I could get on board with that as a first step, but it still seems excessively restrictive.
Why apply this to distilling when we don’t apply it to swimming or the operation of power tools or a plethora of other recreational activities that kill and cripple orders of magnitude more people that distillation?
Licensing, IMO, should be restricted to activities that have a high probability of hurting others. Distilling simply doesn’t meet that standard.
This, of course, is almost total bullshit. For 90+% of the homebrew out there, it is unbelievably easy to tell the difference.
While I agree with most of the things you have said in this thread, I don’t agree with this. Drinking is a social activity. Drinking costs money. If you had a legal still in operation your friends would be lining up share in the bounty.
A lot of activities have come under more scrutiny safety-wise in the last few years. I don’t think mandated licensing is needed either but I’d damn sure do it if it allowed me to make my own shine. Partly, I was addressing Der Trihs’ notion that home distilling is so dangerous compared to other activities - it’s not.
I don’t follow you here. How does this relate to hurting others? The only way I can make the connection is that you think that all those friends would be hurt. Perhaps I didn’t make it clear in the post you quoted, but I did stress the point earlier that I don’t think anybody else should get to decide what risks anybody else is allowed to take. When I say “activities that have a high probability of hurting others” I mean activities that will hurt third parties. Not parties who have willingly and knowingly taken part in the activity.
I can understand licencing cars, there is a good chance a car could hurt somebody who never consented to you driving a car on a public road. I can not understand licencing distillation, since it has almost no chance of hurting anyone, and even less chance of hurting a non-consenting third party
If my friends want to drink my moonshine, what right does Der Trihs have to tell them they can not?
In term so fthe cost, isn’t this all equally true of using power tolls to make furniture? Or of owning swimming pool? Or of cooking food? Or the thousands of other things that are much more dangerous than distilling that don’t require any sort of licence? My friends would line up to take my homemade furniture and swim in my pool and eat my canned vegetables too. Should we also demand a licence for those those things?
You’re right; homebrew is way better.
Purely anecdotal, of course, but based on my - not so limited - experience with Norwegian moonshine (yep, it’s been quite common in certain areas of the country here, even it’s been illegal since the '20s), you’ll have to have totally lost both your taste buds and your sense of smell to not realize that you’re drinking 'shine.
It’s - as succinctly put by silenus: “only fit for pigs and politicians”. And, of course, your average redneck..
And usually quite distinguishable from even half-decent factory rum. It’s not the methanol, it’s the higher alcohols which have a quite, eh, “distinct” smell and taste even at very low concentrations. The average home distiller - at least here - has neither the equipment to make a pure product nor the patience to store it for mellowing.
As to the methanol poisoning risk: Do y’all know the most common antidote to methanol poisoning? It’s ethanol. Otherwise known as “alcohol”. In fact, you’ll have to have quite a high concentration of methanol in your moonshine to make it really harmful for you, because most of the 'shine will be a methanol antidote.
Another argument against legalizing home distillation is that - at least here - it’s been an easily available source for illegal alcohol for minors. Down to middle school children. Yep, a not insignificant fraction of those “homebrewers” don’t distill just for their own use. They actively sell their vile stuff to minors. And they have a good market, because they don’t ID their customers to check if they’re of drinking age.
If they’re doing that now, then how does keeping it illegal help?
Couldn’t they do that just as effectively with non-distilled alcohol?
Many of these arguments about the US laws on private distillation of alcohol seem to be taking for granted that they exist, or even allegedly exist, for health and safety reasons. But most laws about distillation in the US are based on tax revenue, not public safety. The taxes from beer and wine sales are miniscule compared to grain alcohol. They would prefer if drinking distilled alcohol remains a fully taxable experience. The criminal codes on the matter never mention anything about safety, they are concerned with illegal distribution (untaxed sales). They leave the option open for anyone to apply for a permit to operate a still and they are interested in knowing how much alcohol will be produced and it’s location, not what safety measures are being used to prevent toxic results.
Anyway, home stills are perfectly legal in some countries. How do they make it through without all the mass-blindness and entire block parties dying of lead poisoning in, New Zealand? (for just one example of several countries in which it is legal)
There is a good FAQ about some of the myths regarding home distillation at this site.
In the course of a largely misspent life, I’ve consumed a fair amount of moonshine, most of it made by two brothers and a few of their relatives. Making moonshine was sort of a hobby for the two brothers; for some of their relatives, it was a cottage industry and a family tradition. They knew what they were doing and how to do it. That said, drinking moonshine made by amateurs is not something I’d care to risk. Even so, if one wants to make their own booze at home, they should be allowed to have at it. That precludes selling it, of course.
