A U.S. appeals court on Friday declared unconstitutional a nearly 158-year-old federal ban on home distilling, calling it an unnecessary and improper means for Congress to exercise its power to tax.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of the nonprofit Hobby Distillers Association and four of its 1,300 members.
They argued that people should be free to distill spirits at home, whether as a hobby or for personal consumption including, in one instance, to create an apple-pie-vodka recipe.
The ban was part of a law passed during Reconstruction in July 1868, in part to thwart liquor tax evasion, and subjected violators to up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Man, a lot of people here just repeating the same old myths and police lines about moonshine making you blind and stills exploding. Not to be that guy but do some research.
Methanol poisoning is hugely overstated, sugar and grain mash don’t produce enough for it to be dangerous. Fruit mash can, but it’s easy to mitigate. Most cases of methanol poisoning are either the person purposefully drinking methanol or from alcohol that’s been adulterated with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents
Stills can start fires, if improperly operated, but so can gas hobs and we’re not calling for a license to operate those. You really need to be making industrial quantities at pressure for it to explode. Looking at it as a cause of fires in countries where it’s legal indicate that it’s a non-issue. If you’re worried about forest fires, don’t make it so people need to hide in the woods and they’ll do it at home.
It should be noted that it was the US government who intentionally poisoned the alcohol supply during prohibition. The people that attempted to drink this poisoned alcohol were the ones suffering of blindness and other complications.
Ah, an American classic. Sabotage a good thing, and then use an isolated incident to instill a hundred years worth of fear.
The danger comes from the distilling, which concentrates the miniscule methanol to dangerous levels. When I learned distilling, I was taught to throw away the first half cup or so to reduce methanol. In reality, methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol, so you get mostly methanol in that first few shots due to the still warming up, but overall it’s negligible. In a well controlled environment, it’s technically possible to separate the two via this fractional distillation, but it’s not something those early moonshiners really knew about.
In summary, I see home distillation in the same light as picking wild mushrooms: you really have to know what you’re doing. As always, regulation and education is the answer here.