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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

#251

Post by eudamoniac »

magicalhippo wrote: post #91
somat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so expensive? High vice taxes?

Yes. Wine with between 10-15% alcohol by volume[1] currently has a tax of 5,41 NOK per percent ABV per liter. So a typical 0.75 liter bottle of 12% ABV wine gets a tax of 12*0.75 = 53.19 NOK, or about $5.6 / €4.8. For booze above 22% ABV the tax is currently 9.23 NOK. So a 0.7 liter bottle of 40% ABV Whiskey or similar would get 258 NOK or $27 / €23 in tax. And on top of that comes the usual 25% VAT, and high wages t…

Fuck's sake. I've bought some decent bottles of whisky all in for less than $27.

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

#252

Post by eudamoniac »

mattmaroon wrote: post #199
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And contrary to lore, mass spectrometry shows that the idea that methanol comes off the still first (meaning that if you collected the early results, called heads, and drank them, you might get too much) is false or at least drastically oversimplified. This is wrong. The boiling point of methanol is 65C vs ethanol at 78C. Methanol will come out first from distillation.

If it works that way, why doesn’t ethanol come off the still entirely and then water? There’s over a 20 degree gap between their boiling points and yet anyone who has ever distilled will tell you that they see a mix that’s at least 20% water at the very start. (You measure as you go along.) This is still well below the azeotropic mix too. And, later on in distillation, when you’re much closer to the boiling point of…

You're flipping the ingredients here. The vapor will contain some amount of the liquid that is NOT at boiling point. When you distill ethanol, the vapor contains some water. When you distill methanol, the vapor contains some ethanol. The output contains both.

That says nothing about the remains of the input. When removing methanol we are trying to get it out of the input side. So while the output will indeed contain both, that doesn't mean the input will still have any methanol.

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

#253

Post by dlcarrier »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #209
mikewarot wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If laws were written by engineers, all sums of money would be expressed relative to median income. If laws were written by engineers, money would hold its value, and the laws wouldn't require constant adjustment.

You and I must know different engineers.

If all laws were written by the engineers I know, they'd contain loopholes so they could do whatever they want.

    * Houses must follow building code, except for subparagraph C part II.

    * Vehicles must obey speed limits, except for subparagraph C part II.

    …

    * Somewhere buried in subparagraph C part II: Any owner, occupier, or user of property, real or physical, can file a writ of "I don't want to" with the county, which shall be automatically accepted, exempting said owner, occupier, or user from regulations.

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

#254

Post by eudamoniac »

mattmaroon wrote: post #240
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, I’m not. I’m pointing out that distillation doesn’t work how you were told it does in middle school which is the reflexive argument people are making. The argument that all the methanol comes out early because it has a lower boiling point is simply incorrect. Mass spectromery proves it. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.3c00627 When you get into distilling you learn pretty fast that a lot of what yo…

Need a non-paywalled link to glean anything here, because the abstract does not mention the distillation method. Were they even trying to boil off the methanol first?

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

#255

Post by rayiner »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #221
rayiner wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was marketing that was installed on the statute of liberty in 1903, when the U.S. was already fully developed. It doesn’t reflect the original intent at all.

It was written in 1883, as part of fundraising for the pedestal. It might not reflect precisely the "original intent" of the statue, but it's very much in line with all of the other context.

The statute of liberty was from a french admirer of the constitution and abolitionist. It was conceived at a time when Napoleon III had declared himself emperor. The connection to immigration was a completely unrelated glomming-on.

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

#256

Post by btreecat »

angry_octet wrote: post #243
btreecat wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really can't. First, if they are not using anything with pectin in it, there isn't a significant amount of methanol at all worth measuring. Second, if they did use fruit skins in the fermentation stage, there still isn't enough methanol to compete with the ethanol, (which is the cure to methanol poisoning) with out intentionally poisoning the batch. You shouldn't push such FUD.

