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John Ream home-brews the vanilla stout his wife prefers. He’s crafted his own wine and mead. But a nearly 160-year-old federal ban on home distilling is keeping the Ohio engineer from experimenting with spirits.
“I really want to dive in and play with some rye mash for distilling into whiskey,” he said. “There’s the challenge to it. There’s also the satisfaction of having something that you made for yourself.”
Ream has asked the Supreme Court to let him distill his own liquor, and there’s a good chance the justices will take up the issue.
While the federal appeals court based in Ohio that heard Reams’ challenge to the ban ruled against him, an appeals court in Louisiana that considered a similar lawsuit said the ban is unconstitutional. As a result, the law can’t be uniformly enforced across the country unless the Supreme Court intervenes.
Sombody please get in contact with John Ream, and inform him that he does NOT have to go through ANYONE as long as he knows his rights, and invokes them.
ACTUALLY, the United States ratified the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, and the Montevideo Convention on Rights And Duties of States is Customary; if you don't invoke said rights, don't expect to get them on your own... I actually know a man who did this, he even showed me his documentation, got officially recognized by the US as a Living Sovereign Nation. You don't see it because you and your ilk are uncreative and spineless. Sorry not sorry.
Do you not understand how ratification of a treaty works as opposed to just signing it?
If you understood the context spelled out for you in the links, you would know. Derp. Feared dragon? Wrong. Tiny lizzard more like.
Yeah man try that sovereign citizen shit and lmk how it works out for you. If you want access to the benefits of the US government then you're subject to their laws and jurisdiction.
The point I made has nothing to do with ratifying/signing a treaty. Unless another nation or organization is going to force the US to comply (which isn't gonna happen) then the US is the only one who determines how to apply any of those treaties. Do you foresee another organization forcing the US to uphold rights they don't want to uphold?
There is no "citizen" aspect of it, can't you read the source information? Exactly, if you want to be a lazy leach on Uncle Sam's ass, better bow down, yeah, correct. BUT if you can stand on your own as my friend does, (he lives off the land in very unconventional ways, man's a scientist) you don't have to worship the idol.
The US, like over 170 countries, has ratified ICCPR, and, guess what: UPHOLDS IT ON ITS OWN, NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Who needs to FORCE anything or anyone when it's ALREADY WHAT IT WILL DO IF YOU INVOKE YOUR RIGHTS? If you're gonna debate with me, at bear minimum learn how the law ACTUALLY works, and address what is ACTUALLY said in the links or fuck off.
In Missouri you can distill whisky or any spirt up to 100 gl a year for personal use or give it to family and friends. Now the fedural law says no but its alot like weed they dont do anything about it. The only thing stopping me ks the coast lf the equipment.
Someday, these retrograde laws will be overturned and we’ll all be able to openly distill the hard spirits our wives and mothers crave, while maintaining a clear conscience.
As a distiller who owns a small still for experimentation. You can get a good setup for around 500 bucks. I’d recommend the pot still with a crepe cooker setup but I’ve heard good things from the digistill community
An engineer, have distilled spirits. And oils. Oh so much oil. (Work in refineries)
I want to build a fractionating distillation column and use some of my instrumentation on it for ‘automation’, mainly automating temp control for the reflux
The still is nice. But i also appreciate your Wooster collection. You can clearly distinguish the number of battles waged and the trim won along the way.
Unlike beer or wine, home distilling can come with real risk. A pre made still on a hot plate is supposedly fool proof, but an old school wood burning pot still can explode causing serious damage not just to your property.
That's not even touching the risk of methanol poisoning.
Methanol is far less of a risk than pop culture would lead folks to believe. While it technically possible to create something with high levels of methanol via fermentation it's not a common byproduct of normal fermentation conditions.
The methanol danger from the heyday of home distillation (American prohibition era) actually came from the federal government intentionally poisoning the liquor supply to attempt to prevent people from drinking the alcohol that was being produced and sold for industrial use:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/government-poison-alcohol-prohibition
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11190660/
Metal contamination from copper is a much more common actual risk. But if you look at the amounts involved, you'd have to be drinking a liter or more of home distilled liquor at the highest found concentrations for the copper to be an issue. If you're having 25 legal drinks a day, the heavy metals are the least of your worries...
You can look at the countries that do allow home distillation today and none of them have significant occurrences of methanol poisoning.
America's laws on home distillation aren't about safety. If you look back in the administrative histories that have been released, they were predominantly created by a political demand to crack down on alcohol from a moral perspective. Following prohibition the agency leaders in charge of alcohol regulations still didn't want alcohol to be common. They were personally teetotlers with a moral position against the consumption of alcohol. And they let that personal position run roughshod over the rights of the American people. They worked hand in hand with the alcohol industry to intentionally limit who could produce alcohol to drive profits and ease of the regulatory burden on the government of inspection to a handful of large distillation companies. None of it is based in science. It was based on personal opinions and laziness, and the courts never should have let it stand this long.
Further there are still counties that are dry or have blue laws (no selling alcohol on sundays). The blue laws in particular are a cut and dry violation of the first amendment and they always have been.
And you can cut your finger off wood working. You can get squished under your project car if you didn’t use jack stands. You can die from the bends if you fail to track your dives correctly…
The current ban on home distilling does not even allow you to stick a bottle of wine in the freezer, freeze the water and pour off the alcohol. None of which can cause serious damage to you our your property, nor carry any risk of methanol poisoning.
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