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US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional
- briandw 7mo agoGood! Now let's do civil asset forfeiture.
- d--b 7mo agoI always thought the reason was that badly distilled drinks were dangerous.
- serf 7mo agowell, poisonous. normal hooch is dangerous, too.
- sublinear 7mo agoI find this line of thinking fascinating considering how many things we do without a second thought (forced to drive for basic errands, etc.) that are orders of magnitude more dangerous. Anyway, my point is that the people most at risk of poisoning themselves are those unfamiliar with the process. I'm pretty sure a ton of people were doing this anyway for non-commercial purposes without realizing an unenforced federal law even existed.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- smackeyacky 7mo agoIn the modern world they don’t have to be. I’m not sure a bubbling still in every home is a great idea but they won’t be wood fired so that’s a start. You could also test alcohol cheaply these days for the poisonous alcohols. Having said that, fake booze in Thailand has killed and blinded people so it’s not risk free
- mattmaroon 7mo agoThat’s because they adulterate it with methanol. Methanol can be derived from natural gas cheaply. I wrote a long comment above about why this isn’t a risk with home distilling. The much bigger danger for home distilling is fire, as you have open flames and combustible vapor. The fire codes for a distillery are very strict.
- bsder 7mo ago> The much bigger danger for home distilling is fire, as you have open flames and combustible vapor. This would suggest that using induction heating would be significantly safer and have the possibility of precise temperature control. Is there any reason why home distilling does/does not do this?
- mattmaroon 7mo agoElectric heating does reduce the risk of fire, yes, and some of us do it. (It’s also just a lot easier than a turkey fryer.) I rigged a water heater element up for this purpose. (Technically there actually isn’t temperature control in distilling, the temperature is just the boiling point of the mixture, which changes over time as the mixture changes from distillation, but you do control the heat input which effects the speed at which you distill. Tangential, but counterintuitive.) The reason most don’t is just cost/practicality. You really need to have a fair bit of liquid to get good results. Like tenish gallons (~40L). You probably can’t fit a still that big on your stovetop (and you really want to do this outside anyway) and you’d need a 240v connection to provide enough heat. Your standard American wall outlet doesn’t provide enough juice. But the standard 240v 50a you charge an EV with or, in my case, plug in your RV does. People run drier cords out a window too.
- bsder 7mo ago> Like tenish gallons (~40L). Ah, that would do it. I was thinking this was like beer homebrewing and would be around a gallon. Thanks for the info.
- mattmaroon 7mo agoThat’s actually a common myth perpetuated by the American government during prohibition. The Feds added methanol to bootlegged hooch to blind people, then they told people they’d go blind from moonshine to discourage it. Distillation doesn’t create alcohols, it only concentrates them. The ratio of ethanol to methanol in a distilled spirit will be approximately the same as in the wash it was distilled from. Drinking brandy you’ll get about the same ratio as if you drank the wine it was made from. You need the same amount of ethanol to get drunk regardless of how you drink it, all distilling does is get rid of that pesky water that’s in beer and wine. (That makes some other fun things like barrel aging possible.) So you’ll also get the same amount of methanol. Also fun fact: if you got methanol poisoning and went to the hospital the treatment is ethanol, because it blocks the metabolism of methanol. Methanol metabolizes into formic acid which damages the optic nerve. And contrary to lore, mass spectrometry shows that the idea that methanol comes off the still first (meaning that if you collected the early results, called heads, and drank them, you might get too much) is false or at least drastically oversimplified. You’d have to try hard to seriously injure yourself drinking home distilled spirits. (I’ve been doing it for 15 years.) Unless you count just drinking too much, but you’d have that problem with the professional stuff too.
- awesomeusername 7mo agoExperienced distiller here. This comment is spot on.
- frankzander 7mo agoInteresting one.
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo ago>And contrary to lore, mass spectrometry shows that the idea that methanol comes off the still first (meaning that if you collected the early results, called heads, and drank them, you might get too much) is false or at least drastically oversimplified. This is wrong. The boiling point of methanol is 65C vs ethanol at 78C. Methanol will come out first from distillation.
- 7mo ago
- themafia 7mo agoI'm sure availability of testing methods and equipment has come a long way since the 1860s. As well as quality and purity of materials.
- RealityVoid 7mo agoMeh, home distilled spirits are everywhere in Romania. I drank many many times home distilled spirits. They are not that dangerous.
- ihalip 7mo agoHow's your eyesight?
