See Poconos resident Amanda Bryant in 'Moonshiners: Master Distiller'

Three contestants distilled tree nut-infused liqueur on the 2021 episode of “Moonshiners: Master Distiller.” The contestant who won this season’s third episode with her quick-brewed hazelnut rum (praised by the judges as “indelible,” delicious, and proven) was Poconos owner Amanda Bryant.

Bryant came to Pocono Lake from Philadelphia as a teenager. He stated that there was some confusion in his past.

“I didn’t graduate from high school, I didn’t go to college, but I was always a straight-A student,” Bryant said, adding that he wanted to do something better with his life.

“I started doing roofing, got my GED, and was a really hard worker,” Bryant added. “But I really, really wanted to educate myself somehow, so I did roofing for eight or 10 years and just broke my back, found distillation, and distillation became the way I educated myself. “It gave me a sense of purpose and I fell in love with it.”

Bryant said distilling wasn’t something he knew of in his family’s history. He started distilling after seeing some still at a friend’s house. After asking him all kinds of questions about how this worked, another friend of his who was there ordered him a book titled “The Alaska Bootlegger’s Bible.” He read the book in one night and exclaimed to his friends out of irony that he “understood everything about distillation.”

“Sure, you could spend your whole life learning about distillation and not know everything about it,” Bryant said. “But I learned so much in that moment, it was like once it got into your blood, it was there. There’s something about it, there’s science, there’s history, there’s nostalgia, it’s like a craft, an art form. “So from that book on, I became extremely focused on it and turned it into my hobby, and from there it kind of became a career.”

Bryant described moonshine as “a funny word” and defined it as alcohol produced outside of a legal distillery. “Even if you’re a hobbyist, no matter what scale you’re doing it on, if you’re not a legal distiller, you’re making moonshine,” Bryant said. After years of secretly making moonshine, Bryant was tipped off by friends to the Discovery Channel show “Moonshiners: Master Distiller.” A shy person who didn’t even let people take his photo, Bryant repeatedly rejected friends’ requests to apply for the show, “just to shut them up” until he gave up and thought the application would go nowhere.

“And I said, ‘Okay, are you satisfied? They will never call me back. “Hundreds of thousands of people apply for it every year,” Bryant recalls. “Of course they called me back and I had a mental breakdown.”

Bryant said he was so unsure of himself and his skills that he criticized and felt out of his league.

“But what I learned quickly in my first competition was that these people were my peers, not my superiors,” Bryant said. “I met other people who were distilling for the first time in my life, so it was an incredible experience.”

Bryant competed in multiple episodes of “Master Distiller” and won two more, including the “Master of the Backwoods” title in season six. He also stars in the “Moonshiners” documentary series called “Moonshiners: Master Distillers.” It is a spin-off competition.

The season 14 premiere of “Moonshiners” aired on Tuesday, Nov. 12, with new episodes airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

Bryant, who didn’t know if he wanted to be on television permanently, was asked on the show who he wanted to work with and learn from. He chose traditional distillers Mark Rogers and Huck Stewart. “So this was literally a chance for me to go and learn from someone that you would never learn from in a college or professional training environment,” Bryant said. “So I took this opportunity for education. Because how could I turn that down, right? No matter how nervous I am in front of the camera, if I can overcome my fears, maybe I can inspire others. It doesn’t matter how crazy your dreams are, just follow them and you will succeed.”

Working as a woman in a male-dominated field, Bryant said that she was used to working as a roofer and that the situation was no different in distillation. He said that the number of women drinking illegal alcohol was very small. “If you look at the history of distilling, there are a lot of female distillers,” Bryant said. She added that distilling is still thought of as a male-dominated field, but it is still a job that women can “definitely” do.

According to Bryant, in other countries it was women who distilled alcohol, and in America’s colonial days, it was documented that brewers and distillers there were poor, and requests were made for England to recruit better brewers, that is, women brewers. to make better quality products.

“I’m very proud of being a female moonshiner and a female boozer because I can put myself in the public eye and show other women what a strong female role model is, and if I can do that, I mean everyone. I really can do anything,” Bryant said.

“This is very American,” Bryant said. “I like to say that moonshine is as American as apple pie because moonshine is an American thing. Therefore, I am proud of the legacy I have learned and preserved, and my goal is to pass it on to future generations so that these techniques are not lost, but appreciated, practiced and used forever. ”

Max Augugliaro is the public safety and government watchdog reporter for the Pocono Record. reach out to him [email protected].

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