East Tennessee has a long history of moonshine making and moonshine raids.

For years, people would produce the high octane whiskey in the hollers of the hills then law enforcement would break up the illegal stills and pour out the contents.

Then something happened about three years ago.

"I never thought it would happen. I never thought this would come about in my lifetime," Dennis Proffitt of Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine said.

In 2009, Tennessee changed laws to allow dozens of counties to add distilleries.

"I'm proud of living in the mountains and I'm proud of all the good things that Tennessee is known for. We're known for music and we're known for making pretty good whiskey. I'm proud to share that," Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine co-owner Joe Baker said. "My family has always made moonshine. It's something that's been done here for a couple of hundred years."

Joe Baker's family did not make a living from moonshine, but now he does. He is co-owner of Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine. It is the first federally licensed distillery in the history of East Tennessee.

"I remember as a 7th grader doing a science project on moonshine and talking about how the chemical process works," he said.

The science is the same.

Master Distiller Justin King explained moonshine starts with yellow corn.

"This is what we make all of our moonshine out of. It's just basically ground up into a fine meal," Kind said.

No added sugar, just corn.

"We're actually adding corn into the mash right now," he said, explaining the process. "We'll actually bring this corn up into a rolling boil. And what that does is that converts all the starches in the ground corn into simple sugars."

King detailed the next step.

"We'll cool the corn back down to room temperature. We'll add yeast to it at that point and then we'll pump it into one of our four fermentors and start the fermentation process," he said.

He gestured toward a large vat of bubbling liquid. "What's going on here is the yeast is eating up all the natural sugars that we made over there in the cooker and it makes two things. It makes CO2 and it makes alcohol and the bubbles are actually the CO2 rising to the top."

It stays in the fermentors a few days and is then is pumped over to the pot still. It's a setup that looks remarkably similar to moonshine stills of old.

"We'll pump all the mash into this pot still and heat it up. And as you heat it up the vapor rises, it goes across the top into what's called a thumper barrel. The vapor will then rise again and it goes over to the condenser where it's actually condensed from a vapor to a liquid into moonshine," King said. "When it comes out of the still we're somewhere in the 160 proof range. So all our products here proof down with spring water."

Converting bags of grain to jars of 100 proof moonshine takes about five days.

Friends and family oversee the whole process in Gatlinburg. Then Ole Smoky ships moonshine products to distributors.

So is it authentic? Is it the same?

"We heat with steam versus say a fire or propane but it's the same process," King said.

Dennis Proffitt has been making moonshine since he was 13 years old.

He said that white lighting was made with more than just corn and had a higher proof, more alcohol.

Proffitt said the modern corn-only moonshine at Ole Smoky is actually the most traditional. The moonshine meets federal standards and is much more sanitary than something made outside.

"It's better than it is outdoors. And it's probably a whole lot cleaner for sure," Proffitt explained. "We don't have no batteries or no radiators, you know, no dead possums laying in the bottom of it."

Hmm, no dead possums.

Dennis Proffitt has some advice for first time moonshine sippers.

"Try the flavored stuff first, then graduate up to the corn, and then the white lightning," he said.

'Apple Pie' is their best seller.

Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine is developing blackberry and strawberry flavors for this summer, and that's not all the store offers.

"We've got everything from moonshine pickles to chow chow. Anything you can put moonshine in, we do it," Baker said.

They do it legally, making moonshine true to the mountain heritage, just a lot cleaner.

That taste of Tennessee is available at the distillery in Gatlinburg and across the country.

Selling backyard moonshine is still illegal in Tennessee.

The law allows legal distilleries to operate under strict guidelines.