The logistics - for both producer and customer - are somewhat simpler when you distribute half-liter bottles of 90% 'shine instead of 9-liter kegs of 5% homemade beer.
It’s my belief the average person is not knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision regarding the risks of poisoning from drinking home-distilled whiskey. For example, I’ve drank a a few jars of moonshine in the past but before this thread I was unaware of the poisoning aspect.
I still agree that it should be legal. I also agree it not be necessary to require licensing only suggesting it might grease the wheels of legislation.
The only way you can really get poisoned by distilled beverages is if it has been cut or if it was made in a lead soldered still.
The sources I have found give a methanol concentration of roughly 3 parts per million for a fermented sugar wash. A dose of methanol as low as 10 mL can damage your optic nerves, although drinking ethanol with it will vastly decrease the danger. To get 10 mL of methanol you would have to concentrate pure methanol from a 3000 liter batch of wash.
That would be quite difficult even if you were trying to accomplish this.
A more likely scenario is that poorly distilled alcohol will give you a massive hangover.
Actually, yes, he does get to, in a way. Seeing as home distilling is not enumerated as a fundamental right in the U.S. Constitution, Der Trihs, along with all the rest of us, collectively get to decide whether home distillation is an important right.
My personal feeling is that the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shouldn’t be construed to deny others retained by the people, but that’s just me.
We get to decide as a polity which rights are retained and which rights aren’t. That’s what the political system is for.
Is there a fundamental right to commit mayhem? Is there a fundamental right to commit securities fraud? Is there a fundamental right to operate motorized vehicles or equipment under the influence of alcohol? None of those things are enumerated. Do you suggest that they are rights retained by the people?
Something not being illegal isn’t exactly the same thing as it being a right. Home distillation of liquor is illegal under laws passed in the revenuer and moonshiner days. It isn’t to protect anyone’s well being or public safety it is to protect tax revenues. The government reserves the right to a cut of any revenue received from liquor sales and if people can all just distill their own booze willy nilly it would be very hard to enforce that.
But since you apparently think you decide these questions for the rest of us why did you decide to give us the “rights” to make beer and wine, grow tobacco, and reload ammunition at home then?
Just my 2 cents worth but I agree that home distillation should be legal. I lived in Saudi for many years and (mostly) the only available alcohol was home made. Called Sid in the local Arabic, the better stuff was distilled 4 times and was pushing 90% ethanol. People used stills made from stainless or copper with no lead solder so lead poisoning wasn’t an issue. Likewise, people just made sugar mash so there wasn’t a lot of methanol to worry about. Sid was pretty good stuff. Even the hangovers were relatively mild. In Saudi, where it was highly illegal, Sid cost about $40 - $50 for a 1.5 liter bottle so it was also quite cheap.
OTOH, there were some problems as well. People fermented things other than sugar and got higher percentages of methanol, and then concentrated it via distillation, and promptly went blind/deaf.
Other people blew up their kitchens with alcohol vapor. It makes a hell of a bang when you get a kitchen full of vapor and it hits an ignition source. Houses were ruined.
Last but not least, you got the wannabe badasses that would drink shots of straight Sid. These guys usually wound up in the hospital before being deported.
It’s also a lot of work to do it properly. You have to keep a very sharp eye on the thermometer to make sure you are only distilling ethanol. Also, everything has to be spotlessly clean or you get bad tastes and smells.
Personally, I like the idea of distilling my own. I’d love to make some bourbon and age it in an oak barrel.
There’s no getting around it though, there are some serious problems with turning every Tom Dick and Harry into a distiller.
I didn’t do it by myself. You did it too. We all did. That’s the way democracy works. If we all decide to change it, then that’s one thing. My point is that none of these things are part of some inviolate system of “rights” that are separate from any other thing that we as a society choose to regulate.
Personally, I have no stake in the issue, so I’m not bothered whether it’s permitted or not. But I’m not sympathetic to the plea that distilling liquor is part of some kind of sacrosanct “right.” Let the proponents make their arguments about why it should be allowed and let the opponents make their arguments about why it shouldn’t. Whichever side gets the most pull in the legislature wins. But no one gets to put a thumb on the scale by declaring that it’s a “right.”
The thumb is already on the scale. The tax revenue gives a high motivation to continue to restrict distilling.
The safety issue hasn’t been proven to any extent here. Hearsay and misinformation from the Prohibition era doesn’t really present a strong enough argument to throw people in jail over.
If you don’t want to drink homemade whiskey, rum, moonshine, brandy, or any other product, don’t drink it. If you are worried about the safety, don’t drink it. It’s pretty simple.