Why is the US so opposed to home distilled spirits?

The explosions and accidental poisoning.

It is quite easy to ‘overdo’ it and to do it wrong.
If you do it wrong, you end up with methanol in your liquid, which can kill you or make you blind. And if you distill it too far, you end up with such a high alcohol concentration that it can kill you as well. And those you give it to.

Normal fermentation of beer and wine has an upper limit, because at a certain alcohol concentration, the microorganisms that produce the alcohol, die in the alcohol.

Some of the prohibitions against home distilling go back to Prohibition, too, and beyond. If you can safely distill the alcohol and make a safe, drinkable whiskey, then you can probably also avoid evade the taxes that would be due on it, too, and the government would lose a fair amount of tax revenue. That’s why the still-busters were called “revenuers” back in the days before Prohibition.

Aren’t wine and beer distilled alcohol?

^Nope. Beer, wine, and cider you just ferment. Distilling is taking the fermented liquid and trying different techniques to keep just the alcohol part of the liquid, to concentrate the booze.

Money.

like the feds really care about my health and safety

@bkcunningham beer and wine are fermentation with filtration. As ragingloli said “Normal fermentation of beer and wine has an upper limit, because at a certain alcohol concentration, the microorganisms that produce the alcohol, die in the alcohol.”

Distillation attempts to remove and concentrate the alcohol after fermentation.

Can apply for a permit to distill spirits? I’m looking at a website and it appears that you can.

I am not kidding about the explosion part. You sure?

@bkcunningham my understanding is that you can only legally distill spirits for use as machinery fuel, not to drink. Even then, there are a lot of forms and hoop.

Inventor found wandering streets in blackened pants after blowing his home up while trying brew his own vodka

This, this and here make me think you can distill for consumption with a permit.

It’s all about the money. It’s really easy to make homemade liquor in high quantities. They would be losing a lot of what could be a profit if they did allow it.

However, a lot of people where I live really don’t give a damn about the law. My family and many others around us have liquor stills on their property. It’s a way of life.

I never knew about this. Interesting. A couple weeks ago I had homemade cognac and it was delicious. I don’t drink really, but had a little to try it. My friends dad makes it. But, he is in Russia. I had no idea it is against the law to make your own liquor in the US. Has to be the taxes. I’m am surprised it is not ok at all. Seems like the law should only be that an individual cannot sell it.

We made acetone in high school. Isn’t that the same kind of danger? In terms of flammability?

@bkcunningham from your link:

Spirits

You cannot produce spirits for beverage purposes without paying taxes and without prior approval of paperwork to operate a distilled spirits plant. [See 26 U.S.C. 5601 & 5602 for some of the criminal penalties.] There are numerous requirements that must be met that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal or beverage use. Some of these requirements are paying excise tax, filing an extensive application, filing a bond, providing adequate equipment to measure spirits, providing suitable tanks and pipelines, providing a separate building (other than a dwelling) and maintaining detailed records, and filing reports. All of these requirements are listed in 27 CFR Part 19.

Your other links appear to apply to regulations regarding commercial distilleries.

Haven’t you ever seen the “moonshiners” versus the “revenooers” in a movie or a cartoon? Not to debate their realism, but the issue always seem to be the taxes and the evasion thereof.

My understanding is that it’s a tax issue.

Do it wrong and you will make something that can poison people. Blindness and/or death.
@ragingloli described it well but I will add some data.
Tthe distillation process is gradually heating your liquid until it begins to boil and condensing and capturing the vapors of the material you want by selectively controlling the temperature..

At sea level, ethanol boils at at 78.37C. Water boils at 100C. Theoretically you need to keep your equipment between those two temps to extract the ethanol and leave the water behind. Sounds easy. BUT, methanol is often in the mixture and it boils at 64.7 C. That means the producer first needs to distill out the methanol by holding the temp between 65 C and 78C until all the methanol is all gone. Then they must raise the mixture to the ethanol extraction temp.
If their temperature monitoring equipment is off by a little bit, or they are sloppy with the procedure, or if they are doing it at higher altitudes and lower pressures so the boiling points differ, they can easily make poison. It only takes 10 ml of methanol to cause blindness ( ⅓ of a ounce). An undiscriminating/uninformed consumer cannot taste the difference and society ends up paying for their misguided trust.
By regulating and taxing it the consumer has some assurance that the producer is doing it correctly.

@ibstubro, it doesn’t surprise me that government regulations tell us, “There are numerous requirements that must be met that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal or beverage use. Some of these requirements are paying excise tax, filing an extensive application, filing a bond, providing adequate equipment to measure spirits, providing suitable tanks and pipelines, providing a separate building (other than a dwelling) and maintaining detailed records, and filing reports.”

Somewhere down the line, we allowed regulations that made it “impractical.”

I’m not sure what’s legal here, but we have many home wine brewers and moonshiners in Missouri. Not crazy about any moonshine except the Apple Pie but we had one wine we named Blackberry Blackout that was fabulous!

@KNOWITALL My family specialty is apple pie moonshine. Dear lord, it is delicious.

@mambo Where are you? Did you see the Moonshiner’s episode where the biker guy made the Apple Pie shine? It was interesting…that show is crazy. Tickle, lol.

@KNOWITALL My family lives in the deep country in North Carolina. I’ve only seen a few episodes of that show, but I think it’s hilarious.

too dangerous to the person making the spirit and everybody who tries to drink.would need testing from the health board plus fire authorities and the tax collectors if been sold to many.the police force would have to much work making sure it woud not to be sold to underage people or given to them. the hospitals would have even more patients from not just bars and clubs.last but not least the off liciences would suffer big time.

If the govt could make money off it, we’d be all good I’m sure. Always about the dollar bills ya’ll.