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

https://nypost.com/2026/04/11/us-news/us-appeals-court-declares-158-year-old-home-distilling-ban-unconstitutional/

by t-3 • 3 months ago

461 315 3 months ago

nypost.com

joshstrange• 3 months ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298

ckemere• 3 months ago

Wasn’t great. Would love a second attempt focused on distilling not individualist v collectivist or immigration.

(Except for relevant connections around sharing your creations with neighbors and/or internationally inspired novel spirits.)

wing-_-nuts• 3 months ago

I am not really a fan of liquor, but I do like the idea of having skills which are universally valuable.

If you air dropped me into a random village in Africa I doubt I could 'code for cassava' but I could almost certainly make a living if I knew how to set up a basic pot still and safely create booze.

ryandamm2• 3 months ago

Missed in the previous discussion: methanol is irrelevant. Grain based ferments have essentially zero methanol.(And methanol risk is a function of its concentration relative to ethanol — the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!) even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol, and it’s not all that well concentrated in a distillation due to azeotropes (which also says that throwing out the heads doesn’t help that much).

Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol. The biggest risk in home distilling is fire.

cucumber37328423• 3 months ago

Was it missed or intentionally downplayed/ignored because people came into the discussion with priors that they were eager to maintain?

Seems like these sorts of "yes it could be unsafe in theory but the reality of physics and incentives make this mostly irrelevant" type things get missed far too often certain parts of the internet to be coincidence.

That said, the fact that it dropped on a weekend did it no favors the first time around.

ch4s3• 3 months ago

Speaking as a brewer, I can tell you that tons of people who should know better actually believe the methanol thing and will even quote some sciency words to make their argument. I think its a case of bad information coming from black market distilling being propagated uncritically. People who know better (licensed distillers) have no incentive to argue against it.

gostsamo2• 3 months ago

As someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.

htx80nerd• 3 months ago

almost every year there is a news story of some Western tourist visiting another country dying from bootleg methanol alcohol

delichon• 3 months ago

the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!

My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps every night and called it his medicine. I thought it was a euphemism but apparently he was actually taking an antidote prophylactically. You can't be too careful. He never once got methanol poisoning.

PyWoody• 3 months ago

Was his doctor Dr. McGillicuddy?

jppope• 3 months ago

Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol

Pretty sure this was a relic of prohibition right? The feds would contaminate ethanol with methanol to keep people from drinking it, but then they hurt a bunch of people and never faced any consequences...

thaumasiotes3• 3 months ago

Pretty sure this was a relic of prohibition right? The feds would contaminate ethanol with methanol to keep people from drinking it

We still do this now. We don't do it because alcohol is illegal, we do it because we levy higher taxes on non-poisonous alcohol, and if someone decides to drink the poisoned alcohol, they deserve what they get.

jbellis• 3 months ago

the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!

I looked this up, it is directionally correct but if you are in a hospital setting they have better options https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482121/

jasonwatkinspdx3• 3 months ago

even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol

Would using pectinase to break it down first reduce the risk?

ryandamm2• 3 months ago

It would make it worse, by making the pectin available to be fermented!

mattmaroon2• 3 months ago

I did mention all of that. When the same topic came up a few days ago.

ciupicri• 3 months ago

even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol

From https://actamedicamarisiensis.ro/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/...

Only 18% of the tested 56 samples met UE regulation regarding methanol content of alcoholic beverages (0.4% in alcoholic drinks containing 40% ethanol). The highest concentration of 2.39% was found in a plum brandy. Plum brandies contained significantly higher amounts of methanol than brandies made from other fruits (0.91 vs 0.52%, p = 0.01)

ChrisArchitect• 3 months ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298

semiquaver4• 3 months ago

  > [Judge Edith Jones] also said that under the government’s logic, Congress could  criminalize virtually any in-home activity

Well, yeah. This is essentially the holding in Wickard v. Filburn, which seems to be in tension with this decision (overturning that would be great but it’s not the role of the circuit courts of appeal to do preemptively)

Joker_vD• 3 months ago

Also, this line is quite funny on its own because while understand what she actually meant, it can be very easily reinterpreted as "only actions committed out-of-home should be crimes; murdered someone in your home? welp, our hands are tied, have a nice day".

amanaplanacanal2• 3 months ago

I think the point is that murder is handled by the states, not Congress. This is about what the federal government can do, not all government.

bcjdjsndon5• 3 months ago

The law is something we made up... Of course you can criminalize anything, that's the whole point of the law!

joshuacc2• 3 months ago

Sure. But by the text of the constitution (the thing we made up) Congress does not have the power to criminalize “anything,” but only things in specific areas. Everything else is left to state law.

bsimpson5• 3 months ago

Do this one next:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)

swiftcoder• 3 months ago

I'd imagine one wants to litigate Wickard v. Filburn in its entirety, rather than just the downstream Gonzales v. Raich

mothballed12• 3 months ago

That would also invalidate the civil rights act, as the (similar) 19th century CRA was already struck down because the 14th amendment binds against discrimination by public not private actors. The reason why the modern CRAs weren't also struck is because they rested on the laurels of Wickard v Filburn declaring the CRA (this time) is about regulating "interstate" commerce.