- jimnotgym 7mo agoLooks like they didn't see your comment
- ane 7mo agoDepends what you make it from. If you distill eight litres of wine into about a litre brandy without removing methanol, it has the same amount of methanol than eight litres of wine did. Given the average of 150mg/l of methanol in red wine, this puts it to about 1g of methanol in that amount. That is not healthy, but you need to keep in mind ingestion of alcohol slows down the metabolism of methanol through competition and the methanol will be excreted by your kidneys instead of being metabolized. So, just like you won't go blind from a bottle of brandy, you won't go blind from distilled wine. However, you're likely to have a serious headache the morning after.
- RealityVoid 7mo agoNot great, but I'm not blind.
- inglor_cz 7mo agoThe eastern part of Czechia (Moravia) plus Slovakia will distill anything that grows, too, and methanol poisonings are almost non-existent here. Don't underestimate centuries of tradition and know-how. The only exception was a methanol affair 15 years ago, but that had nothing to do with home distillation. In that particular case, two bozos inspired by a badly understood Wikipedia article bought and mixed enormous amounts of industrial methanol with ethanol and sold the resulting mixture on the black market, killing dozens of people and triggering a temporary prohibition as the authorities scrambled to find all the poisoned booze. They are now both serving life.
- retrac 7mo agoHome distillation has been legal in New Zealand since 1996. I'm not from NZ, but from what I can tell from afar, it has not caused any significant problems. Stills are legal and can be bought in shops. There are commercially available countertop appliances which can produce half a litre of 80 proof vodka from a few litres of fermented sugar water. North Americans probably have some cultural hangover from Prohibition about the dangers of small-scale distillation. Methanol in particular is probably overstated as a danger. Methanol poisoning seems to mostly happen from adulteration, often with what is mistakenly thought to be industrial ethanol. It is produced at very low levels by fermentation (less than 0.1%) and so at the home distillation scale there's not enough in one batch to be a significant concern. Fire, however, is a genuine risk.
- ghastmaster 7mo ago>North Americans probably have some cultural hangover from Prohibition about the dangers of small-scale distillation. I find it interesting that you have this notion. I was born in 1984. The history books in school were still implying that home distillation was dangerous. "Rot gut whiskey" "bath tub gin" are phrases that continue to come to mind when I think of the prohibition days. No one I have ever met in all of the different levels of society here have had any strong disdain or distrust of home brewing or distillation. By the time of my upbringing, at least, the general population in the US was content with the alcohol laws. They are not aware of how easy home brewing, wine-making, and distilling are. They are not aware of the post prohibition three tier system. They are consumers of alcohol not producers. That is what prohibition in the US did. "House wine" in the US is the wine a restaurant picks for cheap profits. "House wine" in the old days or in europe is wine you make at home. We, in general, lost that piece of culture with prohibition. It never disappeared in some parts of the country though. Appalachia moonshiners kept the tradition going in mind and spirit for the whole country. If your statement was about other drugs, you would be spot on. Prohibition regarding alcohol was not accepted by almost every demographic strata. Prohibition of other drugs is a different story for cultural reasons.
- razakel 7mo ago>Prohibition regarding alcohol was not accepted by almost every demographic strata. It's very difficult to ban something when even the police do it. I'm guessing that the number of cops who like a drink is somewhere around "most".
- monero-xmr 7mo agoFYI you can also grow psychedelic mushrooms at home in all 50 states legally. The precursors are legal
- tastyfreeze 7mo agoI've bought grain spawn cubensis bags at head shops before. Super easy to grow. Do be careful. Depending on the state mushrooms become illegal at different stages of production.
- Aurornis 7mo agoThis is bad information. The precursors being legal doesn’t mean anything about the legality of producing scheduled drugs from them. The precursors for home distilling are also legal. Possessing schedule I controlled substances is illegal. If you grow the substance, you also possess it. Therefore it’s not legal.
- fzeindl 7mo agoIn Norway alcohol is very expensive, so many people distill at home illegally. Every travel guide tells you to not accept home-distilled drinks, since they can be poisonous.
- bobtheman 7mo agoI visited Norway and was blown away by the price of alcohol. Given that the sun only comes out for a fraction of an hour in winter I struggled to believe it. At a local bar... (I think I was in trondheim?) I asked how they afforded booze? (it worked out to 15$ USD per pint), "We don't, but we do it anyways"
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- somat 7mo agoWhy is it so expensive? High vice taxes?
- somenameforme 7mo agoPrices tend to correlate strongly with wages and wages are very high in Norway for all work, so they also have some of the highest prices on basically everything. Another lol example is a Big Mac combo meal in Oslo - you're looking at around $20.
- inglor_cz 7mo agoScandinavian countries have very specific alcohol policies, though, very restrictionist, and the tax is part of this. This is not just question of "more expensive country, more expensive stuff". Switzerland or Luxembourg are quite expensive, but you will buy affordable and good Italian/Spanish/French wine there, because these countries don't impose anywhere near as much taxation on wine.
