11 ms·
US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional
- joshstrange 6mo agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298
- ckemere 6mo agoWasn’t great. Would love a second attempt focused on distilling not individualist v collectivist or immigration. (Except for relevant connections around sharing your creations with neighbors and/or internationally inspired novel spirits.)
- wing-_-nuts 6mo agoI am not really a fan of liquor, but I do like the idea of having skills which are universally valuable. If you air dropped me into a random village in Africa I doubt I could 'code for cassava' but I could almost certainly make a living if I knew how to set up a basic pot still and safely create booze.
- a_conservative 6mo agoYou could sanitize and disinfect with that alcohol! You could also make extracts of any plants nearby that were useful. Whiskey and vanilla beans are sufficient to make vanilla extract!
- mothballed 6mo agoSub saharan africa already has a very large informal distilling network (especially of bananas), a niche largely reserved for women in many regions (not sure for what the reason is for that exactly).
- Tangurena2 6mo agoProbably because it involves some form of cooking, which is a feminine-coded skill.
- IAmBroom 6mo agoHistorically, brewing, fermenting, and distilling are all "wife chores", probably because of the feminine-coding you mention... until it becomes highly profitable, at which point men take it away. Wine has always easy to trade. Mead and ciders, ditto. Beer/ale, prior to preservative hops, doesn't keep long enough to be viable for intercity trade. The acceptance of hops in a communities' drinkers coincides with a gender change in brewers (documented in PhD dissertations and books). Distillation always results in a shelf-stable product; ergo it quickly becomes male dominated in a cash society (even supplanting cash in colonial America!).
- ryandamm 6mo agoMissed in the previous discussion: methanol is irrelevant. Grain based ferments have essentially zero methanol.(And methanol risk is a function of its concentration relative to ethanol — the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!) even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol, and it’s not all that well concentrated in a distillation due to azeotropes (which also says that throwing out the heads doesn’t help that much). Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol. The biggest risk in home distilling is fire.
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoWas it missed or intentionally downplayed/ignored because people came into the discussion with priors that they were eager to maintain? Seems like these sorts of "yes it could be unsafe in theory but the reality of physics and incentives make this mostly irrelevant" type things get missed far too often certain parts of the internet to be coincidence. That said, the fact that it dropped on a weekend did it no favors the first time around.
- ch4s3 6mo agoSpeaking as a brewer, I can tell you that tons of people who should know better actually believe the methanol thing and will even quote some sciency words to make their argument. I think its a case of bad information coming from black market distilling being propagated uncritically. People who know better (licensed distillers) have no incentive to argue against it.
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- gostsamo 6mo agoAs someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 6mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298
- semiquaver 6mo ago> [Judge Edith Jones] also said that under the government’s logic, Congress could criminalize virtually any in-home activity Well, yeah. This is essentially the holding in Wickard v. Filburn, which seems to be in tension with this decision (overturning that would be great but it’s not the role of the circuit courts of appeal to do preemptively)
- Joker_vD 6mo agoAlso, this line is quite funny on its own because while understand what she actually meant, it can be very easily reinterpreted as "only actions committed out-of-home should be crimes; murdered someone in your home? welp, our hands are tied, have a nice day".
- amanaplanacanal 6mo agoI think the point is that murder is handled by the states, not Congress. This is about what the federal government can do, not all government.
- hackeraccount 6mo agoThis is the question I'd love to see asked to people running for President. Name something you think the States can do that the Federal government is prohibited from doing.
- DrDeadCrash 6mo agoThe answer isn't something we should accept as an opinion, though. For example, laws prohibit the federal government from (direct) involvement in elections.
- semiquaver 6mo agoI think you are confused. The constitution explicitly grants Congress the right to pass laws regulating federal elections: > The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
- user20180120 6mo ago[flagged]
- bsimpson 6mo agoDo this one next: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)
- swiftcoder 6mo agoI'd imagine one wants to litigate Wickard v. Filburn in its entirety, rather than just the downstream Gonzales v. Raich
- mothballed 6mo agoThat would also invalidate the civil rights act, as the (similar) 19th century CRA was already struck down because the 14th amendment binds against discrimination by public not private actors. The reason why the modern CRAs weren't also struck is because they rested on the laurels of Wickard v Filburn declaring the CRA (this time) is about regulating "interstate" commerce.
- bombcar 6mo agofixing the interstate commerce clause is one of those things that needs to be done eventually, but will likely never be done - even if just to "fix" it so everything remains the same but is based on simpler allocation of powers than through a "loophole".