gbacon5• 3 months ago

You have identified a root perversion. Roscoe Filburn’s wheat did not leave Ohio or even his farm. He didn’t offer it for sale; the wheat was for his own use. It was deemed to “affect interstate commerce” and thus within the scope of the interstate commerce clause. With that, a provision intended to remove power of states to tax each other’s goods and services and promote a free trade zone instead became a mechanism to nitpick and micromanage every last little detail, ossify existing practice, protect large players, give loopholes to the politically connected, and enable mass regulatory capture. It cannot be overturned quickly enough.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/317/111/

jmyeet• 3 months ago

I looked at the actual decision [1] and didn't see Filburn mentioned once. I find that odd. Filburn [2] was a controversial and far-reaching decision that said that the Federal government's ability to regulate interstate commerce extended to people growing wheat on their own property for their own use. The rationale was that by growing wheat you weren't participating in the interstate wheat market. That seems like a wild interpretation to me but it's Supreme Court precedent at this point.

So I found this footnote:

The government does not challenge the district court’s Commerce Clause analysis on appeal. Accordingly, any such argument is forfeited, and we do not address it.

That's interesting. Here's a legal analysis that does bring up the Commerce Clause and Filburn [3]. I really wonder why the government didn't raise this issue.

I knew just from the headline this was going to be a 5th Circuit decision, and it was. This is the same circuit that is perfectly fine to override "state's rights" for other issues.

[1] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-10760-CV0.pd...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

[3] https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/reviving-the-commerce-clause-one...

gbear605• 3 months ago

It's possible that the government thought that if they did try to challenge the Commerce Clause analysis, then the Supreme Court could have struck down Filburn. They'd much rather lose narrowly on this specific case than have Filburn reversed entirely.

bee_rider• 3 months ago

That seems like a pretty over-reaching interpretation. It makes sense in the context (needing to support federal economic control during WW2). But in some sense the economy is a dynamic system that touches and is touched by almost every decision we make. I made a pot of coffee this morning, should the federal government have the ability to decide whether or not I’m damaging the cafe market by not supporting my local cafe?

tyre• 3 months ago

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.

Der_Einzige• 3 months ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this one unironically goes given that Uber/Lyft are fully doing "women only" ride shares now.

Gen Z / Alpha have embraced X-"realism" and fully accept essentialism/reject "intersectionality". They're far more conservative/prudish than millennials, even at their young age.

tt24• 3 months ago

The interstate commerce clause is just craziness. It touches everything and gives justification to regulate nearly anything.

AnthonyMouse• 3 months ago

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation.

Specifically the federal ban on private segregation. The states would still be able to ban it.

Moreover, is that the sort of thing you even want as an ordinary statute dangling precariously off of the commerce clause instead of making it a constitutional amendment to begin with?

tdb7893• 3 months ago

I think much more likely is that it will just be made legal federally sometime in the next decade. Marijuana legalization has majorities across ideologies (https://news.gallup.com/poll/514007/grassroots-support-legal...) and even though the inability to create federal law on something so popular seems like a good case study on how the US system doesn't always do a good job representing it's actual people, it seems to be at a critical mass where it can't be ignored for much longer. Even my parents' friends who are conservative have started doing weed.

dmitrygr2• 3 months ago

You’re probably right, though I dread the possibility. I cannot stand the smell, and one of the best things about moving from California to Texas was avoiding that pervasive smell being everywhere. Negative externalities of personal behavior really need to be handled better in our society. If you want pot to be legal, fine, but only inside your own personal enclosed house.

cogman104• 3 months ago

I think the issue is this isn't seen by politicians as a motivating vote driver. It is, however, a motivation for someone to go out and vote against a politician.

That's ultimately what keeps things like MJ illegal. There are just far too many people that will get upset about it if it were made federally legal.

My state, Idaho, has one such politician that is constantly bringing up and trying to find ways to keep the wacky tabacy out of the state. Including trying to amend the state constitution for it. He does this because he's mormon and the mormons are scared of the devil's lettuce.

bsimpson5• 3 months ago

I don't even smoke - it just offends me deeply to see the Supreme Court rule in a direction that's so blatantly against the Constitution.

dfxm12• 3 months ago

It's been popular (with over 50% popular support) for the last decade though. The major opponents are the alcohol industry, big pharma and the prison industrial complex. Their lobbying efforts are too powerful. We (the people) don't stand a chance.

pdonis3• 3 months ago

In Wickard v. Filburn, back in 1942, they said the same thing for wheat.

thaumasiotes3• 3 months ago

You say that like interstate commerce regulation was more egregious for wheat than it was for marijuana.

But Raich is significantly more egregious: the theory on which the government won Wickard v. Filburn, that private consumption of wheat could affect the interstate market for wheat, doesn't even apply, because there can be no interstate market in a substance that is illegal to trade.

9999000009992• 3 months ago

The problem is if you say the government can’t regulate MJ, then all drug regulations fall apart.