- 7mo ago
- ghastmaster 7mo agoThe article is devoid of any meaningful legal language. It is important to note that this ruling applies only to the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi as the fifth circuit is the court that decided this. That said, when parties bring cases to other federal circuit courts, they may cite this case. Frequently, circuit decisions can impact other district courts decisions.
- angry_octet 7mo agoThe Fifth Circuit tells us how the Supremes will vote.
- Jimmc414 7mo agoThe court invalidated IRC Sections 5601(a)(6) and 5178(a)(1)(B), finding they go beyond Congress’s taxation powers. The court’s reasoning was that these provisions amount to an “anti revenue provision” that prevents distilled spirits from coming into existence, since under 26 U.S.C. § 5001(b) taxation begins as soon as the spirit exists, so banning production eliminates the taxable event entirely. Here are the official docs for the case McNutt v. US Department of Justice https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca5.220672/gov.uscourts.ca5.220672.116.1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca5.220...
- ghastmaster 7mo agoI like the analysis of "necessary" and "proper" sections of this opinion. Hopefully, this ruling gets expanded to other circuits and eventually leads to the US Supreme Court ignoring stare decisis with regard to wickard v filburn and let it be thrown in the dust bin of history.
- mothballed 7mo agoSounds similar to the 'tax' power making it impossible to buy a tax stamp for a post 86 machine gun.
- ardit33 7mo agoAwesome... time to get the moonshine flowing again!
- pseingatl 7mo agoDistillation of spirits is a necessary requirement for life on the Aramco compound in Saudi Arabia. Outside the compound, the locally-distilled "sid" is on offer. Both varieties have been available for a half-century with no reports of poisoning.
- ghastmaster 7mo ago>Distillation of spirits is a necessary requirement for life on the Aramco compound in Saudi Arabia. How so? For medical reasons? For the facilitation of the Saudi Aramco oil production which funds the life and habitation of humans in Dhahran? I suspect something was lost in translation.
- decimalenough 7mo agoSaudi Arabia is a famously dry country in all meanings of the word, there's not much fun to be had as an expat unless you make your own.
- eru 7mo agoWhy do you need to distill your spirits? If you really need alcohol, can't you drink undistilled beverages to have 'fun'?
- none2585 7mo agoAbsolutely not
- bamboozled 7mo agoWhy would you drink an undistllled beverage, do you mean alcohol free ? I remember being in college a lot of Muslim kids coming to our parties drinking alcohol because we didn’t care and asking us not to tell anyone…Sake is wonderful.
- eru 7mo ago
- dustractor 7mo agoGreat. Now make it legal to grow ANY type of flower.
- mothballed 7mo agoThat (CSA) falls under regulating interstate commerce instead of tax powers. Picking up a flower and smoking it on the spot is interstate commerce thus i dont think this same idea applies.
- Tadpole9181 7mo ago> Picking up a flower and smoking it on the spot is interstate commerce I don't quite follow - would you be able to explain the argument behind this for me?
- dlgeek 7mo ago(Not the poster you're replying to) Pretty sure they were pointing out the absurdity of Gonzales v. Raich (545 U.S. 1)... But that really is the holding of the US Supreme Court in that case.
- s5300 7mo ago[dead]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- avidiax 7mo agoEdit: According to AI, I've got this a bit backwards. The ruling hits the taxing power, not the commerce clause. It's nonetheless interesting, since the machine gun ban may be affected. The court says that you can't use a tax to ban something outright, which is what the post-1986 machine gun ban is: refusing to collect a tax on post-1986 machine guns, effectively banning them. That leaves the commerce clause as the remaining defense for all taxes-as-bans or general outright bans. And that suggests future cases where Wickard will be under scrutiny. --- I am not a lawyer, but I think this ruling is far more interesting than it appears. It is aiming a crosshair at Wickard v. Filburn, which ruled that a farmer that produced wheat on his farm to exclusively to feed livestock on that same farm was affecting interstate commerce, and could be penalized for overproduction to support price controls. Keep in mind, that this definition of "interstate commerce" is so broad that it essentially reduces the category of "intra-state commerce" to nothing, which seems dubious. That ruling is the basis of a huge portion of the federal government's powers under the commerce clause of the constitution. The supreme court will likely have to rule on this eventually, and how it threads the needle will be very important. If Wickard were simply struck down, the U.S. would be reformed into a weak federation, akin perhaps to pre-EU Europe, where laws vary wildly between states, and the federal government has little power. No EPA, no federal minimum wage, no forced integration, reduced civil rights, only direct interstate commerce being regulated. That's unlikely to happen, but the court would either have to reaffirm Wickard, or would have to come up with a new standard to keep, say, the $200 tax on pre-1986 machine guns effective (preventing a garage machine gun), but allow some notion of non-economic activity like home distilling to continue. The OBBB reduced the tax on suppressors to $0, which strongly undermines the idea that home production of suppressors can be regulated by Wickard, since there is no tax interest to protect. How it might affect the controlled substances act is more complicated, since there is no tax on illegal drugs, and the government has decided to entirely ban non-pharmaceutical street drugs, hence even "hobby" production clearly undermines that policy. It's an area with lots of apparent but longstanding contradictions and questionable standards, but it would upend much of the New Deal to reverse it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
- eru 7mo ago> No EPA, no federal minimum wage, no forced integration, reduced civil rights, only direct interstate commerce being regulated. States can still do civil rights etc.
