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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

#281

Post by tempaccount5050 »

dlcarrier wrote: post #253
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's literally how it works right now.

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

#282

Post by wheels »

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…

Batches under a certain size don't have a problem with methanol poisoning. You need a large enough batch that you get a high percentage of methanol in the "heads". Usually for batches under 100L, it's not an issue. A sensible policy would be limiting "home" distillation to 50L batches (which is a lot of booze; hard to argue you need more than that in a batch for private consumption).

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

#283

Post by margalabargala »

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 not how that works. You're repeating a myth that was started by the intentional addition of methanol during prohibition.

There's no way to produce a dangerous amount of methanol at homebrew scales unless you are trying to do so.

Methanol does not all come out in the heads. It is present across the whole distillation run. There's just not enough of it to be dangerous.

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

#284

Post by margalabargala »

btreecat wrote: post #258
hilbert42 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes exactly.

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

#285

Post by LaffertyDev »

eru wrote: post #274
dmantis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't see how brewing is different. It's very lucrative to tax brewing and even more distilling.

You cannot sell homebrew (and presumably won't be able to sell distilled beverages) without a very expensive license. Homebrewers (of all forms) are generally very aware of this when they get into the hobby. Even "cute" forms of recompensation are heavily frowned upon. The most I've seen are to "pay for the glass itself".

All that is to say, the government is not harvesting tax from homebrew.

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

#286

Post by thebigspacefuck »

robbomacrae wrote: post #169
gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest here: there is no benefit to alcohol (for example wine) and is only detrimental. As a true French person who does want the government paying for "stupid shit" you need to call for the end of wine making and its consumption. But I guess that might be the debate line of which you spoke.

"Let's be honest here: there is no benefit to alcohol (for example wine) and is only detrimental." - That is a pretty extreme statement and easily falsifiable. There are many studies a quick google away that show a much more nuanced take ie [0] and [1]. But the strongest evidence is our most successful societies and civilizations have been intentionally drinking alcohol for ~10000 years [2]. If it was only detrimenta…

Your fist link is to “10 skinny cocktails”. As far as I know there is no safe amount of alcohol.

https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

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

#287

Post by bluGill »

margalabargala wrote: post #283
bluGill wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not how that works. You're repeating a myth that was started by the intentional addition of methanol during prohibition. There's no way to produce a dangerous amount of methanol at homebrew scales unless you are trying to do so. Methanol does not all come out in the heads. It is present across the whole distillation run. There's just not enough of it to be dangerous.

It is not a myth. It might be overblown (in the typical home batch sizes there probably isn't enough methanol to worry about anyway.) However methanol will start to boil out first and so the head will have measurable more methanol than latter - this is the basic physics of distillation. You won't get all the methanol out by discarding the head (again this is how distillation works), but you will get an elevated portion.

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

#288

Post by busymom0 »

pcrh wrote: post #177
frankzander wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol is always poisonous (but mixed with methanol quite a bit more poisonous ) :-)

Ethanol is a naturally occurring substance, humans and many animals have specifically evolved ways of processing it. In moderate doses it does no harm. It's almost impossible to avoid ingesting some alcohol during the course of a natural diet, and that includes if you avoid fermented food such as bread, let alone beverages deliberately brewed to be alcoholic.

Isn't the problem of poisoning caused by Methanol and not Ethanol?

Gemini says this:

"Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, spirits) meant for consumption. While ethanol is safe for moderate consumption, methanol is extremely toxic and can cause poisoning, blindness, or death, even in small amounts."

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

#289

Post by hansvm »

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…

Small-scale distillation is fine. Ten bottles of wine have 500mg of methanol, which is mostly fine for most people even if it all ends up in the same shot -- which it won't; it'll be split between 1-2 750ml bottles even if you do absolutely nothing to remove it from the ethanol.

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

#290

Post by wing-_-nuts »

gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #138
vladvasiliu wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and I, as someone living in France and paying a hefty part of my income to fund public healthcare, understand that the state would want to limit people doing stupid shit costing the society a fortune in fixing them (though, of course, this just creates a debate on where to draw the line). But isn't the point of non-socialized healthcare, like in the US, that you pay for care out of pocket? Or maybe via your in…

Let's be honest here: there is no benefit to alcohol (for example wine) and is only detrimental. As a true French person who does want the government paying for "stupid shit" you need to call for the end of wine making and its consumption. But I guess that might be the debate line of which you spoke.

There has been this societal whip lash where alcohol has gone from being 'good for you' to being 'poison' over the last few years.

While it is true that any amount of alcohol is technically bad for you, 'the dose makes the poison'. Drinking in moderation is relatively harmless. For example, 2 drinks / day raises one's risk of colon cancer by 6%, but that's a relative increase on top of one's ~ 4.4% lifetime risk (which also includes drinkers, so we could be double counting). So you're increasing lifetime risk to 4.7%. Do it for all cancers and you're likely increasing your total risk of death by ~ 1%. Things really only go exponential beyond ~ 20d/wk

So you have to ask yourself, is your enjoyment of the occasional beer worth the very low increased risk? For myself, the answer is yes, but I would not dream of making that decision for someone else, and I object to the government doing it for me.

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