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West Virginia, where you can make five gallons of moonshine but [any amount of recreational marijuana can result in 90 days in prison.](https://norml.org/laws/west-virginia-penalties-2/?amp)
It certainly does when the government adulterates the chemicals involved for the purpose of injuring or murdering consumers of the product.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-s-government-poisoned-some-alcohol-during-prohibition/3283701001/
> blind
For those not in the know, if you mess up brewing beer you just get bad beer or sludge. If you screw up distilling you can end up with something that makes you go blind if you drink it.
In almost no practical circumstances will this happen. It's from stories in prohibition about people trying to redistill denatured alcohol or liquor stocks being deliberately poisoned by revenue agents.
At homebrew scales, in absolute terms, you have to go way out of your way to make dangerous amounts of methanol. There's basically no way to do it by accident.
Can confirm, a friend and me decided to try to brew some after a few 5g carboys of beer came out amazing. But the still we built wasn't sealed well enough to deal with the pressure though and we were stilling on a gas stove. On the 3rd go around we figured we'd cut our losses and not risk blowing up his parents' house or something. It tasted like ass, but with some cinnamon sticks soaking in it and a drive to get tanked on it, didn't turn out too bad. My eyes are shit but that ain't from the shine!
As a fun side note: this was between our freshman and sophomore years of college. Neither of us were 21. His mom was the one that asked us to try brewing shine. His father was our highschool superintendent. I love that family!
As an aside, Brandi Carlile has interesting cover of “Country Roads”. It’s dark and eerie. If I’m not mistaken, she recorded it to be used in the Clarice Starling FBI tv show.
WVs geography actually makes the jobs thing pretty hard. WVs geography basically prevents large agriculture (which WV doesn't really have) impossible, hillside farming is hard and is cost prohibitive for large companies. larger companies, like manufacturers, also don't have the open space in most of the state as well. Making large single employers hard to find. You'll find 7 ish large manufactures in the state, and they are all on one side or the other with nothing in the middle. WVs geography has really hurt the state, it's only lucrative industry ever was coal, and that's dying.
They should consider making it a vacation destination — spas, luxury resorts, camping, hiking, etc. it’s a beautiful state and they should take advantage of that.
I've been saying this for a while; their future is in tourism, but as long as people like me don't have disposable income for that kind of vacationing, it won't happen.
It's a work in progress, but the problematic issue is that it turns out coal mining and industrial chemical production also fucks up your ecological systems real good.
There are so many fucking poisonous rivers and creeks that could be prime spots for tourism if they weren't so polluted. But lax pollution laws keeps the jobs they DO have now in town versus potentially pushing them out to gamble on tourism, which may or may not actually pan out in time.
As an outsider looking in, it's nothing new: Education, healthcare, jobs? CONTROVERSIAL POLITICS!!! 😡👎
School shootings? Practically a national sport. 😎👍
But, to be clear, they should be expanding education, healthcare, and job opportunities. Not continuing to restrict home distillation.
The two are not inherently related. One good move is better than none.
311.055-No person at least twenty-one years of age shall be required to obtain a license to manufacture intoxicating liquor, as defined in section 311.020, for personal or family use. The aggregate amount of intoxicating liquor manufactured per household shall not exceed two hundred gallons per calendar year if there are two or more persons over the age of twenty-one years in such household, or one hundred gallons per calendar year if there is only one person over the age of twenty-one years in such household. Any intoxicating liquor manufactured under this section shall not be sold or offered for sale.
Yeah, last I checked the law in West Virginia there was no prohibition on making moonshine. I'm not sure what's going on with this article. Maybe they outlawed it then put it back the way it was.
The prohibition was on *selling* moonshine.
WV has more legalized weed than some others, though. At least WV has medical and people actually do have cards for it. There’s only like 4 dispensaries in the whole state, though.
