Despite the fact that he’s got a mohawk, a long beard, is covered in tattoos and is a former member of the Spartans motorcycle club, Jason Bartolozzi is unlikely to scare anyone.
The 45-year-old speaks easily of his emotions, often mentioning that he got “goosebumps” or that his hair is “standing straight up now” when you hit on an emotional topic. That would be the hair on his arms because, well, the hair on his head is permanently lacquered to stand straight up.
His skin must have been tingling when he first laid eyeballs on the Discovery Channel’s “Moonshiners” documentary series about illegal distillers, which premiered in 2011. He was immediately fascinated.
“The outlaw stuff of it, if you can’t tell — I am all about it,” he said.
Years of self-directed experimentation, with the tutelage of the series, followed, beginning with a small distilling rig that could have fit on a kitchen counter.
Now, Bartolozzi will appear on “Moonshiners: Master Distiller,” a spinoff of his favorite show. His episode of the moonshining competition series, in which he battles it out with two other distillers, will go live Feb. 18 on Discovery, Discovery GO and Max.
Explosion as a learning experience
Growing up in Webster, Westmoreland County, Bartolozzi was not a good student because he struggled with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Nevertheless, after graduation from Belle Vernon High School, he studied information technology.
“I quit that,” he said of his short-lived computer career. “I’m like, this ain’t what I want to do.”
Instead, he followed his father into work as a tattoo artist.
Now a happily married stay-at-home dad of a teenage son, he lives in a painstakingly remodeled Amish house in Grove City, Mercer County. Distilling moonshine, though illegal, has gradually become the centerpiece of his professional life after much tinkering with his methodology. And a few mishaps.
He now regrets that he didn’t pay more attention in school.
“I failed a lot of math, and I failed my science classes,” he said.
Chemistry would have come in handy in distilling liquor. And maybe physics.
He got a quick lesson in blast pressure several years ago when he accidentally blew up his garage.
Mud wasps had clogged some tubing — called “the worm” — of his distilling equipment. Pressure built up in the copper still and it exploded. The alcohol and mash (a mixture of grains and water) squirted out of the still, which was sitting on a lit burner.
“It’s a flame thrower now, shooting out,” Bartolozzi recalled. “I know I make some pretty good high-proof stuff because the floor was [covered in] blue flame.”
Luckily, he and a friend who was present were able to get the fire under control.
“I lost 3 inches of my beard. My eyelashes stuck together for two weeks,” he said. “But I learned, I learned.”
Strawberries and Creamsicle
He now thinks the fiery incident needed to happen.
“I’m a hands-on kind of learner,” he said. “That put me in check … and I ain’t had an accident since.” (He would eventually like to switch to an electric heating element; he learned that flames and alcohol are not a safe combination.)
Many of his learning experiences were more low-key.
“I remember friends coming and they were like, ‘What are you doing?’ I was throwing 120-proof moonshine down the drain,” he recalled.
“I'm like, ‘It’s not what I want.’ It took a lot of that kind of stuff to get to where I am now.”
He seems to enjoy equally the technical challenges and creative aspects of distilling — fixing equipment problems as well as inventing new moonshine flavors, like strawberries and cream, peach cobbler and orange Creamsicle.
“I make it so the women can drink it. They like sweet and they like smooth. I’m both of those,” he said, laughing.
His technical and creative skills came in handy on the “Master Distillers” show.
He had applied almost on a whim after running across the casting call online. (He had been searching for a role as an extra in movies.)
About two years later, he got an email from the casting director on his father’s birthday, a fact that is significant to him because he lost both of his parents to fentanyl abuse years earlier.
After interviews and background checks, he was chosen to be on the show with his HeavyMetal Moonshine.
“I think it was the mohawk that sold it,” he said.
‘This is what’s up’
The show gives three distillers an assigned task with limited ingredients and different equipment, based on the luck of the draw.
The challenge in this episode was to make a sipping cream (like Bailey’s Irish Cream) — a relatively low-proof liqueur made with dairy products. There are three stages in the competition, with an elimination round.
The winner chosen by the panel of judges gets the opportunity to have his or her spirit manufactured and sold by the show’s sponsoring distillery.
Bartolozzi, who is not allowed to reveal the winner before the show airs, was intimidated by his fellow competitors — a man from Minnesota and a woman from Asheville, N.C., where the show was filmed. He feels they were better educated and had more professional experience than him.
“Then you got me — right out of the back woods of southwest Pennsylvania.”
The other contestants also nabbed his favored ingredients and his preferred still, and he had to contend with a pompous guest judge from New York to boot.
Still, he went into the competition feeling confident.
“I didn't have no room in my luggage for my B game. Just my A game is coming, you know what I mean?”
His focus may have served him well. After initially wavering, he was struck by inspiration for the flavor of his sipping cream. During a few days’ break in filming, while he was golfing in the Smoky Mountains, it hit him: Pillsbury’s orange cinnamon roll, which his mother would make on Christmas morning.
During the break, he did some cooking on a hot plate in the hotel’s bathroom. After he mixed everything up, he thought, “Oh, man, I just came on to something good. This is what’s up.”
We’ll have to tune in to discover if he was right.
Summing up his experience on “Master Distillers,” Bartolozzi said, “It was the greatest experience of my life, hands down, next to having my son or getting married.” And it was “super cool” to meet the regular judges on the show, whom he’d admired for years.
“It was crazy adventure,” he said. “The last day that we were filming, it was such a weird vibe being in that zone. I was in it to win it.”
First Published: February 16, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
