The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a ban on distilling spirits in private homes more than 150 years ago.
Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics. They argue that Congress overstepped its taxation powers when it enacted the home distilling ban as part of a tax reform measure designed to curb fraud by commercial distillers.
Government attorneys counter that Congress properly restricted where spirits can be distilled to prevent producers from evading federal excise taxes. They warn that lifting the ban would violate Supreme Court precedent and erode congressional powers.
I wonder if this decision will affect home insurance rates?
They’ll decide on a way that keeps corporations in charge of that. It’s pretty much what they do.
I’m glad they’re focusing on the important issues.
bro lets get the absynthe flowing
Wait, what? You can’t distilling at home for private use in USA? Really?
It’s one of those technically illegal, no one enforces it unless you decide to sell it without a license.
I used to know people over at r/prisonhooch who would freezejack their homemade wine all the time. That stuff will give you hell’s own hangover.
Yep. When you heat distill with care you can maintain a couple degrees of precision to better separate ethanol from the ugly stuff. Freeze distilling concentrates all the nasty bits and just removes water.
You can, but its the distribution that causes things to get weird.
You can
You can brew beer but distilling liquor is federally illegal.
Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics.
Anyone else feel this is more of a precedent setting case? If the court agrees, will it allow the overturning of other congressional actions from that time period?
The libertarian in me says fuck yes, if you wanna make booze, go make booze, fuck the monopolized spirits industry. The 2026 realist in me is trying to figure out how this turns into a big juicy bone for the existing entrenched industry players.
Long time hobbyist home brewer here. Nobody is stopping you from home distilling. The required gear has long been publicly available. With either boozy category, one doesn’t take up this hobby to save money. There’s a large investment in gear and time to get it done.
It’s taken me close to 10 years of home brew experience, and probably over to $20k in supplies and equipment over that time to make beer that’s on par with craft breweries… 5 gallons of beer at a time.
The conversation ratio on mash to beer is mostly beer. The conversation ratio on mash to finished drinkable liquor is a joke in comparison. Multiple distillations if you want something that’s at best bottom shelf. Forget about aging.
Take that ‘libertarian’ and kill it.
The 2026 realist in me is trying to figure out how this turns into a big juicy bone for the existing entrenched industry players.
The distilled spirits law was from 1868. Other “Reconstruction era” laws passed, that could be targets:
- 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing birthright citizenship, due process under the law, equal protection
- 1866, Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the precursor to the 14th Amendment. The Civil Rights Act protected formerly enslaved people.
We know modern Republicans don’t like either one of these things and think they should be abolished.
So this is the true reason they are willing to hear this case. If they can use this to overturn a law that we can almost all agree to, then they think they can make these easier too.
Because bullshit on government argument that they don’t want over turn Supreme Court president. They do that shit all the time.
I also think about all the folks I know and who would try to distil liquor vs who is smart enough to do it right. Honestly this feels like thing that should be local laws. I feel its a bit like guns. The higher the density the more likely you want to restrict it or at least permit it.
Are any of the people you know who aren’t smart enough to do it safely not doing it because of the law?
I don’t think they don’t do it because its illegal as much as because its not convenient enough. If there was something like head shops for brewing and distillation I could see them giving it a try.
There are definitely those shops near where I live. All the distillation stuff has a “definitely not for alcohol, buddy” warning the same as a “tobacco water pipe.”
You can buy high-quality copper and stainless stills on Amazon directly marketed as “for alcohol.”
yeah if it was commonly legal these would be far more common and accessible. Like I don’t think I even saw a headshop around my area when young but with legalization they are all over the place. You need a special license to sell it but not to sell peripherals.
Maybe, though I don’t see how it gets much more common and accessible than one click purchase and prime shipping to your doorstep.
Honestly, I don’t think that repealing the law will make any notable difference because distillation takes a decent amount of money to get started and a fair amount of effort to do and everything to do it has always been readily available at the brew shop, hardware store, or online.
Like, yeah, weed shops popped up when cannabis was legalized but, in most markets, home grow went down. Distilleries are gonna beat almost every home distiller for cost and quality, and, you know, it was basically already legal and allowed if you weren’t stupid. Plus, existing tax structures are gonna keep individuals from selling it the same way you can’t sell homebrew.
There are supercedent local and state laws afaik, like I know here in Maine it’s like 5 gallons at 200 proof a year.
The accelerationist in me says fuck yes, let these morons methanol themselves to death
The accelerationist in you ought to watch out for the malicious who know better, but do methanol stuff anyway because there’s nobody watching them and they want to increase their profits.
They’re probably against it. Diageo wants you buying from them.
They are indeed against it for that reason.
Hmm.
Methanol poisoning rates are probably gonna go up. As are house explosions.
Should be fun!
There’s several other countries with a thriving legal home distillation scene, New Zealand being one of the more commonly referenced ones, that disprove the danger.
Ethanol is actually a treatment option for methanol poisoning, plus the amount of methanol is quite low in fermented grain and fruit alcohols to begin with and, despite what people believe, is not concentrated in the heads so even forgetting to remove the heads doesn’t increase the risk of methanol poisoning.
