US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

I get to tell my neighbor he can stop making moonshine in the shed now. Dale, thank you for being the reason ALDI's capped how much sugar you could buy.

You're out there somewhere, Beer Baron, and I will find you.

Huzzah! Let the golden era of homemade spirits officially begin! (As opposed to all the hobbyists working in "secret")

[Who wants a bathtub Mint Julep?](https://youtu.be/EVsLaFcFxkY?si=cknl4c5ROR-oDYqj)

Guess all those moonshiners were right all along. The Duke boys are vindicated.

Widespread gambling, homemade alcohol, robber barons controlling society, geopolitical instability that could lead to world war…what year is it again?

I don’t think it was widely implied that home distillation should be illegal. Selling it should be though because of regulations and safe-guarding against improper brewing.

Now that you can’t afford a house, we’ll say it’s ok to make hootch in your house

There’s a lot of misinformation in this thread. Methanol isn’t some big hidden danger in normal home distillation. It mostly comes from pectin, which is found in fruit. If you’re making a grain or sugar wash (like whiskey, vodka, gin or rum), you’re producing basically negligible amounts. You’ll get more methanol from a glass of wine than from a bottle of properly made spirits. Even if you are making brandy, it's still really hard to get enough methanol in it to blind you. Also, methanol isn’t something you can just “cut out” with removing the for-shots. It’s present across the whole run. The early fractions have slightly more, but not in a way where a simple pot still can separte it out completely. The for-shots are tossed because they contain high amounts of Acetone, Acetaldehyde and Ethyl acetate, not methanol. Most of the horror stories (especially Prohibition) come from a totally different issue, industrial alcohol being deliberately denatured with methanol. People tried to redistill it, couldn’t remove the methanol, and got poisoned. Same thing with modern cases: it’s almost always contaminated or intentionally adulterated alcohol, not normal distillation.

Turtle fact of the day: did you know that turtles can breathe out of their butts? f*** AI / LLMs, greedy tech bros suck

Idk how to prove it, but this is a war time indicator

Kaboom! Must’ve been that bean I had for breakfast

I have a neat story! I used to work at a homebrew shop in Montana, and we thought about bringing in distillation equipment. We literally called the ATF, and asked about the legality of selling "stills" and do you know what their response was? I shit you not: "Thats not our department".

Well, there goes the rest of my liver

And just like that the Great Depression is back!!

Unfortunately my home isn't 158 years old, so I guess it's still banned for me, darn.

This depression is going to be wild.

Sadly, A little too late for Popcorn Sutton.[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Sutton)

I'll get you Beer Baron!

Wonder how many people will blow up their own home trying this one simple trick.

I've been working in alcohol production for 10 years. I hate being around stills because in the wrong hands they can turn into pipe bombs. I encourage people to do a lot of research before making this a hobby. If you're local distillery or community college offers courses please take some. People can be seriously injured or die operating stills.

Bathtub gin is back on the menu boys!

Let the 4077th MASH gin still projects COMMENCE.

Outright banning it was always silly and unconstitutional. But it should still be regulated, distilling can be very dangerous if you do it wrong. Exploding stills are not unheard of. There should at the very minimum be safety requirements for home stills.

So does this mean the Moonshiners show is now just a show about a bunch of mountain men who make alcohol for a living and aren’t sneaking around?

We get a moon flyby and moonshine in the same week!

Cool! It was definitely the law that was stopping me from making moonshine before. 

Gosh, all this time I was just distilling 99.99% ethanol in my garage from easily accessible sources for fuel purposes and then storing it in charred oak bourbon barrels until it was time to use it. Now I can actually make alcohol for consumption? What a treat.

That's nice, unfortunately my home is nowhere near 158 years old.

Popcorn Sutton approves

A lot of focus here on booze. I'm just fascinated by the crack in the enormous mountain of jurisprudence on the Commerce Clause this represents.

Wow I’m actually wearing a Popcorn Sutton shirt today

Big day for hillbillies

Huge for biofuels. People don’t even know.

Backyard Bourbon here we come!

This shit was only enforced if you fucked up somehow anyways lol.

You’re out there somewhere Beer Baron, and I’ll find you. ^(No, you won’t)

From the UK here, can someone explain what was banned before then? I thought homebrewing was a biggish thing in USA, watched loads of YouTube videos on it when I got into the hobby years ago.

No jobs, legal gambling, and homemade hooch. The republicans are crafting their ideal electorate/ prison population.