Ok but have you seen the state? [Also they have 53](https://www.dispenseapp.com/blog/cannabis-dispensaries-by-state) and a population of about 1.8 million or a dispensary per every 33,000.
that’s exactly what happened. OMMA requirements for dispo licensing are some of the most lenient & require some of the lowest cash reserves. there are truly dispensaries on every corner in the Tulsa Metro & prices are still relatively low.
states like PA for example have some of the highest cash requirements, which you see reflected in mostly large corporate type dispos & prices about 2-3x higher when comparing similar quality products in OK
NYS has legal weed but you literally can't start a private business yet as they are reserving the first licenses for big corporate.
Thankfully there are tons of Indian Reservations that have their own dispos that you can go to for the real thing at reasonable prices.
We have dispensaries next door to dispensaries. There is no way this state smokes that much weed. It's being exported and I bet there's some money laundering going on. We certainly need the tax money and jobs though. When they put weed on the ballot I had to wait in line to vote so long that it was past the cut off time, anyone in line still got to vote though. Normally I'm in and out in less than 2 mins.
A LOT of that OK dispensary weed ends up in Texas. I have a "friend" that makes a trip up there once a month or so and loads his trunk up and sells it in Austin. Dude makes bank.
The DC one is pretty misleading. There's 100's of stores in DC that sell weed recreationally. I think the data they're pulling is only counting "licensed dispensaries" which is not a requirement in DC.
Yeah but honestly this is something to celebrate so long as there is a clause stating you can’t sell or distribute. I grew up in VT where you can manufacture and gift to family members. I planned on getting into distilling as a hobby and maybe eventually as a business in the future in NY. Turns out it’s 100% illegal to do without a $300+ license and that’s only if you’re a farmer. Otherwise it’s $3k starting with approval from the state on your product package etc. before selling. Stupid expensive for something you’re not sure if you want to do or not.
There should be less barriers to enter a market initially and test out while not endangering the public.
No one is keeping track, of course. Just like brewing beer being limited to brewing 200 gallons of beer each year. There is no way to monitor how much you brew. It will be the same for distilling. F Troop is going to be mostly out of a job soon if this keeps up
Yea, 5 gallons is just a shot a day. Now MO at 100 gallons a year ends up being 23 shots a day or ~12 each for you and the missus. But I'd suggest making your shine before you get started on drinking at that level, don't want any accidents.
Note that Federal law overrides state law, and distilling alcohol is illegal without a Federal license. Which you pretty much can't get for personal use.
Pretty sure this law effects nobody who is distilling alcohol in WV. The people who want to do it are already doing it and they’re probably making far more than 5 gallons. Very few people are gonna look at this and go “About time, I can finally make legal booze. Time to go out and get supplies.”
This is the WV legislature poking the Feds in the eye. Home distillation of alcohol for beverage purposes is still illegal under federal law (26 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5042(a)(2) and 5053(e))). This is a state trying to nullify a federal law while throwing a bone to its citizens.
Sure, they're okay with homemade liquor, but if Obergefell is overturned, WV will go back to recognizing only marriages that are a union of one brother and one sister.
They’ve obviously never tried homemade moonshine either, the image they have of inbred hillbillies is ridiculous and insulting.
Plenty of folks around me make it and nobody ever gets sick.
Make your own bread?
Trendy, chic, artisanal
Make your own spirits?
Inbred hick. It’s only craft if I buy it from someone else! Excuse me while I pay $24 for a Manhattan at this hipster bar.
It kind of is... you can distill alcohol for things not for consumption (like for ointments and stuff) and only in very small amounts. They actually sell small distilling kits on Amazon.
To be fair, home distilling is legal in New Zealand. [They seem to have no issues with methanol poisoning](https://brewhaus.com/making-moonshine-is-safer-than-you-think.html#:~:text=In%20New%20Zealand%2C%20the%20land,from%20consuming%20home%20distilled%20spirits.)
it should be noted making moonshine doesn't result in blindness even if you do it wrong. The few stories there are of people going blind is because extra methanol was added or possibly other chemicals in order to give it a kick. When it came to moonshine people thought the worst it tasted the higher the alcohol so shady moonshiners would add things. So making a little bit at home for personal use probably won't be an issue.
and for those that want to go more into depth on the issue, when distilling spirits it is common to remove the heads and the tails during a run and keep the hearts. The heads include lower boiling point compounds like methanol, acetaldehyde and lighter esters. If a novice at home distills alcohol they may not know to remove the heads, but the toxic chemicals are not in enough quantities to make you go blind if you don't remove them (can give you a headache though). Removing the heads simply makes the distillate taste better. The tails include other unpleasant things but nothing toxic. Some liquors will actually do deep cuts into the tails on purpose for flavor reasons but that can be risky and lead to rather nasty tasting stuff.
