Message 20716 of 39188 in General Discussion

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> I read the whole post. Personally I found it very interesting. One 
> thing however. While I am not an attorney, I don't believe it is 
> illegal to redistill spirits that have already had the taxes paid on 
> them. Sears sells a dandy electric still that only needs minor 
> tampering to install an adjustable thermostat that works just fine.

Actually, it's United States Federal Law, without a state approved distillers 
license (yes, federal law requires the states to handle the licensing), no 
person is permitted to distill fermented substances for the purpose of 
producing consumable alcohol (not a perfect quote, but it's as close as I can 
remember to the printed wording without looking it up).

I've actually done a bit of research on this about a year ago (around the same 
time I made the everclear with my buddy).  I don't know the history on the law 
besides the original intent was to prevent ignorant people from producing 
"White Lightning" which was well known for incidents of causing blindness and 
heart attacks.  The cause of these symptoms is an overdose of Methynol alcohol 
(also called Wood alcohol, which I brought up in the last post).

There was a political (I want to say house of reps, but it could have been 
another post) out of one of the eastern states that was actually building an 
effort to add an amendment that would allow for home distillation in a 
capacity similar to how Wine or Beer making is permitted (you're allowed to 
produce up to a certain limit each year of each for personal, non-profit use). 
 He was trying to start a petition for it (which is one of the only petitions 
I've ever been interested in signing).

This law has something in common with many laws in our fine country...Nobody 
cares (or even knows) about it :)  If you are caught distilling, they'll 
pretty much just give you a fine a bit bigger than a parking ticket and take 
away your equipment.  If of course you're making money on it, you can go to 
prison (if I remember correctly this law has actually been around since 
prohibition when people were going to prison for this)

Damn, I started this post intending it to be quick...lol, I have a problem :)

-- 
Cody