>“Our country’s founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime,” Alt said.
I'm convinced. And it's making me think anyone that disagrees hates apple pie and America.
I get it, but apple pie isn't distilled either. Was just tying into something more thematically aligned. The law has nothing to do with danger, either, it seems to have been driven entirely by desire to protect federal tax revenue.
TIL: Apparently the nickname for distilled apple cider is applejack. Never realized the origin of the cereal's name.
given how explosive ethanol is, i have no problem with the law persisting for public safety reasons even if they weren't originally penned for that reason
i really don't want to die because the downstairs neighbor wants to make his own craft vodka
The restrictions may be somewhat defensible in a tightly packed areas full of, shall we say, unwilling participants, but if I have a large property, why shouldn't I be able to do just that?
There are about 1000 easier ways to start a forest fire than running a mini- distillery. Meanwhile if the local or state government wants to regulate safety requirements here, that is within their power to do so. Its the federal outright ban that is in question.
There is exception. The law specifically says you can get authorization from the Secretary of the Treasury. Likely so they can tax you-likely is not that different from commercial distillers.
Considering the danger of distilling and most people do not have that much land; you likely would need to get approval from govt agencies anyway to be legal.
Oh look I'd wager more fires would be caused by people angle grinding in the summer (*there was a massive fire several years ago caused by this here in Perth), but I was just spitballing ideas. TBH I used to still my own liquor and think that if you're interested enough in the process to actually do it you're also probably aware of the safety aspects to it.
But also I do appreciate how many numbskulls there are out there.
I grew up in moonshine country (or at least what was once moonshine country before they moved on to pot and then meth), and I never heard of a still causing a forest fire.
They’d occasionally go blind from methanol in the shine or slowly give themselves lead poisoning from the solder in the still, but no fires. So they were at least safety-aware enough not to want to lose all their product and get the authorities on their case by burning down the area around their still.
Thank you. I know you have a point. I never did old fashioned distilling -- mostly because I am not sure I am anal enough to keep it clean and whatnot, but I can't say that the idea doesn't have charm.
> mostly because I am not sure I am anal enough to keep it clean and whatnot
Do you perhaps mean fermentation? Distillation is exceptionally easy and not particularly difficult to clean up after. It remains perfectly safe provided you have a cheap digital thermometer, understand the importance of good ventilation, and use off the shelf parts. (The latter only because a custom setup built by a particularly incompetent individual could inadvertently result in the creation of a dangerous pressure vessel.)
The same numbskulls that can purchase power tools at the local hardware store? Or drive a car? Distilling liquor is far safer than a great many common day to day activities.
I'm not really sure why you're trying to argue this to me, however there are some very serious risks to running a home still which shouldn't really be dismissed.
Because I'm responding to your comment in the context of a subtree where it was suggested that home distilling presented sufficient danger to give pause when considering the implications of repealing the ban on it. You yourself expressed such a sentiment. I'm merely pointing out the inconsistency of such a position with regard to the status quo. While it certainly carries risks, home distilling is far safer than a great many common day to day activities.
Distillation also concentrates the methanol, which can kill you. You have to know how to get rid of it (it has a bit lower boiling point), which makes it a non-trivial task with a significant downside. If you then sell the bad alcohol you've just made yourself a public health threat.
The way this is solved in our country is that you can legally make your own alcohol, but only at a state-approved distillery, where the personnel knows how to handle this.
Historically non-edible apples (grown from seed, as well as dedicated cider apples) are widely available and only useful for cider, so it would be a waste of an edible apple to make cider out of it.
In a country that has legalized (not even decriminalized!) marihuana, a still present full-ban on moonshine paints an interesting picture on legislative process
In the U.S., heroin, LSD, and marijuana are the same federal schedule. Have to fill the for-profit prison labor camps somehow, and admitting dealing marijuana isn’t as dangerous as dealing heroin would put a dent in that. Leave that to the corporate opioid peddlers legally addicting Americans in pain.
Did George Washington actually partake in the hobby or did he make his slaves do it like his famous barbecues until he died because he knew it was wrong?
Washington as an unquestioned justification for anything should never be the argument.
I mean whiskey was the first consumer good taxed by the nascent Constitutional republic during his administration and he had to put down a rebellion and federal regulation of distillation was a response to the long-tail impact of that rebellion and failure to enforce the taxation of whiskey and spirits.
Now I think it's dumb to prohibit home distillers and it actually inhibits industry evolution. There is a lot of experimentation that happens in grey areas of the law with homemade spirits and it would be interesting to see how things adapt if the law was lifted.
All that said home distillation is dangerous. Ethanol at volumes sufficient for bottling is explosive, methanol poisoning is real, and even if the techniques for safely distilling it from a mash are learned in a high school chemistry class most people aren't great at it.
