Should people have the right to make their own liquor? I don't know - I'm asking you...

[old mark]

should bootleging be legal?


mark

[proteus_lives]

1. Iffy.

A lot of people died back back in the day from bad batches of bathtub booze.

[MajorChode]

18. That's because people were filtering antifreeze through a loaf of bread and drinking it

There were other equally silly methods for making rubbing alcohol "drinkable". Other unscrupulous 'gin' producers were using various denatured alcohols instead of grain alcohol. These were desperate times and people who were addicted to alcohol resorted to extreme measures to get their fix which often resulted in their death.

Alcohol isn't that hard to produce. Some method of fermentation and a pot still is all you need. Producing really good hooch is another matter, but the basic materials needed are the same. The tricky part is to keep from blowing yourself up as you are basically doing the equivalent of boiling gasoline.

I made homemade hooch when I was a teenager using my moms pressure cooker and a water condenser I lifted from chemistry class. It tasted like all hell, but it did work and it didn't kill me or my friends.

[AngryAmish]

19. Actually, the government was putting poison in liquor

Crazy but true.

[MajorChode]

24. No, that's not true

The article contains some factual information, but the title is extremely misleading and designed to provoke an emotional response.

Alcohol was (and still is) used as an industrial solvent before and after prohibition. The government ALWAYS required alcohol produced for such purposes to be denatured if it was to be sold for non-consumption purposes if the manufacturer wanted to avoid tax rates for consumption alcohol. So the "government" wasn't poisoning the alcohol, the manufacturers were, and this was happening well before prohibition. During prohibition, people were figuring out how to make some denatured alcohol safely drinkable so the government simply tightened the regulations on the method of denaturing that was allowed.

To say that the "government" was poisoning people is extremely misleading. Unscrupulous 'gin' producers were poisoning people and those who were addicted to alcohol were poisoning themselves by using ridiculously stupid home methods to try to make denatured alcohol drinkable. To say that the government was responsible is like saying the government is injecting people with HIV and Hep-C today because they restrict the sale of hypodermic needles (which is actually a much bigger problem than denatured alcohol ever was, BTW).

[Richard D]

2. A lot of people already . . .

. . . legally make their own beer, wine, mead, and other fermented drinks. A kitchen still is easy to put together.
Why not, as long as it's just for personal use.

[rusty quoin]

3. That's right. You can't sell it. But I'll buy it. n/t

[blogslut]

4. There are different classifications

Liquor = Distillation of spirits, which creates a certain amount of ethanol. Too much ethanol is poisonous.

Beer/Wine/Mead/Etc = Fermentation of sugar, water and yeast, which is relatively safe for consumption.

There's perfectly legitimate reasons why liquor licenses are three times as expensive as beer/wine licenses.

[Blecht]

5. Your post makes no sense

Ethanol is ethanol, and yes, it is poisonous. You can poison yourself with beer or wine or bathtub gin. It just takes more of something that is 5 to 15% ethanol to poison yourself than something that is 40 to 50% or more ethanol.

One issue with distilled spirits is that it is easy to get significant amounts of methanol, which is much more dangerous than ethanol and can cause blindness or death in relatively small amounts.

[blogslut]

14. You are correct

And I apologize for not making sense. I am guilty of incorrectness. Methanol.

Thank you for clarifying my incorrectness.

[MajorChode]

21. It's actually not that easy to get harmful levels of methanol

All distilled liquor has some methanol (and other non-ethanol alcohols) in it. Better hooch has less but this is because methanol and some other alcohols result in off tastes, but it takes a much higher level to do you any harm.

If you are fermenting with sugar (as most moonshiners did), it's pretty much impossible to get harmful levels of methanol regardless of what method you use. If you are fermenting with fruit, it is theoretically possible (although highly improbable) to get harmful levels of methanol, but so long as you are throwing out the heads and tails of your batches it's easily avoided. Even shitty homemade hooch has about the same level of methanol as cheap vodka you buy at the liquor store.

Most people who are going to go to the trouble of making hooch at home are after some level of quality and better hooch has lower levels of methanol, but this is true regardless of whether it's made at home or bought at the liquor store. Shitty commercial booze has higher levels of methanol also.

[jtuck004]

6. Might as well be, in small quantities

There are internet sites, videos, even distributors for parts and information. Distilling (different from brewing beer) is banned at a federal level without a permit, as I recall, but your question asked about personal use. As long as you are not selling it or giving away large amounts I can't hardly imagine how you would ever be found.

But it is possible, with a little carelessness, to make something that would hurt someone, so perhaps some safety guidlines with a 10 gal a year limit might be a rational choice. 'Cause I doubt that anyone who wants to try making it is dissuaded by such a restrictive and largely unenforceable federal law.