- gbacon 6mo agoJohn Roberts will find a way to screw it up.
- drak0n1c 6mo agoThat would be an improvement in the same spirit, as the modern CRAs are also unconstitutionally limiting over what one chooses to do with their own property. The scope should be limited to government-involved services and facilities, as those must serve all possible taxpayers. We live in a more connected, option-saturated information age where even bigots more often than not understand the utility of at least doing business politely and making nuanced exceptions. Egregious offenses are corrected by social pressure and business competition. The current regime of ambulance-chasing liabilities inserted into every organizational, contracting, and hiring process harms far more people of every race and sex than it helps.
- GenerWork 6mo agoIt's been way too long since I've taken a political science course, but does this mean that the ban is struck down for the entire country, or just the area that the 5th Court of Appeals covers?
- malfist 6mo agoPrior to this year, the entire country. Today, thanks to SCOTUS shenanigans, it likely only applies to the states involved in the lawsuit, LA. But who knows, hard to keep up with the game of calvinball the SCOTUS is playing.
- dcrazy 6mo agoYou seem to be confusing precedent-setting decisions with nationwide injunctions.
- rtkwe 6mo agoProbably though the old pattern was that the plaintiffs would request and the Circuit would issue a nationwide injunction with the ruling when finding that a law in full unconstitutional. Now we have the weird situation where the constitution is more patchwork because you have to get rulings in all the Circuits or wait for one case to make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
- rdbl27 6mo agoNo, that was never the old pattern. Nationwide injunctions were unheard of until very recently -- as in, within the past 10-20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_injunction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_injunction
- malfist 6mo agoYour own source says they've been common since 1960
- jcims 6mo agoBought and rigged up a 'hand sanitizer plant' about five months into COVID. Populated the thing with thermocouples, load cells and automation with nodered on raspberry pi and a bunch of esp32s flashed with tasmota doing sensing and control. Everything talked over mqtt. Great little architecture and having it highly automated allowed me to focus on the parts that were less easily controlled for. Dashboard: https://imgur.com/a/so7iZJX https://imgur.com/a/so7iZJX Sanitizer run: https://imgur.com/a/iWDlNfb https://imgur.com/a/iWDlNfb Quite a lot of fun actually.
- jdc0589 6mo agoI dont need to see stuff like this. I have too many hobbies already
- jcims 6mo agoI had a load cell under the collection jar that would adjust heat input (via PWM to SCR) to achieve a steady output rate (dW/dt) via outer PID loop, then lower the heat to just below boiling when it got to 700mL to keep it hot but pause output. It'd play a tone, I'd swap in a new jar then resume ignoring the whole thing. (I'm lying, I'd sit glued to that thin little stream of sanitization precursor teeter on breaking up the entire time.) I stopped messing with it right before starting to measure/vary water supply through the condenser coils so I could more directly manage reflux ratio. Also had planned a float/load cell to calculate specific gravity. All sorts of little side quests and fun mix of art/science to get into. You know, if any of those other hobbies start to lose their lustre. :) (for real though, the nodered on pi controlling a squadron of esp32 workers over wifi/mqtt was really nice, in case you would have any use for such a thing in any domain)
- ReptileMan 6mo agoHave you tried putting the sanitizer in ultrasonic bath with charred oak chips? Asking for a friend.
- jcims 6mo agoHaha I actually have a bag of chips but never bought a bath large enough to be worthwhile. Started going down the juniper/citrus/rosemary/coriander/etc route instead.
- mothballed 6mo agoThe post '86 machine gun ban relies on basically the exact principle overturned here.
- EgregiousCube 6mo agoYes, it'd be interesting if this gets appealed and the SC gets to take a look at if $0 tax stamps are allowable under the tax and spending clause.
- esseph 6mo agoTally ho!
- wellthisisgreat 6mo agoYeah, moonshine is ok but Tommy Gun isn’t? It’s roaring twenties y’all!
- gigatexal 6mo agoBig beer head Kavanaugh and Kegseth are probably jumping for joy.
- seanw444 6mo agoA win against the over-application of the interstate commerce clause that benefits everybody! Quick, how can we make this partisan?
- BenjiWiebe 6mo agoDoesn't apply to beer anyways.
- gigatexal 6mo agoI admit I posted this to just find a reason to dunk on this admin.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoIt'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly. That being said, so long as it's for private or non-profit use, I don't really see the harm here.
