Yet another Hacker News

U.S. Supreme Court to review 1868 federal ban on home distilling of liquor

46 points Jimmc414 2 hours ago 55 comments

privacyishuman 1 hour ago | parent

>“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.

I'm convinced. And it's making me think anyone that disagrees hates apple pie and America.

steanne 1 hour ago | parent

makes sense, apples used for pie are wasted when you could be making hooch with them

masklinn 1 hour ago | parent

Historically non-edible apples (grown from seed, as well as dedicated cider apples) are widely available and only useful for cider, so it would be a waste of an edible apple to make cider out of it.

chrisco255 1 hour ago | parent

Or more appropriately, hates apple cider, which was the most common alcoholic beverage in Washington's era. Often homemade.

KPGv2 1 hour ago | parent

apple cider isn't distilled, though; it's fermented

use yeast to convert sugars from apples into alcohol: fermentation

boil that until it becomes a concentrated liquor: distillation

distillation is significantly more dangerous than fermenting

chrisco255 1 hour ago | parent

I get it, but apple pie isn't distilled either. Was just tying into something more thematically aligned. The law has nothing to do with danger, either, it seems to have been driven entirely by desire to protect federal tax revenue.

TIL: Apparently the nickname for distilled apple cider is applejack. Never realized the origin of the cereal's name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applejack_(drink)

KPGv2 1 hour ago | parent

given how explosive ethanol is, i have no problem with the law persisting for public safety reasons even if they weren't originally penned for that reason

i really don't want to die because the downstairs neighbor wants to make his own craft vodka

iugtmkbdfil834 44 minutes ago | parent

The restrictions may be somewhat defensible in a tightly packed areas full of, shall we say, unwilling participants, but if I have a large property, why shouldn't I be able to do just that?

King-Aaron 27 minutes ago | parent

Forest fires

iugtmkbdfil834 24 minutes ago | parent

It is not a bad argument, but would apply it across all states without exception?

King-Aaron 10 minutes ago | parent

Oh look I'd wager more fires would be caused by people angle grinding in the summer (*there was a massive fire several years ago caused by this here in Perth), but I was just spitballing ideas. TBH I used to still my own liquor and think that if you're interested enough in the process to actually do it you're also probably aware of the safety aspects to it.

But also I do appreciate how many numbskulls there are out there.

fc417fc802 4 minutes ago | parent

The same numbskulls that can purchase power tools at the local hardware store? Or drive a car? Distilling liquor is far safer than a great many common day to day activities.

brainwad 1 hour ago | parent

George Washington also made applejack (distilled from Apple cider). It was very popular in colonial America.

shevy-java 35 minutes ago | parent

Right, but distillation is a trivial task, just heat things up properly to their vaporization point. Why would it be forbidden?

AlecSchueler 34 minutes ago | parent

Are things normally forbidden based on their complexity?

yieldcrv 50 minutes ago | parent

Note: a think take ceo’s said that, not the justices like I had assumed

duped 47 minutes ago | parent

I mean whiskey was the first consumer good taxed by the nascent Constitutional republic during his administration and he had to put down a rebellion and federal regulation of distillation was a response to the long-tail impact of that rebellion and failure to enforce the taxation of whiskey and spirits.

Now I think it's dumb to prohibit home distillers and it actually inhibits industry evolution. There is a lot of experimentation that happens in grey areas of the law with homemade spirits and it would be interesting to see how things adapt if the law was lifted.

All that said home distillation is dangerous. Ethanol at volumes sufficient for bottling is explosive, methanol poisoning is real, and even if the techniques for safely distilling it from a mash are learned in a high school chemistry class most people aren't great at it.

I'm a big whiskey enjoyer and home cook and have done a few "dangerous" things myself w/ food and beverages. If the law goes away I know I'm going to do some stuff in the basement and accept the risk myself. But I'm a little wary of laws being lifted that definitely protect people, even if it's a side effect of taxation.

HlessClaudesman 41 minutes ago | parent

Nothing more American than poisoning yourself to save a buck.