I'm a big whiskey enjoyer and home cook and have done a few "dangerous" things myself w/ food and beverages. If the law goes away I know I'm going to do some stuff in the basement and accept the risk myself. But I'm a little wary of laws being lifted that definitely protect people, even if it's a side effect of taxation.
Such concern is inconsistent with the present reality. Gasoline for a lawnmower incorrectly stored in a garden shed or garage is explosive. The propane tank for the BBQ can easily destroy a chunk of you house if placed too close to an open flame. The OTC medication in your bathroom can also poison you if you're careless. There are many creative ways in which the electric supply of your home could result in your death if not treated with care. The examples are practically endless.
Even just a half decent kitchen knife will be razor sharp and capable of removing a digit or two if handled incorrectly.
Are you disagreeing that distilling several liters of cask strength grain alcohol around an open flame is more dangerous than sealed containers of propane and gasoline?
Yes. A sealed container of propane is _far_ more dangerous if we're purely considering what the typical failure mode looks like.
As to the gasoline, please do note that incompetent distilling was being compared to incompetent storage there. So then the gasoline hasn't been properly capped off and has been left in (for example) a garden shed with insufficient airflow. That's once again likely to be more dangerous.
Do also consider that people in the US regularly deep fry using a gas burner. It seems self evident to me that heating a vat of oil to near the smoke point and then making it sizzle, all the while over an open flame, has to be vastly more dangerous on average than what you described.
Also you don't necessarily need to use an open flame to distill. An electric range works perfectly well.
It's not nearly as benign as you're making out. You can be poisoned by a contaminated batch - the ethanol content won't save you. However what is vastly overstated is the risk of such poisoning occurring in the first place. You could as well fear monger about the dangers of food poisoning due to incorrectly fermented kimchi or pickles or sauerkraut or what have you. Even more likely in the typical US kitchen is salmonella poisoning.
It's a lot easier to deal with a small grease fire than vaporized ethanol around an open flame.
> Ethanol is antidot. So again, your chances to severely poison yourself not much higher than if you instead of alcohol were doing Japanese cuisine.
Uh huh that's why all people blinded by bad moonshine are living healthy with full eyesight and no other negative affects, just like people that ate some bad fish
You're spreading FUD and frankly have no idea what you're talking about. An ethanol vapor explosion will be brief and in most cases (unless you're extremely unlucky) will happen fairly early on in this scenario. The typical case will be a figurative flash in the pan that won't spread. The biggest concern is being burned, particularly your eyes.
Grease fires in comparison were one of the leading causes of house fires in the US the last time I checked. The worst case is getting splattered by burning droplets of oil that instantly scald any exposed skin while continuing to burn for long enough to light your clothing on fire. Personally I try to avoid pan frying on a range (as opposed to a dedicated appliance) and if I do I'm careful to verify the location of my fire blanket before starting.
Yeah, same for working on your car when mechanics exist. Or building a computer when you can buy one. Or million other mildly dangerous things. I personally think anyone who plugs in a light bulb is playing Russian Roulette with their lives. Let's not get started on the weirdos who camp.
Some people just enjoying have hobbies; distilling hooch isn't on my bingo card, but it being illegal in the era of "we swear it's definitely not sports betting" is silly.
This would do to spirits what homebrewing has done to beer in this country. So many varieties were rediscovered and popularized when homebrewing and microbrewing were legalized during the Carter Administration.
Liquor has become consolidated among a half dozen global conglomerates. Varieties have been streamlined. Folks who are into making historical cocktails tend to hit roadblocks or make modern "almost" substitutions.
I'm in favor of this ban being struck down, even though I can't really take advantage of it. I brewed beer and wine when I was younger, but for health reasons, I can't drink alcohol anymore.
Striking this down won't mean you can resell your homemade liquor. It might lead to some experimentation and we may get more micro-distilleries as an indirect effect, but it won't change the local and state regulations around producing and selling liquor for public consumption.
No. It is not likely that it will be possible to sell homemade liquor. But, it's this experimentation that will lead to more businesses.
Many microbreweries and small breweries started when home brewers went pro. They had recipes that were popular. They decided to go through the fundraising and investment in order to build appropriate facilities and get licensed.
It's this permission to experiment and play that has inspired many of the popular ales available today.
It's reasonably hard to poison yourself (other than, you know, alcohol) with fermentation. We've been doing it for thousands of years without specialized equipment or training, and the first batches were probably accidental.
It is rather tricky to distill liquor and NOT poison whoever drinks it. Especially on home or poorly maintained equipment.
I'd say that it is actually fairly easy to poison oneself brewing different kinds of alcohols. It is a risky activity. So is driving. So is making fireworks. So is chemistry. So is making cheese, pickles, sauerkraut, and canned goods. People die of botulism every year because they don't follow basic safety procedures when canning, or they eat canned goods that someone else improperly prepared.
That doesn't mean that one shouldn't be allowed to do these things. It means that we should provide appropriate training and, in some jurisdictions, reasonable / non-discriminatory licensing for those who wish to do these things.