> ethanol, (which is the cure to methanol poisoning) Now that is completely incorrect. There is no way to prevent metabolism of methanol once it has been ingested, ethanol just competes with it for metabolisis. Alcohol fermented from fruit byproduct is extremely common in many cultures. It is asinine to think that only grain will be used once this is legalised. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/methanol-poisoning-t…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_toxicity

"Methanol poisoning can be treated with fomepizole or ethanol.[19][22][23] Both drugs act to reduce the action of alcohol dehydrogenase on methanol by means of competitive inhibition. Ethanol, the active ingredient in alcoholic beverages, acts as a competitive inhibitor by more effectively binding and saturating the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme in the liver, thus blocking the binding of methanol. Methanol is excreted by the kidneys without being converted into the toxic metabolites formaldehyde and formic acid. "

So completely correct.

>Alcohol fermented from fruit byproduct is extremely common in many cultures. It is asinine to think that only grain will be used once this is legalised.

Not what I was saying at all. You could use grain, or sugar (cheapest and easiest). That said, the levels are not significantly high enough to poison you unless someone is trying to poison you. It's not happening when making alcohol to drink.

From the link you posted

>Administering patients with controlled doses of either ethanol or fomepizole is standard practice.

Again, what I said is completely correct, your own source confirmed it.

Secondly, also from the article

>Bootleg brewers also sometimes add enough methanol to informally produced spirits to cause serious health effects.

Again, as I said, someone intentionally trying to poison you.

And here's an actual study

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402...

>Both commercial and home-distilled alcohols exhibited methanol concentrations remarkably below the 0.35 % limit for brandy set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

You're simply misinformed.

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

#257

Post by btreecat »

bluGill wrote: post #168
reisse wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I live in a country with both huge distillation culture and significantly non-zero number of methanol poisonings, and they never happen from home brewing. It's really hard to homebrew/distill methanol in a quantity enough to poison you in an otherwise ethanol solution (which acts as an antidote). It's so rare this thread is literally the first time I've heard about possibility of methanol poisoning from homebre…

this is wrong and dangerious! Home brewing very well can cause methanol poinonings. It doesn't happen often because the process is complex enough to get settup that anyone likey talk to someone (or read a book) and get the simple process to avoid it (throw out the beginnigs of each batch since the harmful stuff comes first).

That's incorrect. The methanol bonds tighter to water and doesn't distill out clean in the heads.

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

#258

Post by btreecat »

hilbert42 wrote: post #222
reisse wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I live in a country with both huge distillation culture and significantly non-zero number of methanol poisonings, and they never happen from home brewing. It's really hard to homebrew/distill methanol in a quantity enough to poison you in an otherwise ethanol solution (which acts as an antidote). It's so rare this thread is literally the first time I've heard about possibility of methanol poisoning from homebre…

Homebrewing isn't the issue per se. Methanol from fruit and stuff people normally ferment is pretty negligible. The problem happens when the spirit is sold and broken down/stretched to go futher by middlemen by adding cheaper MeOH. Unfortunately, that has happened enough times with people dying for it to be a problem. Seems some societies are more susceptible to these extremely dangerous ripoffs than others.

Isn't that an issue with alteration and distribution rather than risk during production for self consumption and could happen for just about any product?

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

#259

Post by btreecat »

Spooky23 wrote: post #189
reisse wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I live in a country with both huge distillation culture and significantly non-zero number of methanol poisonings, and they never happen from home brewing. It's really hard to homebrew/distill methanol in a quantity enough to poison you in an otherwise ethanol solution (which acts as an antidote). It's so rare this thread is literally the first time I've heard about possibility of methanol poisoning from homebre…

One leads to the other. Once you have distillation everywhere, bootlegging follows. This was literally the basis of one of the first conflicts of the early federal government.

[dead]

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

#260

Post by btreecat »

cubefox wrote: post #195
freedomben wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.) Why should the government be in the business of reducing consumption? Do you believe alcohol to be immoral, and the government's role to be enforcing morality?

Do you believe heroin is immoral? I don't. I think it's dangerous, which is bad, and it causes addiction, which reduces freedom more than banning it.

But you're out here trying to ban spoons thinking it's going to reduce access to heroin
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