The amount of ethanol vapor in air is also quite low. Many hobby distillation sets also use immersed electric heating elements as they’re way more efficient so igniting ethanol vapor is less risk than you might think.
Yeah, you can also distill using pressure swings entirely to be completely safe.
My neighbor is a licensed gunsmith and gun dealer. He still gets drunk, forgets which guns are loaded, and puts new holes in his walls every few months.
Something tells me that the people most excited about the prospect might have a “safety third” mindset.
Overall, I’m not against getting rid of the ban, even a fairly large still explosion probably won’t take out more than the distiller/their family, and I’m smart enough to not buy sketchy Bob’s moonshine. It does mean I get to play a bit more without breaking any laws.
He still gets drunk, forgets which guns are loaded, and puts new holes in his walls every few months.
As a “gun person”, that guy is a fucking idiot. For one, alcohol and guns don’t mix. For two, the only loaded gun should be the one you’re ready to shoot. Leaving random loaded guns laying around is just asking for trouble.
The more time you spend around guns, the easier it is to forget that people usually don’t get second chances. Every one of those negligent discharges should have been a come-to-Jesus moment about his habits. The fact that none have tells me he’s an accident waiting to happen.
Safety third doesn’t mean don’t think of safety. As much as I loathe Mike Rowe, it’s a valuable philosophy regarding safety. The idea is that “safety first” is so cliche as to be borderline useless, and at worst leads people to think that so long as they follow procedures and wear PPE, that they can’t be hurt, like some warding spell. Safety third puts personal responsibility and awareness of ones surroundings before safety
How embarrassing, that guy forgot his shirt!
Yeah, but those other countries don’t have the same density of stupid Americans.
Just keep some store bought vodka on hand to ease the methanol woes
Was just gonna say, those stories you read every few years about 50+ people dying from improperly distilled alcohol in Kenya are coming to a town near you.
This sounds like a racist Republican trope. Can you link to a credible instance? I’ve literally never heard any stories about this.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/18/nigeria-deaths-suspected-methanol-alcohol-brew-drink
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/19/1112310405/south-africa-teens-methanol-bar-deaths
And a bunch of countries in Southeast Asia https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/methanol-poisoning-symptoms-laos-bali-b3019296.html
Yeah, those weren’t from distillation. From the first link
“Locals told the AP they suspected a popular herbal drink with high alcohol content, known as “Monkey Tail,” was mixed with methanol, causing the deaths.” Notice the methanol added part.
From the second one "Methanol is a toxic form of alcohol that is used industrially as a solvent, pesticide or an alternative source of fuel. It is not used in the production of alcohol sold for human consumption.
It is yet not known how the youngsters ingested the methanol." Again, sounds like cheap industrial methanol was mixed in. Also not home distillation.
And again, the third one isn’t home distillation causing issues, it’s cheap places trying to make a buck by cutting their product with cheap additives.
You’re saying the raw milk ivermectin people are not going to be spiking their alcohol with who knows what?
I’m saying the raw milk ivermectin people are likely to do that already and the current data doesn’t show home distillation to be a problem.
The kind of people who are gonna add methanol to what they make are the kind of people to ignore the legality of home distillation and do it anyways.
Sure.
Source: I made it the fuck up
“Our country’s founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime,” Alt said in a statement.
Yeah, Washington never partook whatsoever in any pastimes which have been rightfully turned into federal crimes. No siree. Not one single thing.
What was the whiskey rebellion about? Oh well guess it doesn’t matter
Probably those whiny, Federalist liberals crying in the town square over George Washington’s love for untaxed, homebrewed whiskey.
I don’t know how popular this is but I would love them to relax the rules on home distillation. There are public safety issues with home distillation but there are lots of things you can do at home that are dangerous and there’s way more safety info and better tools available these days. I just wanna make my own booze!
For all ya’ll disliking this, I can buy chemicals off ebay where a whiff can give you super cancer, i can own large construction equipment without permits and use it as long as its on my own property. I think distilling alcohol is fine
And most of the safety concerns of home distillation are way overblown to boot. The person likely to actually cause a fire distilling at home I guarantee is the kind of person splashing large jugs of white spirits from the hardware store everywhere near open flames or dropping icy turkey in a vat of oil and is already gonna start a fire somehow.
Well fuck. We’ve gone so far around we’ve come back to the point I agree with the government.
Why? People should do what the fuck they want. Are we really going to attack hobbyist for tax evasion right now?
There are some billionaires whose taxes need to be reviewed in a serious way.
Makes sense, they need some positive PR before their next disgusting decision.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court erased limits on how much political parties can spend on advertising and other efforts in coordination with candidates for Congress and president.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the president can fire leaders of independent agencies or commissions.
In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to keep its 2026 elections using a map with redrawn voting districts that had been found by a lower court to be racially discriminatory.
Yet another conservative attempt at government deregulation.
This is one of the those cases where the regulation is there to help the big corporations by preventing competition, not protecting the little guy.
And so the government can get those tax dollars.
It’s about poisonous alcohol distilling and buildings blowing up.
It’s not. It’s a leftover from prohibition that was never directly addressed. Other countries have legal home distilling and don’t have the issues that big alcohol want you worried about.
BOOM.