When it comes to distillation, the rules are pretty straight-forward:
Keep a log book. Use quality equipment. Measure temperatures. Learn to discard heads and tails. Use appropriate ventilation and fire safety protocols. Purchase qualitative test equipment to verify that the product does not contain harmful contaminants. Licensing is a great way to ensure that people know about these things and follow them. A blanket ban actually makes it more likely that people who violate this ban to distill alcohol will poison themselves or others.
This is a bit misleading. While it is possible for distilled spirits to contain methanol, it's generally in very low amounts and removable. Often unless specific ingredients are used, it's not even much of a concern. And funny enough, ethanol itself is a competitive inhibitor for methanol and is an antidote of sorts for methanol ingestion. Most anecdotal stories around poisonous spirits are scare tactics and due to other more serious issues such as prohibition-era bootleggers using car radiators with leaded solder, adding adulterating chemicals to stretch profits, etc.
Clandestine operations for most illicit substances tend to be quite dangerous. There are safe ways to distill alcohol, but given that one can't purchase quality distillation equipment in locations where it is illegal, folks often end up making their own.
I think it's perfectly acceptable if these is a reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing process, like for HAM radio or small game hunting, that covers safety. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of accidents, but it does reduce this possibility.
[federal] You can own a still. You can distill water with it. You can't distill alcohol with it unless you register it and get a permit, which carries all sorts of other location restrictions, fees, paperwork requirements, etc.
Methanol is a natural fermentation byproduct of pectin breakdown of fruits like plums, cherries, apricots as well as grapes.
Methanol collects in a still easier than ethanol. Methanol boils at approximately 64.7°C (148.5°F), while ethanol boils at 78.4°C (173.1°F). Professional distillers carefully measure and discard the initial fraction (the heads/foreshots) of a distillation run to remove the methanol. Easy for a novice to miss this key safety step.
The heads only contain a slightly higher proportion of methanol than the rest of the distillate. They're discarded because they taste bad, not because of safety.
Though it has the result that distilled beverages generally contain slightly less methanol than not-distilled beverages.
Not a chemist, but isn’t there something about azeotropic solutions and combined boiling points that make ethanol / methanol separation not as simple as basic lab technique?
My friend is a chemist and we both like whiskey so we thought experimented this.
You can speed up the aging of whiskey by increasing the surface area of charred wood. It takes 3 years in a barrel, a couple days (hours? maybe? I'm an engineer not a scientist) if you splinter it into wood chips and char them first and agitate the solution.
What you can't really speed up is the oxidation of the tannins which for all we know (barring experimentation) are a key part of the flavor profile. What you could do is mix in oxidizers like bubbling oxygen through it.
The combination of oxygen and ethanol has a name though: "liquid rocket fuel." The idea of combining heat, ethanol, oxygen, and agitating at bottling volumes sounded kinda scary.
I hope people don't try it at home without knowing what they're doing.
More realistically though, the biggest danger comes from leaky apparatus and an open flame. The horror stories come from home distillation over gas burners. Electric heat is plentiful and home stills would most likely be basically kettles.
Shouldn't it be the Congress that creates or voids the laws and not a court? If a law was standing for 150 years them whatever the law I feel it should be changed by the electable lawmakers, not by "council of elders".
Congress creates laws, the President signs them into law, and the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review. The catch is the court has limited capacity to review laws, cases have to go through lower courts first usually, and it has discretion of which cases it hears. The 1868 law might not have ever been challenged in 150 years, or the current judges may think that this particular case has a compelling argument to warrant another review (it happens). The Constitution does not specify that a law is beyond challenge after any period of time, so there is an infinite amount of time to do so. That's a good thing.
The comments below are correct re judicial review, Marbury v. Madison. But another way to think of this is that the Constitution is also a law, a statute even, with higher ranking than the laws passed by Congress. So in this instance, the courts are interpreting and applying the higher-ranking statute.
Also: it’s a bit crazy to overturn Wickard simply because so much subsequent development rests on it, but it was wrongly decided. The commerce power shouldn’t ever have been read as broadly as it was.
The question before the court isn’t whether the law is good. It’s whether the government can ban individuals from an activity for the purpose of making it easier to successfully collect tax on the commercialization of that activity.
The government is only allowed to do what is “necessary and proper” to make enforcement effective. There are reasonable arguments on both sides as to whether prohibiting home distillation is as necessary as it was in the late 19th century.
I found this Hill opinion piece more informing. Arguing against the ban.
> When federal appellate courts reach opposing conclusions, known as a circuit split, the odds exponentially increase for the Supreme Court to grant review and clear up the confusion. Likewise, when a federal statute is struck down in whole or in part, the Supreme Court is even more likely to hear the case. In these two cases, we have a perfect storm where both of those scenarios have occurred.
