The arguments against home distilling usually fall into the following categories: 1) it’s dangerous to make, 2) it’s deadly to drink, and 3) the government’s wallet will be hurt. However, these arguments for preventing home distilling legalization are completely disputable:
1) Distilling isn’t necessarily any more dangerous than pumping gas at a service station or cooking on a stove top — the same principles apply. Sure, an explosion can occur if distillate comes in contact with an open flame. But similar to pumping fuel for their car, people just shouldn’t be smoking cigarettes while distilling alcohol.
New Zealand legalized distilling in 1996 and the instances of still related explosions and fires are tracked. Compared with household fires started from cooking accidents, according to the statistics distilling is safer than frying up some bacon and eggs.
2) Even if home distillers somehow forgot to take out the nasty smelling and awful tasting foreshots they would become drunk and pass out long before they would be able to consume enough methanol to sustain any serious injury. By the way, home brewed beer has methanol in it as well. We just don’t concentrate it by separating the water from the other constituents in our beer. Even jacking beer or cider by freeze distillation (i.e. Eisbock, Apple Jack), won’t concentrate the methanol and fusel oils normally removed via heat distillation to a point of methanol poisoning. It’s not any more dangerous than drinking an entire gallon of hard apple cider. Not advisable, but it’s not going to kill you. The same qty of crap is in both. All you’ve done is removed water. Shot glasses are small for a reason. Consume responsibly.
People were/are injured from moonshine by drinking poorly made products often with crude equipment or unscrupulous additives. With today’s safety features, home stills are safe to operate and the product is safe to consume if principles are properly applied. I had a buddy who blew the lid off his pressure fermenter because he didn’t have a pressure release or spunding valve installed. He overlooked tried and true principles and replaced it with Dumb@$$.
3) I think the real reason home distillation is illegal is in 2020, state and local governments collected ~$7.5 billion in alcohol taxes. If distilling would be made legal, the argument goes that people would just distill their own spirits at home and would spend less or no money on taxed alcohol. I disagree.
As fun, simple, and educational distilling spirits at home might be, like Homebrewing few would actually take up the sport for the same simple reason there are so few home brewers compared to beer drinkers: We live in an instant feedback society. Making bread, pizza, BBQ, beer, pickles, grow a garden, paint the house, or mow the lawn takes time and effort. Today’s society pays for the convenience of someone else to do time consuming tasks. There will be very little to no revenue lost because the average consumer won’t take the time to make their own.
Topic: Home Distilling (Read 462 times)
