I always feel a little stupid asking a legal question because I was a cop for a few years ( and a good one Goddamnit! That village of 460 would have been riddled with crime without me! )
Anyway, why can I legally home brew beer and wine(and I do;) ) but not grain spirits? Is it for health & safety reasons or what? As far as I know, I can brew my home brew as strong as I want. So why does the law prevent me from making whiskey with the air conditioner still my brother in law wants to make? What’s the reasoning behind that law? We don’t intend to sell it.
It is legal in some jurisdictions, including New Zealand. I haven’t heard of any horror stories from home distilling in New Zealand, but I haven’t looked very hard for any either.
The usual argument against it is that it’s dangerous: methyl (wood) alcohol and other compounds (like propyl, butyl, and amyl alcohols, and aldehydes like acetaldehyde and esters like ethyl acetate) are produced alongside ethyl (grain) alcohol in fermentation. A botched job of distilling the ferment will concentrate the poisons. That isn’t the whole story, though.
I don’t believe it’s all that dangerous, as long as you follow a decent recipe, use modern equipment, and distill the product two or three times. Jethro and Billy-Bob out in the back 40 with a rusty bucket might make some dangerous stuff. But Nigel in his Auckland duplex with modern equipment probably won’t.
I suspect the real reason behind the ban against distilling your own is that the feds would lose tax revenues. Hard liquor is taxed by the federal government at $13.50 per gallon, wine at $1.07 and beer at only 58 cents (state taxes are extra). Correcting for the difference in alcohol content, the alcohol in liquor is taxed at a rate about 2 to 5 times higher than beer and wine.
In fairness, I should say that revenue is only one reason that governments tax alcohol. Alcohol in general and hard liquor in particular have long been viewed as evils whose use should be reduced or eliminated. Studies have shown that higher taxes discourage drinking.
Now that moderate drinking has been shown to have some health benefits, these views may be evolving. But there’s no reason to think that hard liquor is healthier than beer and wine, and so I expect no push to reduce taxes on hard liquor, or to legalize home distilling.
I should also note that in all 50 states, home brewing of wine and beer is not a right, but a privilege. Home distilling is neither.
It depends on where you live. Many states allow you to make alcohol “for personal consumption”. This means beer, wine and “spirits”. The problem is when you make too much. <cue “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”> Then the ‘revenoo-ers’ start chasing you, and the G-men march up the hill with the dogs and smash yer still.
In Maryland, the law used to read 50 gallons annually. It may have changed since the mid 70’s. More than what I used to make in wine and mom used to make in Kalhua (or however the heck it’s spelled) to give out at Christmas.
Is it REALLY against the law to distill a ferment for the alcohol? I know this is “common knowledge”…but, has anyone checked to make sure. I can see where it will be illegal to SELL it, but I’d like to see the specific law that states one cannot MAKE it. I remember doing this in college classes, first semester organic chemistry. Was the entire class of 400 breaking the law in a state run educational institution? (Of course it was Missouri, where we take pride in our distillation techniques!)
Anyway, I’ll have to do say “Show Me,” the law that says its illegal
It is legal in most states to make beer and wine for personal consumption. It is illegal throughout the country by federal law though to distill alcohol without a permit from the BATF. This includes “fuel alcohol”. Even those cool “mini-stills” you can buy for the coffee table that allow you to distill a shot of brandy from a glass of wine come with the disclaimer that it is a novelty piece and that it is illegal to actually use it to distill wine. The only consistent answer I ever get on the question of why though, is tax purposes but I’m sure there are more reasons. Incidently, my old neighbor has the large copper pot from his grandfather’s still that he uses as a hanging planter. Word spread about it (it is really a beautiful pot) and the local DA heard about it and paid him a visit to make sure he knew the laws concerning it, one of them being that he needed a permit from the BATF to simply possess it. He got the permit after a quick inspection of it by the Feds.
TD, are you saying that he needed a BATF permit to own a large copper pot? I mean, was there something significant about the pot that makes it distinctly “distilling equipment” which must be licensed? Or is it just “a large copper pot”? Forgive me, but my knowledge of still equipment is limited, and I’m left wondering if you really do need a license to own a planter. Thanks
Had he called it a planter, or grain storage unit or something like that, he probably would have been okay, but since he was on record as having a still, that is what caught the interest of the DA. Having a still is legal, depending on the size of it, as long as you don’t use it to make booze. With his though, the BATF considered it to be a large still, which is not legal. (I’m not sure what they use to define large and small, but knowing the government, I’m sure it is deliberately vague). Remembering the size of it, I would guess that it could hold somewhere around 70 gallons. Plus he had all of the accessories on the wall behind it (lid, piping, containers, condensors, etc). Because of the size of it, and because he made no bones about what it was, they “suggested” that he get a permit because technically it was considered illegal and could be confiscated if the wrong person were to file a complaint and press the issue, which in that area was a very real possibility.
I think one of the other concerns is that when dealing with vapourous alcohol, it is very volitile. I burned the hair off my leg in an alcohol explosion a little while ago, thanks to my brother.
On the topic of owning distilling equipment, I am in posession of a ‘worm’ or distilling jacket that my chemsitry teacher gave me. These can be used for distilling acids and such also.
Back around 1979, it was legal to distill up to 15 gallons of ethyl alcohol per year for personal use as a motor fuel additive. I once had a copy of a government phamplet on exactly how to go about it! I wish I still had that in my possession.
The best part was the bit about personal consumption. They cautioned that you weren’t allowed to distill spirits for imbibing, but in the interest saving lives because they KNEW some people would do otherwise, there was even instructions on how to produce alcohol that was reasonalby safe to drink. The two key pieces of advice were to discard the initial and final effulent from the condenser, since it contained methyl alcohol and other nasties, and to NEVER use a car radiator as a condenser for anything you would drink, but to use only copper or stainless steel components throughout.
I don’t think this program is still in effect, but the hurdles for getting a permit to produce fuel additve alcohol are a good bit less onerous than to get one for making home-brew, which are definitely beyond most peoples means and determination.
Missourians over the age of 21 may manufacture up to 100 gallons per person each year of any alcoholic beverage for personal use, without further limitation, without taxation, and without any license.[21
When copy-pasting material from some source, in this instance wikipedia, you should show it as a quote with proper attribution. And before any Missourans are mislead into starting a distilling-operation to prepare for the zombie-apocalypse, they should read the sentence immediately following yours in the wikipedia-article:
I checked into this a few years back. We have five six gallon carboys, so we bottle thirty gallons at a time. I was somewhere just shy of 200 gallons. I was cautious; to the point of going to several different wine supply shops and making cash purchases. Good times!
It’s perfectly legal if you pay $5000 yearly for a license and open up your operations to government inspectors whenever they feel like inspecting. (I looked all this up a few years ago. So, no cites on hand and things might have changed.)
The stated reason is that improperly distilled liquor can produce methanol, which is dangerous and will make you go blind if you drink it. But my understanding is that it is easy to avoid methanol, and making “healthy” liquor isn’t that difficult. I can’t help but think the real reason is to prevent competition with the big distilleries.
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