This may be an old question. I have searched without luck. Does anyone know if it is legal to make whisky or some variant at home? I read the law for Florida and it talks about beer and wine…but nothing harder. Is that the case? You can only make those two legaly? Thanks.
This is because it is legal to distill spirits for fuel. I beleive there is still federal permits required but they are inexpensive and easy to aquire. This is from research I did years ago but if I recall correctly there is even a federal tax credit for producing ethanol for fuel purposes.
At one of the NHC talks the presenter mentioned that you can get a liscense to home distill - to make fuel. The fuel must have additives that turn the fuel into a poison.
Can’t have you selling the non-poisonous stuff and leeching rightful income away from the state. Oh, and won’t something think of the poor blind children who should be getting into Dad’s Chivas Regal?
I often marvel that homebrewing wasn’t/hasn’t been quashed under the same logic. I know the feds are losing a tiny piece of revenue because of my efforts 8)
I went looking for state tax rates and found this PDF. No wonder Alabama doesn’t want to legalize homebrew – the beer tax in 2009 was $1.05 a gallon.
I think someone needs to make the point to them that the ingredients for a 5 gallon batch of beer - $20 worth of extract, $20 worth of hops, $15 worth of yeast, so $55 in Montgomery would bring in $5.50 in tax, which is $1.10 per gallon. Let alone the money spent on equipment.
They won’t know enough to know that those ingredients would make you a strong hoppy beer and you can make other beer for cheaper, let alone all grain and yeast ranching. You don’t want to overwhelm them with facts and details, they don’t seem too fond of those.