Since I was a kid I couldn’t understand why private citizens can’t roll their own moonshine. Strikes me the same as growing your own weed.

I get the taxation/revenue aspect, but in 2026 America who’s going to produce enough liquor to make a difference? Just put sane limits on home production like some states do with weed.

    • micgerne@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      It’s actually quite difficult to brew moonshine that’s good enough to drink. All those old stories about going blind off of home brewed moonshine are from methanol poisoning.

      this isn’t true and I wish the silly urban myth would die already. Ethanol is preferentially metabolised (competitive inhibition) over methanol, the only way to have enough methanol in home distillation to cause poisoning is if methanol has been deliberately added.

      Apologies for the reddit link, but here is a fairly good writeup of the whole thing:

      https://www.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/cv4bu8/methanol_some_information/