple of full-time people and some part-time staff. several of these guys have made the whiskey run, so they know how to operate all the equipment. distiller here who is

our main consultant for doing whiskey and brandy. he is a master distiller for makers mark. independent. over the past when he five years, many people are familiar with how microbrew beer took off. are a number of entrepreneurial projects designing distilleries for people. he brought a couple of friends who are distillers. one is a young man from the hudson river valley of new york just beginning the process of building a distillery. they are here to learn and get a taste of the industry as well as help us. i encourage people to name their stills. this is pam, sarah, maggie, sondra, elizabeth.

please send me spirits, elizabeth. that's the pneumonic. we are doing apple brandy distillation. this is one of our five copper stills. from my right to my left in order of size. about 62est one is gallons. the largest is about 95 gallons. this is the very top of a rather large, semi spherical top and a conical shape. the still itself is probably that big, probably four feet across. then it runs all the way down to about here. to the base. is 95 gallons in here. that's the size of a bathtub.

i have been coming here now for nine on 10 years -- for 10 years, and one of the things i was fascinated with was the level of detail the archaeologists found in uncovering the site. i'm not an archaeologist. i am a chemical engineer and i make whiskey for a living. but it fascinated me to look at the archaeological site and say, this is where things went. it laid itself out very nicely and a tremendous amount of information was easily discoverable. there are things we learned about the operation here that are transferable to the modern craft of distilling. things like the use of hops as a antibacterial agent. people think hops are only in beer. i can tell you there are times i use hops when i need bacteria. how to make a really

high percent rye mash, because grain.a brat of the if it gets too thick to quick -- you don't stir it enough the first time we made the foam that ate manhattan. it foamed all night long and it was two feet deep and six feet wide when we came in in the and it didn't stop until we distilled it. how tolly learned control it by discovering what they did. water and put it on a paintbrush and hit the foam, and it breaks the phone. eventually, we learned how to not get foam in the first place, and that was much better. but all of this was discovered from studying their techniques.

they described how to layout a still house, the most efficient way of doing things. we were able to look at those it all fit very well with what's going on in the larger distilling industry. kind of a delicate balance. these are direct buyers still. in george washington's time, this was ubiquitous. would go to different phases during the process. the first thing we would do is take what is called the onion, the top part of the still, and remove it. then you start on low fire. you basically build a fire with the intent of getting the flames goes upgh that the heat the flu properly. otherwise, you wind up with smoke in the room. once we have the fire established, then we establish in the condensers.

this is the old worm style condenser. s, and thenn and turne coils around inside the condenser. it comes out the bottom in the , and then it's right here is a liquid. then it's all about balancing the amount of heat we are putting in the still in the amount of water we are running through the condenser. it was off, so it just needs to be balanced. and then also keeping track of the amount of heat so that we .an manage the process

don't try this at home, but the way we manage the heat is we feel the still to see where the .eat is in the still it slightly uncomfortable to have my hand under here. and it's starting to move its .ay up as the heat wave moves, it will move up the onion and out the line arm. finally, when it gets to this knuckle joint, we have about five minutes until we have product coming out the back of the condenser. nice. this one is all the way up in the line arm already. way to go, mr. perky. we really limit ourselves and how we operate here.

we still boil water at the boiler. we've still at hops when we are making the rye. we use wooden buckets. with a wooden masher. we don't use thermometers or hydrometer's when we are making adjustments about adding the grain. we do it with visual and paste. -- pace. we take it over a bucket at a time. when we do the full scale , we can understand why george washington had the staff he did. that's the staff level that it takes. once we start getting liquid out the back end, we monitor quality. the first that comes out is what

we call head. it's inferior quality. that material we collect and get rid of. this is going to turn into a stream pretty quick. y.finitely had see -- heads >> tasting pretty nice though. >> yep. and then once the ogg lights the parts once -- once theyoff peak and drop off, we are really

delicately managing it. you can see the stream volume much orf you put too too little heat in the still. we are managing that to keep it nice, flat, and smooth. >> there you go. >> ok. that will do. that way you cool the line arm a little bit more. this would have come from the and then gone down and found its way back into the creek. the mill pond was a mile from -- two miles from here. it's basically a hollow law of.

you can see valve set the end. do you want to point to a valve and maybe adjusted a little bit? it's the same kind as there are here on the condenser. it shows how much water is coming out of the mill. >> they did only 60-80 gallons of brandy on a couple of occasions. they did apple brandy and peach brandy. they sold most of it, but kept -- sold some of it, but kept most as a record. the whiskey is a different proportion totally. this whole building was built as a commercial distillery for whiskey. whiskey4500 gallons of

one year. in 1799, almost 11,000 gallons. >> we have lots and lots of plantation records and accounts of who was buying washington's whiskey. , up per gallon, by the way to one dollar per gallon for the good stuff that was distilled a few more times. the crew that really made this work would have been african-american slaves. there were six young lack men assigned to the distillery. james anderson and his son john directing it,n but all the work would have been done by those six men, and it would have been a lot of work. carrying the grain around, doing the mashing, it was a labor intensive operation. normally in washington's

time, it went right to market. in our case, when we make a risky run, we go ahead and aged -- not aged, to keep with the tradition here. now, october 22, for the first time, we are offering aged whiskey. so, we will bottle half and barrel the other half, let it sit for two years, and then sell it. nice, what you would expect in a modern town, amber, nice taste. forward to people trying that. >> there was lots of good whiskey being mating -- being

made in kentucky and elsewhere, but a lot of people are interested in what the whiskey washington made would have tasted like. in the last couple of years, we have made enough that we can sell. it is available at a store near here and you can buy it. >> we will be giving towards today as well -- tours today as well, so there will be visitors coming through. that is not always the case. we want people to be safe, but today there is a special thing we are doing with the brandy. >> so, this is a commercial

enterprise, but did washington himself like whiskey? >> well, whiskey was the most popular spirit in the country in the years following the revolution. revolution, it was rum. but after the revolution, rum became more expensive. and americans were growing lots and lots of grain. it became a popular thing. this was a commercial venture though. there were a lot of people but washington's distillery, as we found out from our research, was one of the largest in the country. that doesn't mean it was washington's favorite spirit. popular among the masses, but washington was more of the .radition of madeira and wine although we know from the records that he did drink whiskey, i don't think it would have been his first choice.

6% alcohol and all these guys. and i don't think we have gotten 6% on any of our fermentations yet. hit a percent, but we have never really gotten there yet. ok. >> it's coming out nicely now. >> yep. >> you can watch american artifacts and other american history tv programs anytime by visiting our website, c-span.org/history. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] the presidential inauguration of donald trump is friday,

january 20th. c-span will have live coverage of all the days events and ceremonies. atch live on c-span c-span.org, and listen live on the free c-span radio app. cracks in 1955, 15 year old -- >> in 1950 five, 15-year-old african-american emmett till was kidnapped and murdered. the case went to trial, and two white suspects were acquitted by an all-white jury. sits down with the kansas city public library executive director to talk about "emmett till: the murder that shocked the world and propelled the civil rights ovement." this is about 90 minutes. >> my name is alvin sykes. among my many titles, the most i -- the one i am