On one hand you should have a right to buy whatever you want at 21( which should be the minimum enlistment age), but I’d be concerned about Billy selling homemade GPLs or whatever.

dylan6043• 3 months ago

The problem is if you say the government can’t regulate MJ, then all drug regulations fall apart.

No, that's not what's being said. If you grow your own plant for personal use, there's no need for the federal government to be involved. If you grow that plant and then try to sell it, then there's some commerce which does fall under some regulation (we'll leave the interstate nuances aside). Having the fed being allowed to say you cannot grow in your house is one step away from saying you are only allowed to perform missionary position (no other positions are allowed) between the hours of 7-8pm, but not at all on Sunday.

davidw• 3 months ago

I’d be concerned about Billy selling homemade GPLs or whatever.

Would it be better with a BSD license?

MichaelDickens• 3 months ago

I believe the original idea of the Constitution was that most things would be regulated at the state level.

This is pretty much already the case with marijuana, where it's illegal at the federal level, but in practice if it's legal in your state then it's legal.

torstenvl2• 3 months ago

The word "interstate" does not exist in the text of the Constitution.

There's arguably some merit to your position, but the argument that some case law is invalid because it doesn't meet the definition of a term defined in other case law is circular and incoherent.

codexb2• 3 months ago

It uses the phrase “regulate commerce between the states” which effectively has the same meaning.

codexb2• 3 months ago

The controlling case is Wickard v Filburn (1942).

A farmer was told he could only grow X acres of feed on his own land; feed that he had no intention of selling and was being fed entirely to his own livestock on the same land.

This seems to overturn that in part, but until Wickard is overturned, and the interstate commerce clause reigned in, there will be weird side effects of it like this.

semiquaver4• 3 months ago

Circuit courts may not overrule Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, this decision purports to rest on the “Necessary and Proper” clause, avoiding Wickard (decided on commerce clause grounds)

bell-cot• 3 months ago

There's a lot of context (behind Wickard v Filburn) which would obviously not apply to anyone distilling for personal consumption:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

laughing_man4• 3 months ago

If they reversed Gonzales v. Raich they'd be under a lot of pressure to reverse Wickard v. Fulburn, which would have such wide ramifications I just don't see the court doing it no matter how warranted.

john01dav• 3 months ago

I suspect that if that ruling was made, then many other drugs being made at home for personal use might become legalized, at least unless states decide to go and ban it too. Note that I am not taking a position here on if that's desirable.

bsimpson5• 3 months ago

That's arguing around the point.

If the law is broken, fix the law. Don't pervert logic to pretend that the existing law dictates what you want is correct.

If Roe v Wade is based on faulty logic, cool - overturn it. But it then becomes Congress's responsibility to replace it with the correct version.

The federal government isn't supposed to police people's personal behavior. "Federal" comes from "federation" as in, the group of states in the union. It's the job of the legislature to write the laws, the job of the judiciary to interpret the laws, and the job of the states to do these things for areas that don't rise to the level enumerated in the Constitution.

When you get it twisted, you end up with this tug-of-war where corrupt politicians try to put biased judges on the bench to mold the rules to their whims without actually having to pass them.

abigail95• 3 months ago

If anyone considers that outcome to be strange - that's how most things are supposed to be regulated. It's doubly specified in the wording of the constitution and 10A.

If one takes the opinion interstate commerce means buying, selling and transporting.

It's also how the current system works. Most drug convictions are based on state law. Federal drug prosecutions are 2% of the total. Every state has its version of controlled substances act.

Nothing much would change at all.

Tangurena24• 3 months ago

Many American treaties (with other nations) prohibit both/either parties from decriminalizing marijuana among other drugs.

Links:

discusses some of the treaties:

https://www2.nycbar.org/pdf/InternationalDrugControlTreaties...

History of illegalization of pot:

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44782

bsimpson5• 3 months ago

It's not about decriminalizing marijuana - it's about the absurd assertion that the federal government can regulate what you do personally because "yadda yadda yadda…interstate commerce!"

tavavex• 3 months ago

These treaties are ancient and mostly irrelevant, especially outside the topic of hard drugs. Unless you're doing harm to the other nations, no one will do anything.

This paper is all the way from 2012. Since its publication, many countries have pushed the limits to far greater lengths than what it talks about. Canada remains a signatory to all the old 60s-80s treaties about drugs, but can you guess what the consequences were when we legalized cannabis in spite of all of them? No one cares about these.

15155• 3 months ago

Treaties can't legally do an end-run around the limits prescribed to the government in the Constitution.

andrewmg2• 3 months ago

Our companion case in the Sixth Circuit tees up the issue:

https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/issues/detail/ream-v-us-dep...