- amanaplanacanal 6mo agoProbably none. Unless someone is intentionally adding methanol to it.
- Zigurd 6mo agoThis is what actually happened. Methanol was put into industrial ethanol to prevent people making drinkable booze out of it. It was required. It was the prohibition era version of spraying Agent Orange on a cannabis crop.
- OkayPhysicist 6mo agoUnless they try to make booze from woodchips, they'll be fine. Using fruit or grains or potatoes makes it really hard to end up with enough methanol to be dangerous.
- jotux 6mo ago>It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly. If you're into home brewing or distilling, the first and only comment people completely unfamiliar with the process say is something about going blind because of methanol. It's disappointing because the process is so rich with history and really interesting problems to solve but the zeitgeist is completely poisoned by prohibition-era propaganda.
- dfdsjsdklfjs 6mo agoYes, it's exhausting. Methanol is only ever a tiny portion of the fermented output and that's only with grain fermentation. There's nowhere near enough to blind anyone. Fruit or sugar fermentation does not produce any methanol. In that case the unwanted contaminate is ethyl acetate, which is less harmful but still ruins the drink. It gives bad whiskey its burn and causes hangovers. In both cases the procedure is the same: run the still very slowly at first to increase reflux, pulling off the "foreshots" until contaminants are gone. In the process the still head temps will stabilize as the various low boiling trace compounds are eliminated. Then one runs the still at a normal rate, collecting heads, middle, and tails, and blending those according to one's skill to get the desired product. The middle jars are the clearest and cleanest alcohol, but the heads and to an extent tails contain aspects of the flavor and lots of good alcohol. Whatever isn't used for final blending will be collected and recycled back through the still in the next batch. Properly distilled moonshine is very clean and smooth, like drinking water. No burn and no hangover. If it burns the tongue or gives a hangover, that's because it was not distilled to the highest standards. Most commercially available alcohol isn't. Badly distilled moonshine is 100% a product of prohibition and would not exist for long in a free market, because drinkers won't tolerate it.
- superjan 6mo agoMight as well plug this recent Criminal Podcast episode: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-358-the-formula-3-27-2026 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-358-the-formula-3-27-2026 TLDL: During prohibition, US government required adding 5% methanol to industrial alcohol, hoping that this would stop bootleggers from selling it as liquor. It was sold anyway, resulting in many deaths.
- aqme28 6mo agoTo be fair, we still add 5-10% methanol to industrial alcohol. But also a bunch of bitterants to discourage use.
- mordae 6mo agoAre adding it or just distill both because it's cheaper?
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoTo make it poisonous enough that the tax men leave you alone. So cheaper in a circuitous way.
- tastyfreeze 6mo agoAdding. That majority of things we ferment and distill will not produce anywhere close to 5-10% methanol.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoYeast microbes make ethanol, not (much) methanol.
- caycep 6mo agohow...uh...explosive...are home stills?
- dylan604 6mo agoless than a meth lab
- jerrysievert 6mo agothey're really not. they're generally not a pressure vessel, and even when I've had leaks of ethanol, the fire went out immediately after being removed from heat. today's home stills are usually plug-in resistance heated chambers with a still head, and are very high quality. my flame-out was from a pot still that was sealed with flour and water, not a modern still.
- mynameisash 6mo agoI would say: not explosive. I've seen a decent number of setups, and I can think of three areas where you could be concerned with safety (not necessarily where you should be): 1. Most use propane burners (the exact thing you'd use for homebrewing which is already legal and safe, and also similar to what some large turkey fryers use) which can be risky, but some are electric (120v or 240v). 2. Stills are an open system insofar as there is a way for pressure to escape - if you're goofing things up, you might vaporize and not recondense your ethanol (eg, because you have the heat way too high and/or aren't doing a good job of cooling down the vapors), and it's possible for that vapor to start on fire. I've seen it happen, and it's certainly a spectacle but wasn't particularly dangerous. 3. The distillate itself (ie, ethanol) is usually pretty potent, especially the foreshots and heads. Let's say 70%+. Especially as it's coming out, it's still prone to evaporation, and you could have a combustible/explosive risk here, but I've never seen this to be an actual problem.
- ravenstine 6mo agoNot explosive, but still a potential fire hazard, especially if a still gets way too hot (coolant system fails) and alcohol vapors escape. The risk becomes extremely minimal when using an electric still.
- NoSalt 6mo agoI had no idea this was even a law!!! Where do I turn myself in?
