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

theguardian.com

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

#41

Post by akersten »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #34
InvertedRhodium wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that decants below 78.4C is going to have methanol in it, I usually separate out the first 100ml or so that decants after 78.4C to play it safe. I've been doing it for about 20 years, no poisoning cases yet. Home distillation has been legal in NZ since 1996.

This doesn’t make sense. Whether or not you have methanol depends on what you are distilling from. Distillation doesn’t create methanol and many sources of ethanol contain negligible methanol. TBH, your assertion reads like chemistry word salad. It doesn’t parse.

It seems to parse just fine? They create some unknown mixture of methanol/ethanol (who knows what the ratio is, who cares, like you said, depends what you're making it from) and then raise it past the boiling point of methanol, throwing away everything that comes over while still under the boiling point of ethanol. It sounds like basic distillation to me.

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

#42

Post by mothballed »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #14
ghastmaster wrote: post #7

The 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.

The 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 offici…

Sounds similar to the 'tax' power making it impossible to buy a tax stamp for a post 86 machine gun.

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

#43

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

nik282000 wrote: post #36
mattmaroon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’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 b…

Huh, I thought if you held the outlet of the still at 79c until you stopped getting distillate then you could be reasonably sure that you took out most of the the majority of the methanol.

You can. I think parent is using some technicality of how distillation is not going to get you to 100.0000% purity.

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

#45

Post by ghastmaster »

pseingatl wrote: post #31

Distillation 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.

>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.

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

#46

Post by mothballed »

dustractor wrote: post #44

Great. Now make it legal to grow ANY type of flower.

That (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.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

bobtheman wrote: post #8
fzeindl wrote: post #5

In 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.

I 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]

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

#49

Post by AngryData »

akersten wrote: post #40
mattmaroon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a myth. I’ll have to see if I can find the papers I read but mass spectrometry has shown that methanol comes out throughout the entire process. The idea that things come out at their boiling temperature is a drastic oversimplification. Methanol is really only present in significant amounts in fruit mashes because it comes from fermentation of pectin. Grain or sugar-derived alcohol barely has any at a…

> This is actually a myth. I’ll have to see if I can find the papers I read but mass spectrometry has shown that methanol comes out throughout the entire process. The idea that things come out at their boiling temperature is a drastic oversimplification. Please do find those papers! They may be describing a radical new chemistry that I'm not familiar with. To be clear - methanol boils at 64C and ethanol boils at 78C.…

From what I understood ethanol and methanol form an azeotrope and boil together at a mixed temperature. And the going blind stuff is just prohibition propaganda both to make home distilled alcohol seem dangerous and to scapegoat the fact that the government was actively poisoning "industrial" ethanol.

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

#50

Post by avidiax »

akersten wrote: post #40
mattmaroon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a myth. I’ll have to see if I can find the papers I read but mass spectrometry has shown that methanol comes out throughout the entire process. The idea that things come out at their boiling temperature is a drastic oversimplification. Methanol is really only present in significant amounts in fruit mashes because it comes from fermentation of pectin. Grain or sugar-derived alcohol barely has any at a…

> This is actually a myth. I’ll have to see if I can find the papers I read but mass spectrometry has shown that methanol comes out throughout the entire process. The idea that things come out at their boiling temperature is a drastic oversimplification. Please do find those papers! They may be describing a radical new chemistry that I'm not familiar with. To be clear - methanol boils at 64C and ethanol boils at 78C.…

I suspect that the vapor of the mash is always a mix of the components, and even above the boiling point of methanol, it still produces a mixed vapor. At room temperature, all of the components produce some vapor and will evaporate. This continues as the temperature rises.

It's not clear to me that simple distillation of a methanol/ethanol mixture can produce either pure ethanol or pure methanol at any point, just as it's impossible to distill ethanol and water to pure ethanol (absolute alcohol) if the water is above a small percentage of the mixture.

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