See the opening brief.

nullc3• 3 months ago

Thank you for your work here. Overcoming the argument that a threat of prosecution doesn't create standing is a huge advancement for the cause of freedom-- in light of Babbitt the state never should have been arguing otherwise nor should the lower court have ruled that way but they were and that line of argument is protecting a lot of facially unconstitutional law.

webdoodle• 3 months ago

The entire 10th amendment is basically being ignored because interstate commerce policies and rulings. For that matter, the 1st, 4th and 5th aren't being upheld either.

nradov• 3 months ago

Yes, regardless of that specific case I'm hoping to see a series of Supreme Court decisions that will eviscerate federal government power over internal state affairs and restore the original intent of the 10th Amendment. Long live federalism.

threecheese• 3 months ago

We’ve already seen states try and regulate outside their borders; TX with abortion as one example. How does a weaker federal government protect against this, or do you believe it should not? And how does this not devolve into 50 fiefdoms?

carefulfungi• 3 months ago

It will be an interesting next decade or two on this topic. The federal government increased its power in part to coerce States to end Jim Crow, to broaden personal liberty (like with Roe v. Wade), establish a social safety net, and set minimum environmental protection standards. If we keep seeing federal power being used to compel a reduction in liberalism among the States, the sides supporting "state rights" seem likely to switch.

Adding to that, if the supreme court continues to make realistic federal administration harder by tearing down executive rule making authority and requiring more explicit Congressional rule making (which can't scale in our current system), we'll continue to see less stable and predictable federal regulatory actions - which might further compel the states to step in...

But where will States raise the taxes to make this happen? While the federal government seems willing to do less (in terms of classic liberalism policies), it certainly isn't reducing its spending.

And how will States defend themselves from federal intrusion if they do start to claim more of their power - will we see armed stand-offs between national and state forces?

saltyoldman• 3 months ago

nah, 3d printed firearms next.

bilekas• 3 months ago

That's really strange.. I grow tomatoes at home. Surely that would apply too?

vel0city• 3 months ago

Yes, it would. But there isn't currently a law limiting the amount of tomatoes one can grow especially for personal consumption. In 1938, the Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed. This law tried to control the prices of food by determining quotas for production. Filburn was allowed to grow ~11 acres of wheat. He went and grew 23 acres of wheat, setting aside the overproduction for personal consumption while taking that ~11 acres to market.

dragonwriter4• 3 months ago

Gonzales v. Raich (2005) is a pretty straightforward application of the precedent of Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942) [0] rather than a novel, out-of-the-blue new interpretation of the Constitution.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

GenerWork• 3 months ago

It's been way too long since I've taken a political science course, but does this mean that the ban is struck down for the entire country, or just the area that the 5th Court of Appeals covers?

malfist2• 3 months ago

Prior to this year, the entire country. Today, thanks to SCOTUS shenanigans, it likely only applies to the states involved in the lawsuit, LA. But who knows, hard to keep up with the game of calvinball the SCOTUS is playing.

dcrazy3• 3 months ago

You seem to be confusing precedent-setting decisions with nationwide injunctions.

gmiller123456• 3 months ago

Appeals court decisions generally only apply to their own jurisdiction. But they obviously hold a lot of weight when cited in others.

rtkwe6• 3 months ago

The ruling only has binding precedent in the 5th Circuit, other circuits aren't bound to follow it. Formerly this kind of ruling would come with a nationwide injunction to force the issue but now that those are severely curtailed by the Supreme Court it's only binding to the courts under the jurisdiction of the 5th circuit.

Decisions in other circuits can be very persuasive to other circuits but they're not required to agree the same way a Supreme Court ruling is binding. Circuit splits are moderately common and usually trigger a review by the supreme court if an appeal wasn't filed for the earlier decisions.

rdbl272• 3 months ago

Nationwide injunctions are a very recent legal innovation -- as in, extremely rare until the 2000s, and uncommon until the 2010s.

They were not how this situation was handled for nearly all of the existence of the United States.

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

bluGill• 3 months ago

Only the 5th court of appeals. However if you get caught elsewhere your lawyer will have a good appeal grounds just because your area will need to decide if they agree. If all areas eventually agree it probably never will get to the supreme court. Once several different courts hear this and make a decision if they disagree the supreme court jumps in reading all the logic of everyone below them to try to find a real answer. (It doesn't always work this way, that is the textbook ideal way, but the real world is often different).

Note that unless you think nothing of spending 20 million dollars on lawyers this is probably not something that you want to fight.

jcims3• 3 months ago

Bought and rigged up a 'hand sanitizer plant' about five months into COVID. Populated the thing with thermocouples, load cells and automation with nodered on raspberry pi and a bunch of esp32s flashed with tasmota doing sensing and control. Everything talked over mqtt. Great little architecture and having it highly automated allowed me to focus on the parts that were less easily controlled for.

Dashboard: https://imgur.com/a/so7iZJX

Sanitizer run: https://imgur.com/a/iWDlNfb

Quite a lot of fun actually.

jdc0589• 3 months ago

I dont need to see stuff like this. I have too many hobbies already

jcims3• 3 months ago

I had a load cell under the collection jar that would adjust heat input (via PWM to SCR) to achieve a steady output rate (dW/dt) via outer PID loop, then lower the heat to just below boiling when it got to 700mL to keep it hot but pause output. It'd play a tone, I'd swap in a new jar then resume ignoring the whole thing. (I'm lying, I'd sit glued to that thin little stream of sanitization precursor teeter on breaking up the entire time.)