Larrikin 32 minutes ago | parent

Did George Washington actually partake in the hobby or did he make his slaves do it like his famous barbecues until he died because he knew it was wrong?

Washington as an unquestioned justification for anything should never be the argument.

friendzis 18 minutes ago | parent

In a country that has legalized (not even decriminalized!) marihuana, a still present full-ban on moonshine paints an interesting picture on legislative process

nanolith 1 hour ago | parent

This would do to spirits what homebrewing has done to beer in this country. So many varieties were rediscovered and popularized when homebrewing and microbrewing were legalized during the Carter Administration.

Liquor has become consolidated among a half dozen global conglomerates. Varieties have been streamlined. Folks who are into making historical cocktails tend to hit roadblocks or make modern "almost" substitutions.

I'm in favor of this ban being struck down, even though I can't really take advantage of it. I brewed beer and wine when I was younger, but for health reasons, I can't drink alcohol anymore.

chrisco255 1 hour ago | parent

Striking this down won't mean you can resell your homemade liquor. It might lead to some experimentation and we may get more micro-distilleries as an indirect effect, but it won't change the local and state regulations around producing and selling liquor for public consumption.

margalabargala 1 hour ago | parent

I think they are saying the micro distillery effect will be stronger than you think, not that people will be selling homemade liquor.

nanolith 58 minutes ago | parent

No. It is not likely that it will be possible to sell homemade liquor. But, it's this experimentation that will lead to more businesses.

Many microbreweries and small breweries started when home brewers went pro. They had recipes that were popular. They decided to go through the fundraising and investment in order to build appropriate facilities and get licensed.

It's this permission to experiment and play that has inspired many of the popular ales available today.

KPGv2 1 hour ago | parent

the only issue is that if you screw up distilling liquor and you live in a city, now you're blowing up your neighbor's family

https://news.sky.com/story/three-men-charged-over-explosion-...

ethanol is incredibly explosive

kelseydh 56 minutes ago | parent

Methanol poisoning is another risk.

Methanol is a natural fermentation byproduct of pectin breakdown of fruits like plums, cherries, apricots as well as grapes.

Methanol collects in a still easier than ethanol. Methanol boils at approximately 64.7°C (148.5°F), while ethanol boils at 78.4°C (173.1°F). Professional distillers carefully measure and discard the initial fraction (the heads/foreshots) of a distillation run to remove the methanol. Easy for a novice to miss this key safety step.

mik1998 49 minutes ago | parent

The heads only contain a slightly higher proportion of methanol than the rest of the distillate. They're discarded because they taste bad, not because of safety. Though it has the result that distilled beverages generally contain slightly less methanol than not-distilled beverages.

duped 11 minutes ago | parent

It's about as dangerous as eating foraged mushrooms. You know it's a danger before you try it so you go to lengths to avoid it.

ungruntled 56 minutes ago | parent

Looks like it was petrol, and direct criminal attempt at insurance fraud.

Edit: In addition to a successful plan murder during the explosion.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-46865455

nanolith 54 minutes ago | parent

Clandestine operations for most illicit substances tend to be quite dangerous. There are safe ways to distill alcohol, but given that one can't purchase quality distillation equipment in locations where it is illegal, folks often end up making their own.

I think it's perfectly acceptable if these is a reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing process, like for HAM radio or small game hunting, that covers safety. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of accidents, but it does reduce this possibility.

duped 15 minutes ago | parent

> ethanol is incredibly explosive

My friend is a chemist and we both like whiskey so we thought experimented this.

You can speed up the aging of whiskey by increasing the surface area of charred wood. It takes 3 years in a barrel, a couple days (hours? maybe? I'm an engineer not a scientist) if you splinter it into wood chips and char them first and agitate the solution.

What you can't really speed up is the oxidation of the tannins which for all we know (barring experimentation) are a key part of the flavor profile. What you could do is mix in oxidizers like bubbling oxygen through it.

The combination of oxygen and ethanol has a name though: "liquid rocket fuel." The idea of combining heat, ethanol, oxygen, and agitating at bottling volumes sounded kinda scary.

