Hey, if you won’t take charge of what you’re going to put into your own body, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not in the habit of drinking just anything that someone puts in my hand, without trying to determine what the hell it is first. I feel that the risk of someone not as vigilant, or lied to, who inadvertently poisons themselves, is better addressed through the tort (or criminal justice, depending on the facts) system than outright banning the endeavor.
I like Oakminster’s thoughts on the matter, “Consenting adults ought to be able to consume anything they like, so long as they do so in a manner that doesn’t put others in danger.” In the case of consuming 'shine, I’d assess how competent I thought the distiller was, and how the beverage smelled, stuff like that. Whether it was pleasurable enough to offset the risk, that sort of thing. My own dumb ass would shoulder most of the blame if I ended up getting blind from the stuff (which I understand requires a large dosage or the adulteration that randomface alluded to, like theAustrian Diethylene Glycol wine scandal.)
asterion, could you tell composition by the specific gravity of what was coming off the still? I don’t know. I’ve never distilled. Is there a simple reagent test, or one shot test strip sort of thing that’s available?
People have been home distilling around the world for centuries and it hasn’t caused the downfall of civilization yet. Some smart regulation may be required but there’s no real inherent reason to stop it.
Maybe a compromise would be possible like we have around here: You make your own mash by collecting and fermenting fruit from the garden (plums, pears, apples, cherries or other fruit) and then take it to one of the many small distilleries where a professional distills it. (These guys are mostly wine growers who inherited the burn rights and do the distilling in the winter when the rest of the business is slow.)
This has a number of upsides:
You get to have your own spirits, made from your own fruit so you know exactly what’s in your liquor.
There is no health risk (other than from drinking alcohol) because the distilling is done by an expert.
The state gets its cut of taxes because these distilleries have to document how much they burn.
I don’t carry a chemistry lab around with me. Nor can I run a trace on the history of everything I drink or eat. Which is why I prefer to have the government take care of such matters, since it does have chemistry labs and so forth.
How is this an argument that distilling should be illegal?
People like you can choose to only buy from the government, other people can do as they wish. What exactly gives people like you the right to force this Nanny-state nonsense onto the whole population based upon your personal paranoia?
If you want the Nanny-state to take care of you, you can easily do so. Your Fascism starts to show when you want to force others to live by your paranoid insecurities.
The fact that people endanger others by doing things like this, of course. And because I don’t think that “distilling rights” are important enough for people to be crippled for them. I’ve noticed how in arguments like this “rights” only go one way; you have the right to do whatever you like, but other people don’t have a right not to be crippled or killed in the process.
Maybe we could simply label home distilling products with a really scary warning?
“Cape does not allow user to fly.”
Seems odd that the main reason to ban this act is that it might cause blindness if done wrong. But then cigarettes will cause death and the government is perfectly happy to allow that. So let’s allow home distilling but put a big scary picture of a blind hillbilly on the package.
So you get to decide what risks other people are allowed to accept. Gotcha.
*And *you get to decide which rights are important. :rolleyes:
Nonsense. I just stated explicitly that you have every right to only buy from the Nanny-state if that is what you wish.
You just claimed that buying from the state with all its cool machines-that-go-ping will mean that you do not get crippled or killed. You still have that right regardless of whether home-distilling is legal. We do not wish to remove that right from you. Nobody is forcing you not to buy from the state. Nobody will lock you in jail for buying form the state. You, however, do wish to force me not to make my own. You do wish to lock me up for making my own. You have every right to take whatever steps you like to avoid being crippled or killed.
The rights only go one under *your *totalitarian standard. Under our proposal you have the right to do whatever you like, and we have the right to do whatever you like. Only under your Nanny-state nonsense is one group deprived of its rights.
With one minor nitpick that Der Trihs will have to wait until he/she is over the federally defined age limit before he/she will have the right to purchase alcohol.
People are already running illegal stills. My part of the country is notorious for it. Some of them are as expert as anyone in a licensed commercial distillery. If anything, they’re limited by their equipment and the need for discretion.
Others, of course, are not so expert. Illegality impedes teaching, learning and implementing proper and safe techniques.
My grandfather told me that to test moonshine, you take a teaspoonful of it and light it on fire. If it burns with a clean blue flame, it’s good. If it burns orange, it’s bad.
I don’t know if there is any truth to that, but that’s what the old time moonshiners used to do.
I’m not sure what circumstances would occur where you didn’t… You’d have to take a drink from someone you couldn’t trust, without seeing it being poured. If someone poured me, say, a rum and coke, I’d know by the taste if it wasn’t rum in there. I don’t think a single sip of a mixed drink would blind me, even if it’s not been correctly distilled.
If you do go around taking unknown drinks from random strangers, there’s a lot more to worry about than it possibly being home distilled!
No, you wouldn’t. Home-distilled rum is home-distilled rum. It’s indistinguishable from factory distilled rum. The same as you can’t distinguish home brew beer from factory beer.
However if we are going to stop people producing goods because they might offer them to someone, who might then mistake them for a commercial product, then we are going to have to ban people from producing food of any sort.
After all, somebody could give Der Trihs a sandwich, and he would have no idea if the ham, lettuce, bread and butter are all from Nanny-state Industries ™ or if they are all home made. And far more people die and are crippled every year from food poisoning than from alcohol.
Therefore we need to make it a felony for people to produce food. After all, people endanger others by producing food.
I assume Der Trihs is going to get on board with my push to ban food production. After all, it is motivated by *exactly *the same concerns as his push to keep distilling lillegal, and it harms far more people than distilling ever has.
So I propose that only the Nanny-state should be able to produce food. Anybody who is is unlicenced by the state will be committing a felony if they produce food.
We allow people to cook at home and improper procedure while cooking can lead to ecoli, salmonella and botulism poisoning. We even allow people to invite others into their house and serve cooked food! If they want to sell that food, there’s usually some minimal amount of regulation necessary but the system seems to be working pretty well.
I’ve often considered making my own still. There’s companies all over the internet that will sell you stills, like the Amphora Scoiety.
From the reading I have done on the subject, it’s virtually impossible to harm yourself with methanol poisoning. The stuff with lower boiling points than EtOH come out together (the ‘heads’). The heads apparently smell and taste terrible. In order to drink enough of a dose to harm you, you’d have to force yourself to drink a substance that smells and tastes like turpentine. The EtOH you get off of a reflux still should be pretty much laboratory grade - no smell or taste. Knowing the above, anyone doing this is going to be watching the thermometer (the temp in the column should give you a good idea of when the good stuff is ready to come out) and will discard anything that has a smell.
Apparently it is possible to make ~15L of 40% vodka from nothing more than 10kg of sugar, baker’s yeast and water.
Although it is illegal in canada, I have read some articles stating that the cops will not even respond to a tip that someone is operating a still - unless they’re trying to sell the product. In which case they get their equipment seized and have to pay a $575 fine.
New Zealand legalized home distilling in 1996 and sales of hard liquor actually increased.
Much the same is true in Australia. In most states it is technically illegal to operate a still, yet stills are sold openly in every home-brew shop in the country, along with instruction manuals. They are also advertised. The whole thing is very nudge-nudge wink-wink so long as you don’t sell the product, and once again, the penalty is a slap on the wrist.
I have never heard of anybody being injured form drinking home-made spirits, although a few people did go blind about 15 years ago by drinking imported spirits that had been contaminated.
When I wanted to start driving, I was required to take a test to prove I knew what I was doing. I also have to carry that certification with me at all times that proves I know how to operate a machine that kills 30 to 40 thousand people a year.
Home distillation could be handled in a similar fashion.