I stopped messing with it right before starting to measure/vary water supply through the condenser coils so I could more directly manage reflux ratio. Also had planned a float/load cell to calculate specific gravity.

All sorts of little side quests and fun mix of art/science to get into.

You know, if any of those other hobbies start to lose their lustre. :)

(for real though, the nodered on pi controlling a squadron of esp32 workers over wifi/mqtt was really nice, in case you would have any use for such a thing in any domain)

ReptileMan2• 3 months ago

Have you tried putting the sanitizer in ultrasonic bath with charred oak chips? Asking for a friend.

jcims3• 3 months ago

Haha I actually have a bag of chips but never bought a bath large enough to be worthwhile. Started going down the juniper/citrus/rosemary/coriander/etc route instead.

mothballed12• 3 months ago

The post '86 machine gun ban relies on basically the exact principle overturned here.

EgregiousCube• 3 months ago

Yes, it'd be interesting if this gets appealed and the SC gets to take a look at if $0 tax stamps are allowable under the tax and spending clause.

esseph3• 3 months ago

Tally ho!

wellthisisgreat• 3 months ago

Yeah, moonshine is ok but Tommy Gun isn’t? It’s roaring twenties y’all!

gigatexal2• 3 months ago

Big beer head Kavanaugh and Kegseth are probably jumping for joy.

seanw4442• 3 months ago

A win against the over-application of the interstate commerce clause that benefits everybody! Quick, how can we make this partisan?

BenjiWiebe• 3 months ago

Doesn't apply to beer anyways.

gigatexal2• 3 months ago

I admit I posted this to just find a reason to dunk on this admin.

lenerdenator• 3 months ago

It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly. That being said, so long as it's for private or non-profit use, I don't really see the harm here.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 months ago

Probably none. Unless someone is intentionally adding methanol to it.

Zigurd• 3 months ago

This is what actually happened. Methanol was put into industrial ethanol to prevent people making drinkable booze out of it. It was required. It was the prohibition era version of spraying Agent Orange on a cannabis crop.

OkayPhysicist• 3 months ago

Unless they try to make booze from woodchips, they'll be fine. Using fruit or grains or potatoes makes it really hard to end up with enough methanol to be dangerous.

jotux• 3 months ago

It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly.

If you're into home brewing or distilling, the first and only comment people completely unfamiliar with the process say is something about going blind because of methanol. It's disappointing because the process is so rich with history and really interesting problems to solve but the zeitgeist is completely poisoned by prohibition-era propaganda.

dfdsjsdklfjs3• 3 months ago

Yes, it's exhausting.

Methanol is only ever a tiny portion of the fermented output and that's only with grain fermentation. There's nowhere near enough to blind anyone. Fruit or sugar fermentation does not produce any methanol. In that case the unwanted contaminate is ethyl acetate, which is less harmful but still ruins the drink. It gives bad whiskey its burn and causes hangovers.

In both cases the procedure is the same: run the still very slowly at first to increase reflux, pulling off the "foreshots" until contaminants are gone. In the process the still head temps will stabilize as the various low boiling trace compounds are eliminated.

Then one runs the still at a normal rate, collecting heads, middle, and tails, and blending those according to one's skill to get the desired product.

The middle jars are the clearest and cleanest alcohol, but the heads and to an extent tails contain aspects of the flavor and lots of good alcohol. Whatever isn't used for final blending will be collected and recycled back through the still in the next batch.

Properly distilled moonshine is very clean and smooth, like drinking water. No burn and no hangover. If it burns the tongue or gives a hangover, that's because it was not distilled to the highest standards. Most commercially available alcohol isn't.

Badly distilled moonshine is 100% a product of prohibition and would not exist for long in a free market, because drinkers won't tolerate it.

FergusArgyll• 3 months ago

I dunno, I tried making some myself when I was quite young and I can still see. Don't know what I did wrong / right...

ReptileMan2• 3 months ago

Probably zero. The problem with methanol comes when distilling big batches. Then you can have it accumulate in the beginning.

superjan• 3 months ago

Might as well plug this recent Criminal Podcast episode: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-358-the-formula-3-27-2026

TLDL: During prohibition, US government required adding 5% methanol to industrial alcohol, hoping that this would stop bootleggers from selling it as liquor. It was sold anyway, resulting in many deaths.

aqme282• 3 months ago

To be fair, we still add 5-10% methanol to industrial alcohol. But also a bunch of bitterants to discourage use.

mordae• 3 months ago

Are adding it or just distill both because it's cheaper?

caycep2• 3 months ago

how...uh...explosive...are home stills?

dylan6043• 3 months ago

less than a meth lab

jerrysievert• 3 months ago

they're really not. they're generally not a pressure vessel, and even when I've had leaks of ethanol, the fire went out immediately after being removed from heat.

today's home stills are usually plug-in resistance heated chambers with a still head, and are very high quality. my flame-out was from a pot still that was sealed with flour and water, not a modern still.

mynameisash• 3 months ago

I would say: not explosive. I've seen a decent number of setups, and I can think of three areas where you could be concerned with safety (not necessarily where you should be):

1. Most use propane burners (the exact thing you'd use for homebrewing which is already legal and safe, and also similar to what some large turkey fryers use) which can be risky, but some are electric (120v or 240v).