> If the taxing power supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause were the only issue in contention, we would already have quite a sexy Supreme Court case. To dress it up even further, plaintiff John Ream astutely argued in his Sixth Circuit filings that the federal ban on at-home alcohol distillation for personal consumption also exceeds Congress’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce because the activity in dispute is neither commerce nor interstate.
> The Supreme Court’s misguided 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn found that Congress could regulate wheat even if it is consumed on its originating farm. In the time since, far too much mischief has been committed in the name of regulating interstate commerce that is neither interstate nor even commerce.
> the federal ban on at-home alcohol distillation for personal consumption also exceeds Congress’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce because the activity in dispute is neither commerce nor interstate.
I thought it was already settled that making your own does affect interstate commerce because you are not buying from the market. That was covered in a Radiolab episode where this whole thing was decided.
Wickard v. Filburn: The Court decided that if Filburn used his own wheat for feed instead of buying it on the open market, it cumulatively affected interstate commerce and national market prices
I'm not saying I agree with that ruling. Only that it was already ruled on.
I’m really excited that this court has expressed interest in reviewing and reversing New Deal era Interstate Commerce clause rulings
Its going to be so disruptive but necessary to kill the administrative state
What does that look like? Honestly I think the collection of states will figure out their own coalitions, and Congress will find a way to still do federal agencies under different authority
I don’t like that the term federal has diverged from its definition to mean this separate layer of government in the same shape of the United States but controls all, this will put it back in line to the term of collaboration between its constituent states and the national entity
Much has been written about the health motivations for reduced alcohol consumption but my pet theory is that people (myself included) grew tired of the ridiculous marketing-driven booze culture that emerged in the 2010s. Bottles of unobtainable bourbon going for $500 on the secondhand market, "gluten free" vodka (which every distilled beverage innately is unless adulterated), 13% ABV quadruple-hopped blood orange turbo dank Cali IPA, ultra-peaty scotch that tastes like a bonfire, chocolate infused bourbon barrel-aged "Cabernet", canned vodka sodas infused with artificial flavoring and sold at a 400% markup...
Whatever happened to a nice cold beer at the end of a hot day outside or a nice glass of wine with dinner? Home distillation and fermentation are also hobbies unto themselves in the same spirit (pun intended) of old-fashioned enjoyment, no mega-conglomerate marketing required.
Making/growing anything for personal use should be legal.
A government should have no power over people’s private lives, so long as their actions do not infringe, and do not conspire to infringe, on the rights of others.
Is it possible this is an attempt from liquor companies to increase alcohol consumption in the US where its already declining and hurting their bottom line?
If people who normally don't drink or drink very little may start drinking more which leads to increased alcohol purchases when out at restaurants or at the grocery store.
The main question is why a government in an allegedly free
country thinks it can control what people do. This is not
solely confined on forbidding production of liquor but also
taps into all those other discussions about "sovereign"
citizens. It is a question of how much slavery a government
can enact. It is an interesting discussion because on youtube
you see many videos where people poke fun at sovereign citizens
being largely clueless, but they then don't answer the follow-up
question as to how much control a government may have over "its"
people. And who controls the making of laws. And why any law xyz
would have to be binding - since without enforcement, the law
would not be effective (and often is not, anyway, if you are
rich).
For those who missed the point: this post is related to the Deepseek ban. You can't have open source AI models, because the "distilleries" don't like it.
>“Our country’s founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime,” Alt said.
I'm convinced. And it's making me think anyone that disagrees hates apple pie and America.
Or more appropriately, hates apple cider, which was the most common alcoholic beverage in Washington's era. Often homemade.
apple cider isn't distilled, though; it's fermented
use yeast to convert sugars from apples into alcohol: fermentation
boil that until it becomes a concentrated liquor: distillation
distillation is significantly more dangerous than fermenting
I get it, but apple pie isn't distilled either. Was just tying into something more thematically aligned. The law has nothing to do with danger, either, it seems to have been driven entirely by desire to protect federal tax revenue.
TIL: Apparently the nickname for distilled apple cider is applejack. Never realized the origin of the cereal's name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applejack_(drink)
given how explosive ethanol is, i have no problem with the law persisting for public safety reasons even if they weren't originally penned for that reason
i really don't want to die because the downstairs neighbor wants to make his own craft vodka
The restrictions may be somewhat defensible in a tightly packed areas full of, shall we say, unwilling participants, but if I have a large property, why shouldn't I be able to do just that?
Forest fires
There are about 1000 easier ways to start a forest fire than running a mini- distillery. Meanwhile if the local or state government wants to regulate safety requirements here, that is within their power to do so. Its the federal outright ban that is in question.
It is not a bad argument, but would apply it across all states without exception?
There is exception. The law specifically says you can get authorization from the Secretary of the Treasury. Likely so they can tax you-likely is not that different from commercial distillers.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5178
Considering the danger of distilling and most people do not have that much land; you likely would need to get approval from govt agencies anyway to be legal.