I hope people don't try it at home without knowing what they're doing.

More realistically though, the biggest danger comes from leaky apparatus and an open flame. The horror stories come from home distillation over gas burners. Electric heat is plentiful and home stills would most likely be basically kettles.

Arainach 54 minutes ago | parent

It's reasonably hard to poison yourself (other than, you know, alcohol) with fermentation. We've been doing it for thousands of years without specialized equipment or training, and the first batches were probably accidental.

It is rather tricky to distill liquor and NOT poison whoever drinks it. Especially on home or poorly maintained equipment.

nanolith 38 minutes ago | parent

I'd say that it is actually fairly easy to poison oneself brewing different kinds of alcohols. It is a risky activity. So is driving. So is making fireworks. So is chemistry. So is making cheese, pickles, sauerkraut, and canned goods. People die of botulism every year because they don't follow basic safety procedures when canning, or they eat canned goods that someone else improperly prepared.

That doesn't mean that one shouldn't be allowed to do these things. It means that we should provide appropriate training and, in some jurisdictions, reasonable / non-discriminatory licensing for those who wish to do these things.

When it comes to distillation, the rules are pretty straight-forward:

Keep a log book. Use quality equipment. Measure temperatures. Learn to discard heads and tails. Use appropriate ventilation and fire safety protocols. Purchase qualitative test equipment to verify that the product does not contain harmful contaminants. Licensing is a great way to ensure that people know about these things and follow them. A blanket ban actually makes it more likely that people who violate this ban to distill alcohol will poison themselves or others.

blackfawn 33 minutes ago | parent

This is a bit misleading. While it is possible for distilled spirits to contain methanol, it's generally in very low amounts and removable. Often unless specific ingredients are used, it's not even much of a concern. And funny enough, ethanol itself is a competitive inhibitor for methanol and is an antidote of sorts for methanol ingestion. Most anecdotal stories around poisonous spirits are scare tactics and due to other more serious issues such as prohibition-era bootleggers using car radiators with leaded solder, adding adulterating chemicals to stretch profits, etc.

wwosik 1 hour ago | parent

Shouldn't it be the Congress that creates or voids the laws and not a court? If a law was standing for 150 years them whatever the law I feel it should be changed by the electable lawmakers, not by "council of elders".

valleyer 1 hour ago | parent

Not under long settled American jurisprudence. See Marbury v. Madison (1803).

dcrazy 1 hour ago | parent

The question before the court isn’t whether the law is good. It’s whether the government can ban individuals from an activity for the purpose of making it easier to successfully collect tax on the commercialization of that activity.

The government is only allowed to do what is “necessary and proper” to make enforcement effective. There are reasonable arguments on both sides as to whether prohibiting home distillation is as necessary as it was in the late 19th century.

chrisco255 1 hour ago | parent

Congress creates laws, the President signs them into law, and the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review. The catch is the court has limited capacity to review laws, cases have to go through lower courts first usually, and it has discretion of which cases it hears. The 1868 law might not have ever been challenged in 150 years, or the current judges may think that this particular case has a compelling argument to warrant another review (it happens). The Constitution does not specify that a law is beyond challenge after any period of time, so there is an infinite amount of time to do so. That's a good thing.

zeroonetwothree 1 hour ago | parent

Maybe it “shouldn’t be” but this is the system the US has had since 1803.

anon373839 51 minutes ago | parent

The comments below are correct re judicial review, Marbury v. Madison. But another way to think of this is that the Constitution is also a law, a statute even, with higher ranking than the laws passed by Congress. So in this instance, the courts are interpreting and applying the higher-ranking statute.

Also: it’s a bit crazy to overturn Wickard simply because so much subsequent development rests on it, but it was wrongly decided. The commerce power shouldn’t ever have been read as broadly as it was.

nradov 1 hour ago | parent

It's a little late for that since apparently everyone quit drinking.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/21/health/alcohol-use-decline-st...