2. Stills are an open system insofar as there is a way for pressure to escape - if you're goofing things up, you might vaporize and not recondense your ethanol (eg, because you have the heat way too high and/or aren't doing a good job of cooling down the vapors), and it's possible for that vapor to start on fire. I've seen it happen, and it's certainly a spectacle but wasn't particularly dangerous.

3. The distillate itself (ie, ethanol) is usually pretty potent, especially the foreshots and heads. Let's say 70%+. Especially as it's coming out, it's still prone to evaporation, and you could have a combustible/explosive risk here, but I've never seen this to be an actual problem.

ravenstine2• 3 months ago

Not explosive, but still a potential fire hazard, especially if a still gets way too hot (coolant system fails) and alcohol vapors escape. The risk becomes extremely minimal when using an electric still.

dfdsjsdklfjs3• 3 months ago

With an electric boiler, risk of fire is essentially zero. But if it did boil over due to cooling system failure, something else in the room (a spark from a relay, etc) might cause an explosion. This is why runs always need to be human attended and monitored, unless it is truly a bulletproof well tested setup that is designed for automated operation.

The ultimate alcohol boiler for small runs is an electric water heater. They have an inert glass coating on the inside, and as long as all plastic is removed and fittings are replaced with lead-free copper then it's safe.

You can match the heating element to the still head and always be assured of running it at exactly its maximum speed. Both heating elements can be used to speed up initial heating of the contents before dropping down to one element for the run.

Get a short, stubby water heater for best results. Then you can set your receiving pot and other stuff on top, like it's a table. Most painless and trouble free distilling experience ever.

Nixon and McCaw wrote a great book on distilling and they also sell a fine copper wool packed column that, at full length with extension, will support 1500W continuous boiler power. The stainless pot they sell as a boiler is good to get started with and works as a great receiving pot for the water heater boiler. If you upgrade the bottom water heater element to 6000W (normally 4500W in most heaters) and run it at 120V (half voltage), that drops it down to 1/4 power or 1500W, so a perfect match.

Tangurena24• 3 months ago

They're a significant fire hazard which is why ATF regulations for stills require them to be located at least 100 feet from a residence.

I live in a city with 2 distilleries. You can smell when they're dealing with the mash because everyone in town can smell it. Also, we all get some black mold (not the really bad one) all over our siding which I think is some byproduct of the fermentation step.

My father worked in the oil business. As a chemical engineer, he was brewing his own moonshine (Poitín [pronounced 'poh-cheen'] in Ireland, Sidiki [means 'friend'] in Arabic language countries) since he was in university. In Saudi Arabia, there were frequent home fires in the western-expatriate communities. Newspapers reported them as "unattended cooking pot" fires. It happened several times per year in the Ras Tanura community they last lived in.

beedeebeedee2• 3 months ago

Thanks for sharing your comment. I was skeptical about your claim that black mold would be a consequence of living near a distillery, but in fact, it is. It is called Whiskey Fungus and is related to the aging of the spirits.

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

cs02rm0• 3 months ago

Crikey. My dad (and just about every other westerner) used to brew sid down the road in Dhahran, I never heard of fires from it.

NoSalt• 3 months ago

I had no idea this was even a law!!! Where do I turn myself in?

andrewmg2• 3 months ago

Reposting my comment from the last thread:

For those wondering, the opinion[0] doesn't address the Commerce Clause power (and Wickard and Raich) becaue the government abandoned that argument. See footnote 5.

The Commerce Clause issue is raised in our other case[1] that's now pending before the Sixth Circuit.

(I argued both cases.)

[0] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-10760-CV0.pd...

[1] https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/issues/detail/ream-v-us-dep...

tomwheeler• 3 months ago

As I understand it, this only applies to the three states in that district, all of which also have statewide bans against it.

My state (Missouri) has the most lax home distilling state laws in the nation, which allow residents to produce up to 500 bottles per year. Well, at least theoretically, since the federal ban takes precedence.

beedeebeedee2• 3 months ago

The best liquor I ever had was by a state police detective who had been home distilling since he was 12. It was made from rye and corn, but tasted like peaches.

I think it is kind of magical to witness the process. I only experimented a few times, and never aged it, so every was very sharp. The best was a sharp brandy made from a bottle of wine I bought. The worst was using a leftover keg of beer, which bittered the copper pipe, so everything after tasted like gin.

I would recommend people try it. You can make one out of copper pipe from a hardware store, a few fittings and a pressure cooker. Be safe, of course, and remember that ethanol is used as a preventative for methanol poisoning :)

01100011• 3 months ago

To me, the refractive index of hot ethanol makes it sparkle like a diamond when leaving the still.

I don't drink anymore, but man I loved distilling. It's like magic.

wiredfool2• 3 months ago

The best I’ve ever done was a double distilled Spanish box wine we picked up for 1eur/l. The wine was undrinkable, but the brandy was sooooo smooth.

