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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

#111

Post by [deleted] »

mattmaroon wrote: post #13
d--b wrote: post #3

I always thought the reason was that badly distilled drinks were dangerous.

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…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by razakel »

ghastmaster wrote: post #37
retrac wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home 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…

>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 t…

>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".

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

#113

Post by leni536 »

avidiax wrote: post #50
akersten wrote: post #40

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. 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…

You can't distill out pure methanol, as at the boiling point of methanol ethanol also has some vapor pressure, so you distill a mix. However above that boiling point you distilled out all methanol (with a mix of ethanol), and the remaining ethanol should be free from methanol.

This also matches what happens when distilling ethanol from water. You can't distill pure ethanol, but you csn distill ethanol-free water afterwards.

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

#114

Post by lostlogin »

RealityVoid wrote: post #97
lostlogin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads as authenticity Eastern European. A colleague from the region explained to me that if the booze is cheap, you just make sure you drink plenty of good booze too. Blocks the metabolic pathway.

Yes, that is true. But almost no one really does this, cutting the head is what is usually done and I have never heard of someone poisoning themselves with homemade țuică. It's fine, really. It seems USians are convinced homemade hooch will blind you without having absolutely no personal experience with it.

Here in New Zealand it’s legal, and I trade my honey for honey gin.

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

mattmaroon wrote: post #15
smackeyacky wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 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

That’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.

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by dmantis »

angry_octet wrote: post #86

As 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 Constitut…

There are many hobbies with which people can kill themselves if they don't understand what they are doing. I don't see how brewing is different. A grown-up person has rights and bears the consequences of negligence and that's totally normal, that's what freedom is.

As long as the product is not sold outside but for personal consumption, it must be legal to make without any certifications.

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

#117

Post by jjtwixman »

eru wrote: post #89
jjtwixman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to have worked rather well though.

If it works so well, perhaps delegate authority even more centrally. To the UN or so?

I mean you said it yourself, it's a compromise. Giving the states free reign to terrorise their populations didn't work out so great. The relatively strong federal government of more recent times however seems to have worked out not so badly. Now there's a retarded paedohpile in office starting random wars and of course all bets are off. The US political system actually probably is quite shit, but I don't think it's about centralisation vs decentralisation, but electing an unaccountable king every 4 years is just a retarded and easily exploitable system.

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

#118

Post by dr_dshiv »

donatj wrote: post #107
angry_octet wrote: post #86

As 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 Constitut…

The antidote to methanol is just ethanol. If you find yourself drinking something untrustworthy you can at least cure yourself with a chaser of an equivalent amount of everclear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_toxicity#Treatment

you are saving lives, friend.

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

#120

Post by freedomben »

dmantis wrote: post #116
angry_octet wrote: post #86

As 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 Constitut…

There are many hobbies with which people can kill themselves if they don't understand what they are doing. I don't see how brewing is different. A grown-up person has rights and bears the consequences of negligence and that's totally normal, that's what freedom is. As long as the product is not sold outside but for personal consumption, it must be legal to make without any certifications.

Agree completely, though sadly we are a very long way from this. In a lot of places it is literally illegal and prison-time just for growing certain naturally-occurring plants for purely personal use. I don't see how this ruling helps with that at all though
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