Do you know any moonshiners?

[leftyo]

You are mistaken. Making your own boose is not illegal, perfectly legal UNTIL you sell it without paying the tax. My father did it back during prohibition, he even served it to guests but never sold it! (beer only)

red is regularily mistaken, but not worth your breath pointing it out to him. he will just accuse you of being a liberal or something worse.

[Allen]

When I saw all the sales from these small stills on ebay I looked up the legalities. Apparently there are Federal laws and State laws. The feds say NO to any amount of whiskey (w/o a very costly permit) but YES if you make alcohol for your gas tank. Only Missouri is given as an example of states that OK for home use but if you wanted to actually stay legal you would need to check it out in your own state. Even in states that allow it w/o a permit you still have to obtain a federal permit. It is my understanding that beer and wine production is much less enforced for home use.

https://www.whiskeystillpro.com/blogs/news/34986945-the-truth-about-us-law-and-distilling-alcohol-at-home

[RED]

https://www.whiskeystillpro.com/blog...lcohol-at-home[/QUOTE]

There has been some recent changes in the law. That moron in the White House along with other stupid Republicans included distillers in the new 2017 tax law by cutting the tax rate on a proof gallon.

“I just had an email from a craft distiller today saying ‘this is a real game-changer for us’,” Mark Gorman of the Distilled Spirits Council told WhiskyCast in a telephone interview.

https://whiskycast.com/distillers-cheer-part-of-gop-tax-reform-changes/

There is at least one State that has licensed "craft" shiners... I forget which one... It has always been legal to manufacture or make beer and wine for your own consumption. Distilling is a completely different set of laws. By Federal law, it is illegal in the U.S. to distill alcohol without an expensive license. The States don't care and I cannot find where anybody that has made a couple of quarts and drinks it has ever been prosecuted by a State.

As I said in the OP, it is virtually impossible for a hobby distiller to produce alcohol as cheaply as you can buy it. 180 proof 90% Alcohol by volume is dangerous and has no flavor. The trick is to distill and retain flavor. A pot still is butt simple but reflux and fractioning columns can be very elaborate, complicated, and difficult to manufacture.

My friend has a very basic pot still. The boiler is a stainless steel beer keg with a copper column and a Liebig cooling arm. It is a 15 1/2 gallon pony keg but he can only fill it about 1/2 full... any more than that and it might burb or puke into the column causing a possible explosion of hot alcohol. So lets say he is using a sugar wash that is 12% alcohol. He can turn that wash into about 1 quart of 50%+ ABV alcohol called the hearts. The rest is is called heads, feints, or tails. Then he takes the hearts and "oaks" them. Remember it takes 7 - 10 days to ferment the wash and another week or two for the oaking, filtering, etc.

[Darreld Walton]

My Granddad was running shine out of southeast Idaho, down into Utah to SLC via Logan and Ogden, in a Model T Ford "Turtle deck" roadster with a Frontenac OHV conversion. Not especially fast, but the articulation of the Model T suspension turned that car into a billy goat, going places that the police department's V8 Fords couldn't follow. Saw Grandma Walton on the side of the road with her sister in Logan, locked the brakes up, went back, introduced himself, and their progeny now populates much of the northwest. Grandpa always kept a fifth of Jack Daniels hidden under the sink where the Bishop couldn't see it, said he couldn't make it for less than what he could get bourbon out of the liquor store. I always preferred Turkey, myself, till Johnny Moon came back from leave to visit his family in Georgia. Brought back a couple of cases of the family recipe put up in quart Mason jars. There just ain't enough "O's" in smooooooooth to describe that stuff. Me, and another fella that I worked with, Jerry, a great, huge, hulking biker type, split a quart, and soon, we got to talking bikes, 4x4's, shootin' huntin' and stuff, and ended up 'belly bumpin', and talking loud enough that everyone could hear us over the music. There was a spindly little 2nd Lt. there, fresh out of the USAF Academy, who had it in his mind that Jerry and I were about to trash the place with a fist fight. Hell, we were just havin' fun! Anyhow, that LT managed to work his way in between Me and Jerry, put a hand on each of our chests, and tried to push us apart. Jerry reached out, took him by the collar, lifted him clear off the floor and let him down off to the side, out of the way. That LT never looked at either of us the same way for the next four years till he PCS'd out of FE Warren, and even once in awhile, would walk against the far side of a hallway as we passed. Good stuff, that was. I've had some that was so bad that I've had a better taste in my mouth after siphoning gas out of the neighbor's pickup.......oh, BTW, been a "friend of Bill W" for 27 years now. Didn't realize till just now that it's been that long since I pulled a cork.......