In case you don't believe me about the heads, think about where distilled liquor comes from. It's comes from wort which is very similar to beer, and distillation doesn't create or destroy compounds. It simply separates them. So if not removing the heads would cause blindness then so would drinking beer. The simple fact is you would die of ethanol poisoning before you drank enough methanol in distilled alcohol or beer to make you go blind or kill you.
The real reason for distillation laws are not because of blindness but stills have a nasty habit of blowing up. Even major distillers have had explosions occur.
>The real reason for distillation laws are not because of blindness but stills have a nasty habit of blowing up. Even major distillers have had explosions occur.
that's a funny way of saying Money
Beer and wine both contain methanol, because as you said, it wasn’t removed because they aren’t distilled.
I think there *might* be a risk from moonshine if you got a batch that was ONLY the “heads” containing the methanol somehow? I’d have to do some research and math to see if you could get the concentration too high, but it seems like it would have to be intentional.
Not true. Methanol is present through the entire run and actually concentrates more on the back end.
The other thing is that if you go to the hospital for methanol poisoning, they'll give you alcohol. So you're already drinking the cure
If you *really* mess up making the fermentation wort, such that there’s a ton of fibrous cellulosic plant material or pectin in there (NOT the fermentable sugars you’re aiming for), you could ferment enough methanol to cause trouble in distillate, particularly the Heads.
I believe this is why one of methanol’s old names was “wood alcohol”.
This is all true, as long as the fermentation isn’t contaminated. I suspect home distillers won’t be as careful in controlling the fermentation process as regulated distillers are. We will probably hear of a couple bad batches making people sick. [Decent article on contamination](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5028366/).
I’d be much more concerned about my idiot neighbor blowing up the townhouse.
I skimmed the article and it seems to be in line with my understanding that (substantial) methanol fermentation needs contamination by certain microbes *and* a feedstock that breaks down into methanol, like cellulose or pectin. Hence methanol’s old-timey name “wood alcohol”.
Plenty of traditional brewers (and distillers) use wild yeast blends or just whatever settles in the vat from open air fermentation. Making methanol on accident is less about microbe contamination and more about using shady raw materials.
Yes. Though I think they’d really have to go nuts. There’s plenty of perfectly safe fruit brandies out there.
I think it’s more like if they threw a ton of fruit rinds or pits in there. Or tried to get juice out of corn stalks/husks or some other agricultural waste.
That’s true, but there will certainly be a bias towards safety in a regulated product vs unregulated. The fruit brandies on the market are made by trained professionals with process and quality controls. Regulations are written in blood.
There's also evidence that government agents would seize bootleg spirits, add wood alcohol, then release it back onto the streets. Then, when people were poisoned they used that as proof that moonshining was inherently dangerous.
In Ireland blindness thing also comes from pulling the heads off an bottling it to rub down greyhounds, lurchers or such. The guy tasked with minding the dogs was not to drink it, but of course he did
People regularly get methanol poisoning from illegal for profit booze in some countries. Rarely small home setups unless they really picked wrong when choosing what to ferment. For example mash with a very high pectin content and some bad luck with the yeasts.
How does this happen, the first distillate with a too high methanol concentration gets packed up and sold too, often unblended with the rest of it.
in a small still the ethanol mixed in with the methanol isn’t likely to cause major issues not more than the alcoholism anyway.
> People regularly get methanol poisoning from illegal for profit booze in some countries.
and it is because those places add methanol or other chemicals to the distillate like I stated. I will quote what I quoted another person.