Next best was cheap tokaij furmint, distilled once and then mixed back into some of the undistilled wine. Basically the same thing as pineau de charante, but Hungarian and on the kitchen table.

hansvm3• 3 months ago

I'm not sure if it extends to box wines or Spanish wines, but my main complaint of bottom-shelf wines in the US is that they're pure sugar/acid/alcohol with almost no extra flavors and pretty bad distributions of the main components (especially being far too sweet). A small pattern I'm noticing in your description is the presence of sugar in the distillation inputs. Assume I know nothing about distillation; is that relevant?

rpmisms• 3 months ago

I know a few cops who moonshine. It's a natural part of my neck of the woods, and it's wonderful.

shevy-java• 3 months ago

Have a beer for that news!

lofaszvanitt• 3 months ago

Do not drink, fight the calories.

DesiLurker• 3 months ago

they also need to strike down the state laws restricting collection of rainwater on you own property.

Nifty3929• 3 months ago

Great - but this will only until home distilling becomes popular in which case they will find a new reason to prohibit it. A company will produce a home-distilling gizmo with a fancy screen and app to go with it. They will raise some few $M's and have news articles written. Probably there will be a subscription consumable of some kind. Then there will be some bad press and they will make it illegal and the fancy home distiller will become useless do to a lack of software updates.

bcjdjsndon5• 3 months ago

Then there will be some bad press and they will make it illegal

Can't have the workers getting sozzled all day, there's work to be done

esbranson• 3 months ago

The US refused to defend the Commerce Clause, so the circuit court did not consider it, though the Commerce Clause precedent would have likely demanded a different result.

This is circuit split engineering by the administration, meant to allow the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent on the Commerce Clause or whatever.

mark124mj• 3 months ago

Homebrewing beer and wine was illegal at the federal level until 1978, and the sky didn't fall when that changed. Distilling is the same kind of personal-use activity — the main difference is that the law just never caught up. Good to see the courts pushing this forward.

AceJohnny2• 3 months ago

Wrong thread. You probably meant to post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47755629

moron4hire4• 3 months ago

If you have a stock pot, a steel bowl that is large enough to sit on top of the stock pot, and a Pyrex measuring glass, you can start distilling now.

Put the glass in the center of the pot. Fill the pot with not enough mash to float the glass. Top the pot with the bowl. The condensate will form on the bowl and run towards the bottom center of the bowl, where it will drip into the glass.

I was able to distill a few bottles of home made apple wine that I had screwed up some additional flavorings on. It took a couple of hours for 3 or 4 bottles.

You'll have to do your own research on the finer details of making this work. I figured it out from first principles in the middle of doing it, so it's not that hard. Hell, people have been distilling for centuries, before they even knew what caused fermentation. Anything pre-Industrial Revolution peasants could do, I should be able to figure out in my modern house full of power tools. I'm not here to teach you how to do this, just inform that it's possible with equipment you likely already have.

ilamont2• 3 months ago

I was able to distill a few bottles of home made apple wine that I had screwed up some additional flavorings on. It took a couple of hours for 3 or 4 bottles.

My grandfather used to make something called Apple Jack using a method known as freeze distillation. He'd put fermented cider (widely available in rural New York) in a cask and place it out in the barn on a really cold night. The water would freeze, but the alcohol would not and could be tapped.

https://easygenie.org/blogs/news/cider-and-apple-jack-an-ame...

moron4hire4• 3 months ago

So "the water freezes, the alcohol does not," is not actually how freeze-distillation works. The entire batch freezes solid. You then let the block melt and collect the first meltings. If you start off with a 5% ABV solution, freeze it, and then melt off half of it, you'll end up with two halves where one is maybe 7% ABV and the other is maybe 3% ABV. You will need to reprocess those halves to further concentrate (yes, both halves, you want the alcohol from the 3% portion, too, but you have to do them separately or you're back to where you started) with your level of efficiency being limited primarily by your patience and how cold your freezer can get. Probably not cold enough to get above 20% ABV [0].

One problem with freeze-distillation is that it's more like removing watery alcohol and taking everything else than it is like in boil distillation where you're trying to remove alcoholic water and leave everything else behind. So you still need to make multiple runs to get the ABV up, but boiling will remove impurities, whereas freezing will concetrate them.

[0] IDK, that's just a guess, I'm not inclined to look it up. I'm not writing a reference guide here.

ZeWaka• 3 months ago

Done out West in the apple-growing states as well!

snowwrestler• 3 months ago

Decisions like this illustrate what a hollow farce the modern federal courts’ approach is to Constitutional governance.

To be clear, courts are not supposed to change policy or make new policy, they are just supposed to interpret the law as written.

So supposedly this ruling is “not a change in the law” but rather a discovery that actually the law has always been this way but oops, someone read it wrong 158 years ago and literally everyone has read it wrong for the ensuing 158 years.

Until now, when an unusually wise and discerning small group of people finally read things the right way.

I strongly support the substance of this decision, the ban was stupid overreach. But I also recognize that decades of agreeing with the substance of similarly silly “discoveries” has created a situation where federal judges have essentially infinite leeway to inject their own opinions into the law under cover of “wow, I finally discovered the correct interpretation” (no matter how tortured).

dangus• 3 months ago

With my respect for you as a person, I think your idea here is demonstrating both ignorance and cynicism to the way the law works.

