His fascination with things he has “to know” means that as a kid, Cheyenne’s Geno Stecks made jets with firecrackers and balsam wood.
As a teen with his dad in Pine Bluffs, he bought a 1934 Hudson Terraplane and turned it into a rat rod. As an adult he’s graduated to be a full-blown redneck engineer, making potato cannons, a meat smoker, another rat rod and now he faces a new frontier.
The longtime fan of the Discovery Channel shows “Moonshiners” and “Master Distillers” series is trying his hand at making his own hooch with a tiny hobby still.
Since December, he’s produced about 1.5 cups of moonshine, estimating he’s so far spent, “Oh, about $500 or $600 or so” on so far.
He can’t make much. The still is a small 1-liter setup that fits on a section of his kitchen counter. But that’s not the point, Stecks said. He’s having a blast being a “moonshiner,” even if at the rate he’s going he’ll produce enough to fill a bottle by Christmas.
Standing 5-foot-4 with a full head of hair and long, bushy salt-and-pepper beard, Stecks loves NASCAR and embraces being a redneck. He refers to himself as a “furry midget, rat rodder, and now I’m going to be a moonshiner.”
Stecks, a mechanic and “caraholic” for more than 45 years, said his fascination with cars began as a little kid pondering how turning a key made his dad’s car go. Instead of comic books in grade school, he read motor manuals. He remembers riding in the car with the family.
“I could tell you what car was coming just by seeing the grill,” he said.
His father operated a fireworks stand near the Wyoming-Nebraska border while he was in grade school. That led to experiments blowing up plastic soldiers, then he turned to balsa wood gliders.
“We’d take a couple of bottle rockets and make a jet airplane out of them,” he said.
Birth Of A Redneck Engineer
His teen years included dirt bikes, wrestling in the 98-pound, 105-pound and 112-pound weight classes, and proving to football players who hassled him that he could bench press 267 pounds twice. The 200-pound gridiron athletes couldn’t lift their own weight.
A favorite memory from Stecks’ teen years was finding the old Hudson in a ranch field, learning it was owned by a lawyer in Denver and paying $100 for just the rusted body. He and his dad turned it into his high school ride complete with a 327 Chevy V8 engine, a floorboard he made in shop class, seats from a Mustang and much more.
Now 64, Stecks loves NASCAR and owns a fast 1931 Model A rat rod named “Clyde” that he made several years ago. The hood ornament is another of his self-engineered creations that looks like a pinwheel.
“That’s a center bearing out of one of them fidget spinners, and it’s got a prop off of a drone I got in the house,” he said. “Then I used 3/8 set screws and I put them in upside down to make the cylinders.”
The ride’s won 34 awards in car shows.
He also built himself a smoker using a wood stove and beer keg last year. The firebox is an old wood stove he and his dad built nearly 40 years ago, attached to the keg with a length of exhaust pipe.
“It works awesome,” Stecks said. “I cook on applewood chunks.”
His potato cannon made of plastic pipe and a compressed air tank that can fire the tubers three-quarters of a mile, he said.
Still Of The Night
So, making moonshine is not out of character.
“If I want something and I can make it for pennies on the dollar, it’s fun,” he said.
On Christmas Eve, he watched a “Moonshiners” marathon in which one of show’s stars made a tiny still to be given away as a prize.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to find one of them,’” he said. “I was over at my son’s on Christmas Day and we were playing on the computer until we Googled ‘mini stills’ and found this one. It was $180 and came from Portugal.”
The 1-liter copper still is nothing like the big 50- to 100-pound pots he sees on the TV show. He said in looking for stills, he saw that there are stills available in a range of sizes up to a 200-gallon pot.
“My pot on my still holds a liter,” he said. “I want to do this in my kitchen, just something to play with.”