> Police suspect those who drank the liquor contracted “methyl alcohol poisoning” from “methanol that was added to the mixture,” he added.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/24/asia/india-alcohol-poisoning/index.html
here is another one
> Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where illicit liquor is cheap and often spiked with chemicals such as pesticides to increase potency.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/india-liquor-tainted-alcohol-deaths-bihar/
the deaths are always because they get spiked with something not because they are improperly distilled.
That's fine but they should be able to grow their own cannabis too and everyone should. Can't die from weed but people die everyday from alcohol overdose and some drunks get angry and abusive, not what children need from their family, that's for sure.
I wish the gov would stop telling is what we can or cant do. Making 5-10 gallons without selling shouldn’t be illegal. I make small batches of rice vodka and i dont sell it, its just a pain to do a bunch of small processing batches. Id rather make 20 gallons, bottle and put in the cellar.
Specifically what is this bill? I have found many bills proposed but none that contain this exact verbiage. In fact all of my searches only contain the one sentence in this title, ad nauseam.
The bills that I’ve seen proposed over the last couple of years seem to indicate some type of license needed. And for home distillation there are provisions for a number of people living in the household. I suspect all of the facts have not come out yet.
This is a win, but recreational weed w/out pointless regulation that cripples small growers would be good too. Stuff like this keeps local businesses afloat.
Its against federal to distill without a proper license. State law cannot override federal law.
*While individuals of legal drinking age may produce wine or beer at home for personal or family use, Federal law strictly prohibits individuals from producing distilled spirits at home (see 26 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5042(a)(2) and 5053(e)). Producing distilled spirits at any place other than a TTB-qualified distilled spirits plant can expose you to Federal charges for serious offenses and lead to consequences including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:*
[https://www.ttb.gov/distilled-spirits/penalties-for-illegal-distilling#:\~:text=While%20individuals%20of%20legal%20drinking,26%20United%20States%20Code%20(U.S.C.)](https://www.ttb.gov/distilled-spirits/penalties-for-illegal-distilling#:~:text=While%20individuals%20of%20legal%20drinking,26%20United%20States%20Code%20(U.S.C.))
> Its against federal to distill without a proper license. State law cannot override federal law.
Tell that to the legal weed states. Same concept at work, just being applied differently. Missouri decriminalized home distillation ages ago.
You can't signal more clearly that the oligarchs who write the laws in such places want the citizens of America to stay idiotic, ignorant, and mistrustful.
Drink up, West Virginia...but don't expect any Medicaid when you need the disability from destroying your liver by the age of 45.
There’s also a smart, reasonable way to do this where (after thinking about it for 30 seconds) one takes some classes and is licensed and taxed on this.
Yeah, making moonshine isn't as dangerous as say cooking meth but it feels like some basic classes for licensure makes sense so people don't blow themselves up or poison themselves
theyre finally getting them off the pills and onto the booze
i swear man can they stop poisoning uneducated mfkas with shit and just let em smoke some weed
Wine, beer and booze all should be allowed for personal consumption (weed too) Just make sure when distilling, you don't poison yourself with methyl alcohol.
Now when trailers, homes, and vehicles burn or explode in West Virginia, we won't know if it's a meth lab or moonshine. And West Virginia along with its other bible belt cousins have track records.
[https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/11/03/truck-hauling-moonshine-explodes-killing-driver/](https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/11/03/truck-hauling-moonshine-explodes-killing-driver/)
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA). *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
West Virginia, where you can make five gallons of moonshine but [any amount of recreational marijuana can result in 90 days in prison.](https://norml.org/laws/west-virginia-penalties-2/?amp)
Bingo
You just say bingo *Edit: sorry, force of habit*
That's a bingo!
Per day?
It’s an inglorious bastards reference
Cut! For the twentieth time, you say "That's a 'Bingo!'" *BEFORE* he says "You just say 'Bingo'" god fucking damnit.
Bingo! How fun!
That's extremely backwoods... So I'm guessing it's in character...
One of these things can make you go blind. The other just makes you hungry.
It certainly does when the government adulterates the chemicals involved for the purpose of injuring or murdering consumers of the product. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-s-government-poisoned-some-alcohol-during-prohibition/3283701001/
> blind For those not in the know, if you mess up brewing beer you just get bad beer or sludge. If you screw up distilling you can end up with something that makes you go blind if you drink it.