- andrewmg 6mo agoReposting my comment from the last thread: For 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...
- tomwheeler 6mo agoAs I understand it, this only applies to the three states in that district, all of which also have statewide bans against it. My state (Missouri) has the most lax home distilling state laws in the nation, which allow residents to produce up to 500 bottles per year. Well, at least theoretically, since the federal ban takes precedence.
- beedeebeedee 6mo agoThe best liquor I ever had was by a state police detective who had been home distilling since he was 12. It was made from rye and corn, but tasted like peaches. I think it is kind of magical to witness the process. I only experimented a few times, and never aged it, so every was very sharp. The best was a sharp brandy made from a bottle of wine I bought. The worst was using a leftover keg of beer, which bittered the copper pipe, so everything after tasted like gin. I would recommend people try it. You can make one out of copper pipe from a hardware store, a few fittings and a pressure cooker. Be safe, of course, and remember that ethanol is used as a preventative for methanol poisoning :)
- 01100011 6mo agoTo me, the refractive index of hot ethanol makes it sparkle like a diamond when leaving the still. I don't drink anymore, but man I loved distilling. It's like magic.
- wiredfool 6mo agoThe best I’ve ever done was a double distilled Spanish box wine we picked up for 1eur/l. The wine was undrinkable, but the brandy was sooooo smooth. Next best was cheap tokaij furmint, distilled once and then mixed back into some of the undistilled wine. Basically the same thing as pineau de charante, but Hungarian and on the kitchen table.
- hansvm 6mo agoI'm not sure if it extends to box wines or Spanish wines, but my main complaint of bottom-shelf wines in the US is that they're pure sugar/acid/alcohol with almost no extra flavors and pretty bad distributions of the main components (especially being far too sweet). A small pattern I'm noticing in your description is the presence of sugar in the distillation inputs. Assume I know nothing about distillation; is that relevant?
- IAmBroom 6mo ago> A small pattern I'm noticing in your description is the presence of sugar in the distillation inputs. Assume I know nothing about distillation; is that relevant? Sugar should be completely removed by a proper distillation setup (although a lazy setup can allow some "contamination" with sugars).
- shevy-java 6mo agoHave a beer for that news!
- lofaszvanitt 6mo agoDo not drink, fight the calories.
- DesiLurker 6mo agothey also need to strike down the state laws restricting collection of rainwater on you own property.
- Nifty3929 6mo agoGreat - but this will only until home distilling becomes popular in which case they will find a new reason to prohibit it. A company will produce a home-distilling gizmo with a fancy screen and app to go with it. They will raise some few $M's and have news articles written. Probably there will be a subscription consumable of some kind. Then there will be some bad press and they will make it illegal and the fancy home distiller will become useless do to a lack of software updates.
- bcjdjsndon 6mo ago> Then there will be some bad press and they will make it illegal Can't have the workers getting sozzled all day, there's work to be done
- esbranson 6mo agoThe US refused to defend the Commerce Clause, so the circuit court did not consider it, though the Commerce Clause precedent would have likely demanded a different result. This is circuit split engineering by the administration, meant to allow the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent on the Commerce Clause or whatever.
- mark124mj 6mo agoHomebrewing beer and wine was illegal at the federal level until 1978, and the sky didn't fall when that changed. Distilling is the same kind of personal-use activity — the main difference is that the law just never caught up. Good to see the courts pushing this forward.
- AceJohnny2 6mo agoWrong thread. You probably meant to post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47755629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47755629
- moron4hire 6mo agoIf you have a stock pot, a steel bowl that is large enough to sit on top of the stock pot, and a Pyrex measuring glass, you can start distilling now. Put the glass in the center of the pot. Fill the pot with not enough mash to float the glass. Top the pot with the bowl. The condensate will form on the bowl and run towards the bottom center of the bowl, where it will drip into the glass. I was able to distill a few bottles of home made apple wine that I had screwed up some additional flavorings on. It took a couple of hours for 3 or 4 bottles. You'll have to do your own research on the finer details of making this work. I figured it out from first principles in the middle of doing it, so it's not that hard. Hell, people have been distilling for centuries, before they even knew what caused fermentation. Anything pre-Industrial Revolution peasants could do, I should be able to figure out in my modern house full of power tools. I'm not here to teach you how to do this, just inform that it's possible with equipment you likely already have.