Oh look I'd wager more fires would be caused by people angle grinding in the summer (*there was a massive fire several years ago caused by this here in Perth), but I was just spitballing ideas. TBH I used to still my own liquor and think that if you're interested enough in the process to actually do it you're also probably aware of the safety aspects to it.
But also I do appreciate how many numbskulls there are out there.
I grew up in moonshine country (or at least what was once moonshine country before they moved on to pot and then meth), and I never heard of a still causing a forest fire.
They’d occasionally go blind from methanol in the shine or slowly give themselves lead poisoning from the solder in the still, but no fires. So they were at least safety-aware enough not to want to lose all their product and get the authorities on their case by burning down the area around their still.
Thank you. I know you have a point. I never did old fashioned distilling -- mostly because I am not sure I am anal enough to keep it clean and whatnot, but I can't say that the idea doesn't have charm.
> mostly because I am not sure I am anal enough to keep it clean and whatnot
Do you perhaps mean fermentation? Distillation is exceptionally easy and not particularly difficult to clean up after. It remains perfectly safe provided you have a cheap digital thermometer, understand the importance of good ventilation, and use off the shelf parts. (The latter only because a custom setup built by a particularly incompetent individual could inadvertently result in the creation of a dangerous pressure vessel.)
The same numbskulls that can purchase power tools at the local hardware store? Or drive a car? Distilling liquor is far safer than a great many common day to day activities.
I'm not really sure why you're trying to argue this to me, however there are some very serious risks to running a home still which shouldn't really be dismissed.
Because I'm responding to your comment in the context of a subtree where it was suggested that home distilling presented sufficient danger to give pause when considering the implications of repealing the ban on it. You yourself expressed such a sentiment. I'm merely pointing out the inconsistency of such a position with regard to the status quo. While it certainly carries risks, home distilling is far safer than a great many common day to day activities.
Its very simple for states to pass safety regulations here. The federal outright ban is whats in question.
George Washington also made applejack (distilled from Apple cider). It was very popular in colonial America.
Right, but distillation is a trivial task, just heat things up properly to their vaporization point. Why would it be forbidden?
Distillation also concentrates the methanol, which can kill you. You have to know how to get rid of it (it has a bit lower boiling point), which makes it a non-trivial task with a significant downside. If you then sell the bad alcohol you've just made yourself a public health threat.
The way this is solved in our country is that you can legally make your own alcohol, but only at a state-approved distillery, where the personnel knows how to handle this.
Are things normally forbidden based on their complexity?
makes sense, apples used for pie are wasted when you could be making hooch with them
Historically non-edible apples (grown from seed, as well as dedicated cider apples) are widely available and only useful for cider, so it would be a waste of an edible apple to make cider out of it.
In a country that has legalized (not even decriminalized!) marihuana, a still present full-ban on moonshine paints an interesting picture on legislative process
Which country are you referring to?
In the U.S., heroin, LSD, and marijuana are the same federal schedule. Have to fill the for-profit prison labor camps somehow, and admitting dealing marijuana isn’t as dangerous as dealing heroin would put a dent in that. Leave that to the corporate opioid peddlers legally addicting Americans in pain.
https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-fda-failure...
Did George Washington actually partake in the hobby or did he make his slaves do it like his famous barbecues until he died because he knew it was wrong?
Washington as an unquestioned justification for anything should never be the argument.
Note: a think take ceo’s said that, not the justices like I had assumed
I mean whiskey was the first consumer good taxed by the nascent Constitutional republic during his administration and he had to put down a rebellion and federal regulation of distillation was a response to the long-tail impact of that rebellion and failure to enforce the taxation of whiskey and spirits.
Now I think it's dumb to prohibit home distillers and it actually inhibits industry evolution. There is a lot of experimentation that happens in grey areas of the law with homemade spirits and it would be interesting to see how things adapt if the law was lifted.
All that said home distillation is dangerous. Ethanol at volumes sufficient for bottling is explosive, methanol poisoning is real, and even if the techniques for safely distilling it from a mash are learned in a high school chemistry class most people aren't great at it.
I'm a big whiskey enjoyer and home cook and have done a few "dangerous" things myself w/ food and beverages. If the law goes away I know I'm going to do some stuff in the basement and accept the risk myself. But I'm a little wary of laws being lifted that definitely protect people, even if it's a side effect of taxation.
Such concern is inconsistent with the present reality. Gasoline for a lawnmower incorrectly stored in a garden shed or garage is explosive. The propane tank for the BBQ can easily destroy a chunk of you house if placed too close to an open flame. The OTC medication in your bathroom can also poison you if you're careless. There are many creative ways in which the electric supply of your home could result in your death if not treated with care. The examples are practically endless.
Even just a half decent kitchen knife will be razor sharp and capable of removing a digit or two if handled incorrectly.