A discussion about the legality can be found here...

[madokie]

7. I quit drinking when I realized it was but a symptom of another bigger problem

I tried to make both whiskey and beer but was never successful with either. I burped my whiskey and didn't keep my beer at a constance enough of a temperature. Both were the death knell of what I was trying to do.
To answer your question, Yes, a person should own their own destiny

[Jamastiene]

8. Yes, but...

they should be required to take a short class.

They should make sure they learn to throw out the foreshot.

Plus, any possibly toxic additives to fake the bead should be prohibited. I'm not talking about flavors, but crap like embalming fluid, methanol*, manure and bleach.

There should also be enforced guidelines on what materials are used to build the still as well. People should be prohibited from using radiators and other things that might contain toxic contaminants.

A rule about not firing up the still near any forests or inhabited dwellings would be a very good idea too.

Other than those few safety concerns, I see no reason not to legalize it and let people have a go at it.


* Some people add methanol later, and on purpose, to give it more of a kick. There is some methanol (and other crap you don't want to drink) in the foreshot, that's why you throw it out.

[Hannah Bell]

9. you can make it. you just can't sell it.

[Quantess]

10. Does this have anything to do with the tightened regulations on homebrewed beer?

I figure that most people who start a thread on DU must have some rationale, some impetus for posting.

[old mark]

25. I was awake around 2AM, saw a few minutes of a program on

whiskey making in the US, legal and otherwise...I am thinking it should be legal to make anything you want for your own use, but not for sale unless regulated for safety and (sigh) taxed, as if you were selling muffins...

I don't see the need to regulate something for home consumption, but that's just me...I also don't drink alcohol, so I got no dog in this fight.

A lot of this seems like waste of government time and money...


mark

[Luminous Animal]

11. You have the right to make it. You just can't make it in commercially viable quantities...

and/or sell it.

[PavePusher]

12. Yes, should only be regulated as to purity.

Ain if 'twas legal, warn't be "bootleggin'", naw wood it?

[guitar man]

13. Sure why not

As long as you're not selling it and a still explosion doesn't threaten to damage your neighbors property you should be able to have at it. ;)

[LostInAnomie]

15. Yes. Without a doubt.

There's no good reason to keep people from doing it. People are allowed to use much more dangerous tools in their everyday life than a still. The methanol that can cause poisoning and blindness is easy to remove.

The only reason I can think of for keeping it illegal is all the tax money that the government gets.

[eridani]

16. Yes to making; no to selling

You want to sell something, you subject your product to all relevant consumer regulations. If you use it only for yourself, whose bloody business is it?

[Liberation Angel]

17. Absolutely except that: sales need to be at least under standards

of purity and safety.

Why not?

[bemildred]

20. The government should regulate in a way that allows vigorous competition.

It should never prohibit, that just creates black markets, and we know where that leads.

[MajorChode]

22. Making your own hooch is not bootlegging

Bootlegging is the smuggling of alcohol (or other things). The term comes from the prohibition era when people would hide flasks or bottles in their boot legs.

If you are talking about making hooch and selling it illegally, that would be bootlegging, and yes it should be illegal. If you are talking about making hooch for personal consumption, that should not ever be illegal.

[Dr Morbius]

23. Society has every right to prohibit behavior which would be...

...immediately and directly harmful to oneself and/or one's neighbors, and to tax behavior which is indirectly or less immediately harmful. Behavior which is not harmful should not be proscribed or punished by government. Now, if making one's own liquor could be done by the average person safely, it should be legal. If, however, specialized skills are required (and it certainly sounds like it), then government is justified in applying regulations to restrict such activity to those who know what they're doing. Part of the reason governments exist is to protect the people. That's why we have laws; we actually expect our government to protect us from our neighbors at the same time it protects us from foreign threats.

We have a Constitution, which, flawed or not, happens to be the highest law of the land. And the Constitution prohibits importing liquor into states where it is illegal (amendment 21), and that gives the federal government the authority to restrict liquor production even if it was entirely safe. As stills are inherently unsafe and as the product can be poisonous, AND as the Constitution specifically gives the government power over alcohol, the answer is: not in this country. People do, however, have every right to change the Constitution and eliminate that clause of the 21st amendment.

[MajorChode]

26. Even if it can't be done safely it should be legal

The government should not be in the business of being a nanny. If someone is doing something stupid that only harms themselves, more power to them. So I can't agree that society should prohibit such things. Only when they are making a profit from others' stupidity should the government regulate the activity.

Stills might be unsafe, but certainly less so than many other activities, and millions of uneducated and fairly unintelligent people managed to do it for many years without blowing themselves up or getting poisoned.