This type of interpretation of law is by design.

When lawmakers write a law, it’s specifically the judicial branch’s job to interpret it, which is exactly what is happening here.

It’s also exactly how you describe by design: legislators can pass laws that say whatever they want. They can pass a law that says that all left-handed people are subject to a 50% income tax even though such a thing would clearly violate the constitution. Legislatures can make illegal laws just by having the votes to do so. The role of the judicial branch is to interpret the constitutionality of laws that are made.

Critically, a lawsuit has to challenge a law’s legality and constitutionality in order for it to be interpreted as unconstitutional. There also has to be a harmed party that shows they have standing to make that lawsuit.

It’s entirely possible that nobody brought this specific argument to a judge in the last 158 years. It’s also entirely possible that what is acceptable by reasonable people in society has changed over time, which can alter the interpretation of laws. That is normal, expected, and by design.

I think comments like yours unnecessarily demonize “activist judges” when this is the designed function of their role.

dnautics• 3 months ago

You're missing the philosophical principle that the more laws you have the wider the breadth of the domain that laws can interpret becomes, and that laws generally accrue. This is not by design, and there are jurisdictions which explicitly curtail this by having sunset laws.

LastTrain3• 3 months ago

“They can pass a law that says that all left-handed people are subject to a 50% income tax even though such a thing would clearly violate the constitution”

I think that would be constitutional, but in conflict with other laws.

mothballed12• 3 months ago

The overwhelming use of civil instead of common law by the world would beg to differ that there is any consensus on this.

I agree with a lot of the advantages of common law that can sort of legislate through precedent. But it does make it basically impossible to be on notice of what is illegal and what isn't, particularly in the modern world where not only are there hundreds of thousands of law and thousands of pages of federal "regulations" bound as law but you also have to know all the precedent and asterisks to the interpretations to know what is actually illegal.

buckle8017• 3 months ago

The decision 158 years ago that an activity could be banned through taxation was obviously in error.

marcusverus2• 3 months ago

The power of the judiciary to "interpret" the constitution was a huge chink in the armor of the Constitutional order. A handful of unelected judges can effectively amend the constitution via simple majority, but can only be "overruled" by the people if there is extremely broad opposition (as a constitutional amendment requires 2/3 of both houses)--which is, of course, a total inversion of the democratic-republican principles which brought our country into being. The practical effect is that, while the people have some limited democratic control over the government, control of the state has been wrested away from them by the Judiciary. This was fine so long as the Judiciary saw themselves as honest arbiters of the constitutional order, but the moment the Judiciary began to see themselves as architects rather than mere arbiters, the constitutional order was at an end.

mothballed12• 3 months ago

The check elected officials have on this is to pack the courts. This is what FDR threatened to do to get through (at the time unconstitutional, now magically "not") a bunch of popular legislation.

yieldcrv5• 3 months ago

I don't think it does demonstrate that at all, it would demonstrate that if there was a prior court challenge were it was found to be constitutional. but there was not, this was the first court challenge, hundreds of millions of people, maybe over a billion over the last 150 years never thought to take it to federal court

one person finally did, and this decision matches what a lower court found in 2024, this is a pattern of consensus actually. the government (executive and legislative branch) is losing, while the judicial branch has complete consensus

this would actually be the worst example of anxiety about a fictionally different modern federal court, and seems more so to be an example of not knowing how they work at all

one suggestion that I've seen in other democracies is that a law passed by the legislature can be sent for constitutional review immediately by the President, instead of simple sign or veto. In the US system, all laws can be passed and it takes someone challenging it, and of the people that challenge the law they have to find a way to have "standing" - as in, prove how they were affected by the law - which is a huge risk if the law has a penalty you have to risk being affected by. That's how we have a massive nearly infinite set of laws that have never been challenged.

talkingtab• 3 months ago

The substantial issue is not "unconstitutional" or "revenue", but instead "corporate protectionism". The elephant in the room.

There are certainly concerns about home distillation. The question is whether We address those concerns uniformly or whether protections of "tax revenue" is really protection for corporate interests.

We live in a time of toxic corporatism. Not all corporations are toxic, but those who prioritize their interest over the common good are indeed toxic. Everyone has the right to use nicotine and smoke cigarettes. You can buy them - if old enough - anywhere. But the use of cigarettes is toxic. As are vapes. But some corporations believe that their wealth is worth all the early deaths and health costs that a lifetime of smoking brings.

It is the behavior of these corporations that is the issue here. Those who take the Friedman Doctrine to toxic extreme. The courts have promoted these greedoconomy by enacting United vs FEC and other anti-democratic policies. In contravention of their duty.

Corporate interest have become so powerful that we have become a corpocracy rather than a democracy.

Jeff Bezos has "Democracy dies in the dark" as the motto of the Washington Post. Democracy dies with the Friedman Doctrine and United vs FEC. Thanks Jeff and to all of the other corporate overlords.

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

Related Stories