Are you disagreeing that distilling several liters of cask strength grain alcohol around an open flame is more dangerous than sealed containers of propane and gasoline?
Yes. A sealed container of propane is _far_ more dangerous if we're purely considering what the typical failure mode looks like.
As to the gasoline, please do note that incompetent distilling was being compared to incompetent storage there. So then the gasoline hasn't been properly capped off and has been left in (for example) a garden shed with insufficient airflow. That's once again likely to be more dangerous.
Do also consider that people in the US regularly deep fry using a gas burner. It seems self evident to me that heating a vat of oil to near the smoke point and then making it sizzle, all the while over an open flame, has to be vastly more dangerous on average than what you described.
Also you don't necessarily need to use an open flame to distill. An electric range works perfectly well.
> All that said home distillation is dangerous
No, it is not. Not more dangerous than rice stir‑frying
> methanol poisoning is real
Ethanol is antidot. So again, your chances to severely poison yourself not much higher than if you instead of alcohol were doing Japanese cuisine.
It's not nearly as benign as you're making out. You can be poisoned by a contaminated batch - the ethanol content won't save you. However what is vastly overstated is the risk of such poisoning occurring in the first place. You could as well fear monger about the dangers of food poisoning due to incorrectly fermented kimchi or pickles or sauerkraut or what have you. Even more likely in the typical US kitchen is salmonella poisoning.
> Not more dangerous than rice stir‑frying
It's a lot easier to deal with a small grease fire than vaporized ethanol around an open flame.
> Ethanol is antidot. So again, your chances to severely poison yourself not much higher than if you instead of alcohol were doing Japanese cuisine.
Uh huh that's why all people blinded by bad moonshine are living healthy with full eyesight and no other negative affects, just like people that ate some bad fish
You're spreading FUD and frankly have no idea what you're talking about. An ethanol vapor explosion will be brief and in most cases (unless you're extremely unlucky) will happen fairly early on in this scenario. The typical case will be a figurative flash in the pan that won't spread. The biggest concern is being burned, particularly your eyes.
Grease fires in comparison were one of the leading causes of house fires in the US the last time I checked. The worst case is getting splattered by burning droplets of oil that instantly scald any exposed skin while continuing to burn for long enough to light your clothing on fire. Personally I try to avoid pan frying on a range (as opposed to a dedicated appliance) and if I do I'm careful to verify the location of my fire blanket before starting.
Nothing more American than poisoning yourself to save a buck.
Yeah, same for working on your car when mechanics exist. Or building a computer when you can buy one. Or million other mildly dangerous things. I personally think anyone who plugs in a light bulb is playing Russian Roulette with their lives. Let's not get started on the weirdos who camp.
Some people just enjoying have hobbies; distilling hooch isn't on my bingo card, but it being illegal in the era of "we swear it's definitely not sports betting" is silly.
This would do to spirits what homebrewing has done to beer in this country. So many varieties were rediscovered and popularized when homebrewing and microbrewing were legalized during the Carter Administration.
Liquor has become consolidated among a half dozen global conglomerates. Varieties have been streamlined. Folks who are into making historical cocktails tend to hit roadblocks or make modern "almost" substitutions.
I'm in favor of this ban being struck down, even though I can't really take advantage of it. I brewed beer and wine when I was younger, but for health reasons, I can't drink alcohol anymore.
Striking this down won't mean you can resell your homemade liquor. It might lead to some experimentation and we may get more micro-distilleries as an indirect effect, but it won't change the local and state regulations around producing and selling liquor for public consumption.
No. It is not likely that it will be possible to sell homemade liquor. But, it's this experimentation that will lead to more businesses.
Many microbreweries and small breweries started when home brewers went pro. They had recipes that were popular. They decided to go through the fundraising and investment in order to build appropriate facilities and get licensed.
It's this permission to experiment and play that has inspired many of the popular ales available today.
I think they are saying the micro distillery effect will be stronger than you think, not that people will be selling homemade liquor.
It's reasonably hard to poison yourself (other than, you know, alcohol) with fermentation. We've been doing it for thousands of years without specialized equipment or training, and the first batches were probably accidental.
It is rather tricky to distill liquor and NOT poison whoever drinks it. Especially on home or poorly maintained equipment.
I'd say that it is actually fairly easy to poison oneself brewing different kinds of alcohols. It is a risky activity. So is driving. So is making fireworks. So is chemistry. So is making cheese, pickles, sauerkraut, and canned goods. People die of botulism every year because they don't follow basic safety procedures when canning, or they eat canned goods that someone else improperly prepared.
That doesn't mean that one shouldn't be allowed to do these things. It means that we should provide appropriate training and, in some jurisdictions, reasonable / non-discriminatory licensing for those who wish to do these things.