- trick-or-treat 7mo agoMaking their waaaaayyyy.. The only way they know how. But that's just a little bit more than the law would allow. Yee-haw!
- angry_octet 7mo agoAs tourists to sketchy places in Asia discovered, methanol poisoning is a real risk, even from large scale distillation. It is the quality control that matters. Illegal stills make quality control impossible, so legalisation and government certified testing can make it safe. However, this ruling is not about alcohol, it is about dissolving Federal authority exercised via the trade and commerce clause of the Constitution.
- cubefox 7mo ago> Illegal stills make quality control impossible, so legalisation and government certified testing can make it safe. Another way to increase safety is to reduce the availability of illegal stills without quality control by enforcing the ban. (Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.)
- freedomben 7mo ago> (Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.) Why should the government be in the business of reducing consumption? Do you believe alcohol to be immoral, and the government's role to be enforcing morality?
- cubefox 7mo agoDo you believe heroin is immoral? I don't. I think it's dangerous, which is bad, and it causes addiction, which reduces freedom more than banning it.
- btreecat 7mo agoBut you're out here trying to ban spoons thinking it's going to reduce access to heroin
- freedomben 7mo ago
- dr_dshiv 7mo agoI've been wanting to start an alchemical spirits company in Amsterdam. Does anyone have experience in this space?
- ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago> … 1868 … $10,000 fine. If the original 1868 law stated $10,000, that’s insane (equivalent of millions, these days). If not, then that might mean this law has been regularly reviewed and updated, so it’s not just something that was lost in the back of the cabinet.
- martin-t 7mo agoIf laws were written by engineers, all sums of money would be expressed relative to median income. And at that point it wouldn't be a stretch for most people to make the connection that some people are more privileged than others and fines should be relative to personal wealth and income. Imagine if laws were written by people who know what a function is...
- ciupicri 7mo agoFrom https://etsc.eu/billionaires-eur-25000-drink-driving-fine-puts-means-tested-penalties-in-the-spotlight/ https://etsc.eu/billionaires-eur-25000-drink-driving-fine-pu... > A Norwegian billionaire that recorded a BAC level three times higher than the legal limit has been banned from driving and handed a 250,000 krone fine (EUR 25,000). But the fine could have been much higher as, under Norwegian law, fines are linked to monthly income and in some cases overall wealth. > Finland has a ‘day fine’ system, with penalties linked to an offender’s wages.
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- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- andrewmg 7mo agoFor those wondering, the opinion[0] doesn't address the Commerce Clause power (and Wickard and Raich) becaue the government abandoned that argument. See footnote 5. The Commerce Clause issue is raised in our other case[1] that's now pending before the Sixth Circuit. (I argued both cases.) [0] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-10760-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-10760-CV0.pd... [1] https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/issues/detail/ream-v-us-department-of-treasury https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/issues/detail/ream-v-us-dep...
- cobbzilla 7mo agoIs there a genuine opportunity to overturn either Wickard or Raich? That would be exciting.
- andrewmg 7mo agoRaich is teed up. See our opening brief[0] at pp. 38–39. [0] https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/library/docLib/2025-06-24-The-Buckeye-Institute-Appeal-Brief-in-Ream-v-U-S-Department-of-Treasury.pdf https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/library/docLib/2025-06-24-T...
- iamnothere 7mo agoWonderful news. Inch by inch maybe we can finally reclaim some freedoms.
- DM70 7mo agoGenerally, majority of bans are wrong. Excessive freedom limitations limit personal development and economic growth. For thousands of years people were brewing, cooking and making things at home. People dying from car accidents, yet we do not ban cars, don't we? Because cars have major utility value plus play huge part in economy. At the same time, some forces pent decades fighting tobacco companies, destroying true American and British business icons. And somehow replaced them with proliferation all kinds of narcotics and dangerous chemical vapes, which earn huge revenues for literal potential military enemies, and with chemical sin food, water and air, which kill people more than tobacco did. Which suggests it could have been more about money/geopolitics rather than people's safety.
- user20180120 7mo ago[flagged]