- ilamont 6mo ago> I was able to distill a few bottles of home made apple wine that I had screwed up some additional flavorings on. It took a couple of hours for 3 or 4 bottles. My grandfather used to make something called Apple Jack using a method known as freeze distillation. He'd put fermented cider (widely available in rural New York) in a cask and place it out in the barn on a really cold night. The water would freeze, but the alcohol would not and could be tapped. https://easygenie.org/blogs/news/cider-and-apple-jack-an-american-tradition https://easygenie.org/blogs/news/cider-and-apple-jack-an-ame...
- moron4hire 6mo agoSo "the water freezes, the alcohol does not," is not actually how freeze-distillation works. The entire batch freezes solid. You then let the block melt and collect the first meltings. If you start off with a 5% ABV solution, freeze it, and then melt off half of it, you'll end up with two halves where one is maybe 7% ABV and the other is maybe 3% ABV. You will need to reprocess those halves to further concentrate (yes, both halves, you want the alcohol from the 3% portion, too, but you have to do them separately or you're back to where you started) with your level of efficiency being limited primarily by your patience and how cold your freezer can get. Probably not cold enough to get above 20% ABV [0]. One problem with freeze-distillation is that it's more like removing watery alcohol and taking everything else than it is like in boil distillation where you're trying to remove alcoholic water and leave everything else behind. So you still need to make multiple runs to get the ABV up, but boiling will remove impurities, whereas freezing will concetrate them. [0] IDK, that's just a guess, I'm not inclined to look it up. I'm not writing a reference guide here.
- snowwrestler 6mo agoDecisions like this illustrate what a hollow farce the modern federal courts’ approach is to Constitutional governance. To be clear, courts are not supposed to change policy or make new policy, they are just supposed to interpret the law as written. So supposedly this ruling is “not a change in the law” but rather a discovery that actually the law has always been this way but oops, someone read it wrong 158 years ago and literally everyone has read it wrong for the ensuing 158 years. Until now, when an unusually wise and discerning small group of people finally read things the right way. I strongly support the substance of this decision, the ban was stupid overreach. But I also recognize that decades of agreeing with the substance of similarly silly “discoveries” has created a situation where federal judges have essentially infinite leeway to inject their own opinions into the law under cover of “wow, I finally discovered the correct interpretation” (no matter how tortured).
- dangus 6mo agoWith my respect for you as a person, I think your idea here is demonstrating both ignorance and cynicism to the way the law works. This type of interpretation of law is by design. When lawmakers write a law, it’s specifically the judicial branch’s job to interpret it, which is exactly what is happening here. It’s also exactly how you describe by design: legislators can pass laws that say whatever they want. They can pass a law that says that all left-handed people are subject to a 50% income tax even though such a thing would clearly violate the constitution. Legislatures can make illegal laws just by having the votes to do so. The role of the judicial branch is to interpret the constitutionality of laws that are made. Critically, a lawsuit has to challenge a law’s legality and constitutionality in order for it to be interpreted as unconstitutional. There also has to be a harmed party that shows they have standing to make that lawsuit. It’s entirely possible that nobody brought this specific argument to a judge in the last 158 years. It’s also entirely possible that what is acceptable by reasonable people in society has changed over time, which can alter the interpretation of laws. That is normal, expected, and by design. I think comments like yours unnecessarily demonize “activist judges” when this is the designed function of their role.
- dnautics 6mo ago
- talkingtab 6mo agoThe substantial issue is not "unconstitutional" or "revenue", but instead "corporate protectionism". The elephant in the room. There are certainly concerns about home distillation. The question is whether We address those concerns uniformly or whether protections of "tax revenue" is really protection for corporate interests. We live in a time of toxic corporatism. Not all corporations are toxic, but those who prioritize their interest over the common good are indeed toxic. Everyone has the right to use nicotine and smoke cigarettes. You can buy them - if old enough - anywhere. But the use of cigarettes is toxic. As are vapes. But some corporations believe that their wealth is worth all the early deaths and health costs that a lifetime of smoking brings. It is the behavior of these corporations that is the issue here. Those who take the Friedman Doctrine to toxic extreme. The courts have promoted these greedoconomy by enacting United vs FEC and other anti-democratic policies. In contravention of their duty. Corporate interest have become so powerful that we have become a corpocracy rather than a democracy. Jeff Bezos has "Democracy dies in the dark" as the motto of the Washington Post. Democracy dies with the Friedman Doctrine and United vs FEC. Thanks Jeff and to all of the other corporate overlords.