When it comes to distillation, the rules are pretty straight-forward:
Keep a log book. Use quality equipment. Measure temperatures. Learn to discard heads and tails. Use appropriate ventilation and fire safety protocols. Purchase qualitative test equipment to verify that the product does not contain harmful contaminants. Licensing is a great way to ensure that people know about these things and follow them. A blanket ban actually makes it more likely that people who violate this ban to distill alcohol will poison themselves or others.
This is a bit misleading. While it is possible for distilled spirits to contain methanol, it's generally in very low amounts and removable. Often unless specific ingredients are used, it's not even much of a concern. And funny enough, ethanol itself is a competitive inhibitor for methanol and is an antidote of sorts for methanol ingestion. Most anecdotal stories around poisonous spirits are scare tactics and due to other more serious issues such as prohibition-era bootleggers using car radiators with leaded solder, adding adulterating chemicals to stretch profits, etc.
the only issue is that if you screw up distilling liquor and you live in a city, now you're blowing up your neighbor's family
https://news.sky.com/story/three-men-charged-over-explosion-...
ethanol is incredibly explosive
Looks like it was petrol, and direct criminal attempt at insurance fraud.
Edit: In addition to a successful plan murder during the explosion.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-46865455
Clandestine operations for most illicit substances tend to be quite dangerous. There are safe ways to distill alcohol, but given that one can't purchase quality distillation equipment in locations where it is illegal, folks often end up making their own.
I think it's perfectly acceptable if these is a reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing process, like for HAM radio or small game hunting, that covers safety. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of accidents, but it does reduce this possibility.
I noticed this item the other day on Amazon. Its a "VEVOR Alcohol Still 8 GAL / 30 L Alcohol Distiller Kit with Thumper Keg"
https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-Alcohol-Distiller-Stainless-Ste...
Theres a good summary of the various laws at this site as well:
https://legallyexplained.com/is-it-illegal-to-own-a-still/
The bottom line appears to be:
[federal] You can own a still. You can distill water with it. You can't distill alcohol with it unless you register it and get a permit, which carries all sorts of other location restrictions, fees, paperwork requirements, etc.
[state] depends.
At least for the US.
Methanol poisoning is another risk.
Methanol is a natural fermentation byproduct of pectin breakdown of fruits like plums, cherries, apricots as well as grapes.
Methanol collects in a still easier than ethanol. Methanol boils at approximately 64.7°C (148.5°F), while ethanol boils at 78.4°C (173.1°F). Professional distillers carefully measure and discard the initial fraction (the heads/foreshots) of a distillation run to remove the methanol. Easy for a novice to miss this key safety step.
The heads only contain a slightly higher proportion of methanol than the rest of the distillate. They're discarded because they taste bad, not because of safety. Though it has the result that distilled beverages generally contain slightly less methanol than not-distilled beverages.
Not a chemist, but isn’t there something about azeotropic solutions and combined boiling points that make ethanol / methanol separation not as simple as basic lab technique?
It's about as dangerous as eating foraged mushrooms. You know it's a danger before you try it so you go to lengths to avoid it.
> ethanol is incredibly explosive
My friend is a chemist and we both like whiskey so we thought experimented this.
You can speed up the aging of whiskey by increasing the surface area of charred wood. It takes 3 years in a barrel, a couple days (hours? maybe? I'm an engineer not a scientist) if you splinter it into wood chips and char them first and agitate the solution.
What you can't really speed up is the oxidation of the tannins which for all we know (barring experimentation) are a key part of the flavor profile. What you could do is mix in oxidizers like bubbling oxygen through it.
The combination of oxygen and ethanol has a name though: "liquid rocket fuel." The idea of combining heat, ethanol, oxygen, and agitating at bottling volumes sounded kinda scary.
I hope people don't try it at home without knowing what they're doing.
More realistically though, the biggest danger comes from leaky apparatus and an open flame. The horror stories come from home distillation over gas burners. Electric heat is plentiful and home stills would most likely be basically kettles.
Shouldn't it be the Congress that creates or voids the laws and not a court? If a law was standing for 150 years them whatever the law I feel it should be changed by the electable lawmakers, not by "council of elders".
Congress creates laws, the President signs them into law, and the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review. The catch is the court has limited capacity to review laws, cases have to go through lower courts first usually, and it has discretion of which cases it hears. The 1868 law might not have ever been challenged in 150 years, or the current judges may think that this particular case has a compelling argument to warrant another review (it happens). The Constitution does not specify that a law is beyond challenge after any period of time, so there is an infinite amount of time to do so. That's a good thing.
The comments below are correct re judicial review, Marbury v. Madison. But another way to think of this is that the Constitution is also a law, a statute even, with higher ranking than the laws passed by Congress. So in this instance, the courts are interpreting and applying the higher-ranking statute.
Also: it’s a bit crazy to overturn Wickard simply because so much subsequent development rests on it, but it was wrongly decided. The commerce power shouldn’t ever have been read as broadly as it was.