After watching the Discovery Channel show "Moonshiners," Cheyenne mechanic Geno Stecks was inspired to try it on his own. So far, his tiny hobby moonshine still has produced about 1.5 cups of hooch since December. At that rate, he thinks it'll take "about a year" to fill one of his tiny 2-liter oak kegs. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
After watching the Discovery Channel show "Moonshiners," Cheyenne mechanic Geno Stecks was inspired to try it on his own. So far, his tiny hobby moonshine still has produced about 1.5 cups of hooch since December. At that rate, he thinks it'll take "about a year" to fill one of his tiny 2-liter oak kegs. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
After watching the Discovery Channel show "Moonshiners," Cheyenne mechanic Geno Stecks was inspired to try it on his own. So far, his tiny hobby moonshine still has produced about 1.5 cups of hooch since December. At that rate, he thinks it'll take "about a year" to fill one of his tiny 2-liter oak kegs. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
Geno Stecks with his 1931 Model A Ford rat rod, which he's had for 21 years and drives "all the time." (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
Geno Stecks with his 1931 Model A Ford rat rod, which he's had for 21 years and drives "all the time." (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
One of Geno Stecks' redneck engineered creations is this smoker on his front porch. It's made from an old wood stove, beer keg and exhaust pipe. He says it works "awesome." (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
One of Geno Stecks' redneck engineered creations is this smoker on his front porch. It's made from an old wood stove, beer keg and exhaust pipe. He says it works "awesome." (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
Copper Still
He said the stills can be stainless steel or copper. Stecks chose copper because it removes phosphates from liquor during the distilling process.
The still comes with the “worm” or copper coil that cools the distillate as it leaves the contraption. He has built a cooler for the “worm” because to produce the alcohol the distillate requires a cooling process.
Part of his learning is dealing with the mash for the production. He found an Arkansas company, Still’n The Clear! It offers moonshine ingredient kits and instruction for wannabe moonshine makers.
The company education includes a YouTube channel, podcasts and “Moonshiner Academy” for those who want to accelerate their learning curve.
Steck said he ordered their Simple Beginners Bourbon 10-gallon kit that came with 6 pounds of crushed corn, 3 pounds of crimped oats and 2 tablespoons of yeast. He cut the recipe in half because he only wants to make 5 gallons.
As part of the process, the water has to heat to 180 degrees and the corn and oats need to be stirred for 45 minutes. On “Moonshiners,” they typically use wooden boat paddles that have been cut down and drilled so the mash will flow through.
Stecks needed something smaller and put his tinkering skills into action.
“I went and got a paint mixer and hooked it on a electric drill and did it that way, and that worked awesome,” he said. “My hands were tired by the time I got done with 45 minutes of running that thing, but at that time I figured out, hmm, how can I do this with a drill press.”
He said he’s added the yeast to the mash, put it a plastic 7-gallon bucket with a lid not completely closed, and is waiting for the fermentation process to be complete before attempting to put the mash into a cheesecloth and squeeze the liquid out to go into the still.
He finally got his first moonshine Thursday, about 1 cup’s worth he said took six hours to get.
Won’t Go Blind
Stecks said he is not afraid of creating “methanol” that can make people blind if they drink it. That’s mostly associated with fruits that are used and not a grain mash.
He understands the first 30% of distillate, or the “head” that comes out of the still, is “typically thrown away or used for some other purpose.”
In testing his still by distilling water, he said the result from the copper still smelled like tea and tasted like tea.
“I had no idea why,” he said, confessing to being a “major rookie” in his moonshine quest.
As someone who has a Budweiser beer on most days, Stecks has tried moonshine. He and his girlfriend decided to dress as moonshiners for Halloween a few years ago.
“We took my rat rod and dressed up in bib overalls and went to a Halloween party and bought a small jug of moonshine for that,” he said.
Moonshiners And NASCAR
Stecks said his current interest in moonshining probably can be traced to his love for NASCAR racing.
“NASCAR was created out of bootleggers back in the late ’40s after World War II racing their moonshiner cars,” he said. “Then they got that all organized and everything and that’s what kind of got me into it.”
As part of his initial step in becoming a moonshiner, Stecks said he bought two small oak barrels to age his product in. The mash he purchased is supposed to produce a bourbon-like drink with a hint of caramel and vanilla.
The tiny barrels with the small amount of moonshine whiskey will be able to age the product in a matter of weeks and not years, Stecks said.
Stecks said the moonshine still was kind of a Christmas present to himself. He said his son got a beer-making kit for Christmas for his wife, so now the projects for the new year will center around perfecting their crafts.
In the future, Stecks said he may add a tiny “thumper” tank to the process that allows for other flavors to be introduced to the alcohol that drips out of the worm.
“I want to try and make a coffee moonshine or maybe a root beer,” he said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
