Old soldiers never die, they just smell that way. Never nominated for sainthood, the author has spent his life in the most "gawdawful" places with some of the most interesting people imaginable. "Making your own" often meant using local ingredients and improvising your equipment. This thirst induced ingenuity produced some amazing and sometimes hilarious results. The characters, recipes, plans and instructions in this book are real, only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The war stories are all true and growing daily.

An ex-Green Beret, Leon came to Alaska in 1973. Assigned to the U.S. Army Northern Warfare Training Center at Ft. Greely where he met his wife Scottie. The crew now includes a son, Leon Jr. studying for a degree in Computer Science and an incorrigible little green bird named Jessie who "punctuated" almost every page of the draft book.

The aim of this book is to explain how to make all types of alcoholic beverages in an easy to understand and entertaining manner. It stresses the arts, not the science, steers you toward using wholesome natural ingredients, rather than chemicals and shows you how to make, rather than buy most of your equipment. It has an Alaskan Bush flavor by virtue of many of its tales and recipes, but the "how-to" information is universal and applies anywhere in the world.