The question before the court isn’t whether the law is good. It’s whether the government can ban individuals from an activity for the purpose of making it easier to successfully collect tax on the commercialization of that activity.
The government is only allowed to do what is “necessary and proper” to make enforcement effective. There are reasonable arguments on both sides as to whether prohibiting home distillation is as necessary as it was in the late 19th century.
Not under long settled American jurisprudence. See Marbury v. Madison (1803).
Maybe it “shouldn’t be” but this is the system the US has had since 1803.
I found this Hill opinion piece more informing. Arguing against the ban.
> When federal appellate courts reach opposing conclusions, known as a circuit split, the odds exponentially increase for the Supreme Court to grant review and clear up the confusion. Likewise, when a federal statute is struck down in whole or in part, the Supreme Court is even more likely to hear the case. In these two cases, we have a perfect storm where both of those scenarios have occurred.
> If the taxing power supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause were the only issue in contention, we would already have quite a sexy Supreme Court case. To dress it up even further, plaintiff John Ream astutely argued in his Sixth Circuit filings that the federal ban on at-home alcohol distillation for personal consumption also exceeds Congress’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce because the activity in dispute is neither commerce nor interstate.
> The Supreme Court’s misguided 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn found that Congress could regulate wheat even if it is consumed on its originating farm. In the time since, far too much mischief has been committed in the name of regulating interstate commerce that is neither interstate nor even commerce.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5857091-home-distillin...
> the federal ban on at-home alcohol distillation for personal consumption also exceeds Congress’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce because the activity in dispute is neither commerce nor interstate.
I thought it was already settled that making your own does affect interstate commerce because you are not buying from the market. That was covered in a Radiolab episode where this whole thing was decided.
Wickard v. Filburn: The Court decided that if Filburn used his own wheat for feed instead of buying it on the open market, it cumulatively affected interstate commerce and national market prices
I'm not saying I agree with that ruling. Only that it was already ruled on.
Gonzales v Raich :(
I’m really excited that this court has expressed interest in reviewing and reversing New Deal era Interstate Commerce clause rulings
Its going to be so disruptive but necessary to kill the administrative state
What does that look like? Honestly I think the collection of states will figure out their own coalitions, and Congress will find a way to still do federal agencies under different authority
I don’t like that the term federal has diverged from its definition to mean this separate layer of government in the same shape of the United States but controls all, this will put it back in line to the term of collaboration between its constituent states and the national entity
It's a little late for that since apparently everyone quit drinking.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/21/health/alcohol-use-decline-st...
Much has been written about the health motivations for reduced alcohol consumption but my pet theory is that people (myself included) grew tired of the ridiculous marketing-driven booze culture that emerged in the 2010s. Bottles of unobtainable bourbon going for $500 on the secondhand market, "gluten free" vodka (which every distilled beverage innately is unless adulterated), 13% ABV quadruple-hopped blood orange turbo dank Cali IPA, ultra-peaty scotch that tastes like a bonfire, chocolate infused bourbon barrel-aged "Cabernet", canned vodka sodas infused with artificial flavoring and sold at a 400% markup...
Whatever happened to a nice cold beer at the end of a hot day outside or a nice glass of wine with dinner? Home distillation and fermentation are also hobbies unto themselves in the same spirit (pun intended) of old-fashioned enjoyment, no mega-conglomerate marketing required.
I was going to say that the court looking at this at all is a recession indicator...
Making/growing anything for personal use should be legal.
A government should have no power over people’s private lives, so long as their actions do not infringe, and do not conspire to infringe, on the rights of others.
Is it possible this is an attempt from liquor companies to increase alcohol consumption in the US where its already declining and hurting their bottom line?
I spend much less on alcohol now that I brew my own.
Big Honey and Big Apple are making off like bandits, however.
Not to mention, Big Bathtub.
How would home distilling improve the liquor companies' bottom line?
If people who normally don't drink or drink very little may start drinking more which leads to increased alcohol purchases when out at restaurants or at the grocery store.
Addicts won't have the time to glue in the time to distill, unless they're addicted to making the liquor and not necessarily consuming alcohol
Don’t sip from the first fraction; it’s methanol.
The main question is why a government in an allegedly free country thinks it can control what people do. This is not solely confined on forbidding production of liquor but also taps into all those other discussions about "sovereign" citizens. It is a question of how much slavery a government can enact. It is an interesting discussion because on youtube you see many videos where people poke fun at sovereign citizens being largely clueless, but they then don't answer the follow-up question as to how much control a government may have over "its" people. And who controls the making of laws. And why any law xyz would have to be binding - since without enforcement, the law would not be effective (and often is not, anyway, if you are rich).
If you can ban one thing just for easier taxation there should be many other things that could also be banned for the same purpose.
You could ban Apple pie and extract more tax from the slaves.
For those who missed the point: this post is related to the Deepseek ban. You can't have open source AI models, because the "distilleries" don't like it.