Root_Denied 1 hour ago | parent

I was going to say that the court looking at this at all is a recession indicator...

alexjplant 58 minutes ago | parent

Much has been written about the health motivations for reduced alcohol consumption but my pet theory is that people (myself included) grew tired of the ridiculous marketing-driven booze culture that emerged in the 2010s. Bottles of unobtainable bourbon going for $500 on the secondhand market, "gluten free" vodka (which every distilled beverage innately is unless adulterated), 13% ABV quadruple-hopped blood orange turbo dank Cali IPA, ultra-peaty scotch that tastes like a bonfire, chocolate infused bourbon barrel-aged "Cabernet", canned vodka sodas infused with artificial flavoring and sold at a 400% markup...

Whatever happened to a nice cold beer at the end of a hot day outside or a nice glass of wine with dinner? Home distillation and fermentation are also hobbies unto themselves in the same spirit (pun intended) of old-fashioned enjoyment, no mega-conglomerate marketing required.

QGQBGdeZREunxLe 1 hour ago | parent

I found this Hill opinion piece more informing. Arguing against the ban.

> When federal appellate courts reach opposing conclusions, known as a circuit split, the odds exponentially increase for the Supreme Court to grant review and clear up the confusion. Likewise, when a federal statute is struck down in whole or in part, the Supreme Court is even more likely to hear the case. In these two cases, we have a perfect storm where both of those scenarios have occurred.

> If the taxing power supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause were the only issue in contention, we would already have quite a sexy Supreme Court case. To dress it up even further, plaintiff John Ream astutely argued in his Sixth Circuit filings that the federal ban on at-home alcohol distillation for personal consumption also exceeds Congress’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce because the activity in dispute is neither commerce nor interstate.

> The Supreme Court’s misguided 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn found that Congress could regulate wheat even if it is consumed on its originating farm. In the time since, far too much mischief has been committed in the name of regulating interstate commerce that is neither interstate nor even commerce.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5857091-home-distillin...

zeroonetwothree 1 hour ago | parent

Gonzales v Raich :(

yieldcrv 47 minutes ago | parent

I’m really excited that this court has expressed interest in reviewing and reversing New Deal era Interstate Commerce clause rulings

Its going to be so disruptive but necessary to kill the administrative state

What does that look like? Honestly I think the collection of states will figure out their own coalitions, and Congress will find a way to still do federal agencies under different authority

I don’t like that the term federal has diverged from its definition to mean this separate layer of government in the same shape of the United States but controls all, this will put it back in line to the term of collaboration between its constituent states and the national entity

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 1 hour ago | parent

Don’t sip from the first fraction; it’s methanol.

Rodmine 1 hour ago | parent

For those who missed the point: this post is related to the Deepseek ban. You can't have open source AI models, because the "distilleries" don't like it.

phyzix5761 48 minutes ago | parent

Is it possible this is an attempt from liquor companies to increase alcohol consumption in the US where its already declining and hurting their bottom line?

warkdarrior 47 minutes ago | parent

How would home distilling improve the liquor companies' bottom line?

BetterThanSober 36 minutes ago | parent

Addicts won't have the time to glue in the time to distill, unless they're addicted to making the liquor and not necessarily consuming alcohol

nsilvestri 45 minutes ago | parent

I spend much less on alcohol now that I brew my own.

Big Honey and Big Apple are making off like bandits, however.

foo12bar 30 minutes ago | parent

Not to mention, Big Bathtub.

shevy-java 37 minutes ago | parent

The main question is why a government in an allegedly free country thinks it can control what people do. This is not solely confined on forbidding production of liquor but also taps into all those other discussions about "sovereign" citizens. It is a question of how much slavery a government can enact. It is an interesting discussion because on youtube you see many videos where people poke fun at sovereign citizens being largely clueless, but they then don't answer the follow-up question as to how much control a government may have over "its" people. And who controls the making of laws. And why any law xyz would have to be binding - since without enforcement, the law would not be effective (and often is not, anyway, if you are rich).

deepfriedchokes 18 minutes ago | parent

Making/growing anything for personal use should be legal.

A government should have no power over people’s private lives, so long as their actions do not infringe, and do not conspire to infringe, on the rights of others.