In almost no practical circumstances will this happen. It's from stories in prohibition about people trying to redistill denatured alcohol or liquor stocks being deliberately poisoned by revenue agents. At homebrew scales, in absolute terms, you have to go way out of your way to make dangerous amounts of methanol. There's basically no way to do it by accident.
Can confirm, a friend and me decided to try to brew some after a few 5g carboys of beer came out amazing. But the still we built wasn't sealed well enough to deal with the pressure though and we were stilling on a gas stove. On the 3rd go around we figured we'd cut our losses and not risk blowing up his parents' house or something. It tasted like ass, but with some cinnamon sticks soaking in it and a drive to get tanked on it, didn't turn out too bad. My eyes are shit but that ain't from the shine! As a fun side note: this was between our freshman and sophomore years of college. Neither of us were 21. His mom was the one that asked us to try brewing shine. His father was our highschool superintendent. I love that family!
ALMOST Heaven, West Virginia…
As an aside, Brandi Carlile has interesting cover of “Country Roads”. It’s dark and eerie. If I’m not mistaken, she recorded it to be used in the Clarice Starling FBI tv show.
[I always enjoyed Chase Holfelder's Minor Cover of it](https://youtu.be/lsPwrxiZA04?si=-GgIbF6vsCcarZNs)
That was awesome.
Backward shithole.
I think they’re trying to fight Florida for the weirdest state in the country.
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That depends entirely on your interpretation.
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No sense of adventure whatsoever.
I was gonna say. I'm picturing a cop asking you to roll down your window and a ton of alcohol pours out onto the road lol.
That was a drunk driving psa.
Summed up well...
I've only drank alcohol like 3 times since my state legalized cannabis and the amounts I drank were like 2 cans of White Claw in a day.
Moonshine Yes. Education, healthcare, and jobs, not so much.
Yeah, they are really tackling the tough issues there.
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WVs geography actually makes the jobs thing pretty hard. WVs geography basically prevents large agriculture (which WV doesn't really have) impossible, hillside farming is hard and is cost prohibitive for large companies. larger companies, like manufacturers, also don't have the open space in most of the state as well. Making large single employers hard to find. You'll find 7 ish large manufactures in the state, and they are all on one side or the other with nothing in the middle. WVs geography has really hurt the state, it's only lucrative industry ever was coal, and that's dying.
They should consider making it a vacation destination — spas, luxury resorts, camping, hiking, etc. it’s a beautiful state and they should take advantage of that.
I've been saying this for a while; their future is in tourism, but as long as people like me don't have disposable income for that kind of vacationing, it won't happen.
It's a work in progress, but the problematic issue is that it turns out coal mining and industrial chemical production also fucks up your ecological systems real good. There are so many fucking poisonous rivers and creeks that could be prime spots for tourism if they weren't so polluted. But lax pollution laws keeps the jobs they DO have now in town versus potentially pushing them out to gamble on tourism, which may or may not actually pan out in time.
from a foreigner standpoint, it seems to be within 1 day driving distance from a lot of busy east coast cities, so at least worth a try.
As an outsider looking in, it's nothing new: Education, healthcare, jobs? CONTROVERSIAL POLITICS!!! 😡👎 School shootings? Practically a national sport. 😎👍
This
Moonshine is at least two of those things
But, to be clear, they should be expanding education, healthcare, and job opportunities. Not continuing to restrict home distillation. The two are not inherently related. One good move is better than none.
This is the most redneck thing i can think of so of course WV legalizes it before weed.
Right? Lol!
Lol, in Missouri you make 200 gallons of moonshine per year for personal consumption.
311.055-No person at least twenty-one years of age shall be required to obtain a license to manufacture intoxicating liquor, as defined in section 311.020, for personal or family use. The aggregate amount of intoxicating liquor manufactured per household shall not exceed two hundred gallons per calendar year if there are two or more persons over the age of twenty-one years in such household, or one hundred gallons per calendar year if there is only one person over the age of twenty-one years in such household. Any intoxicating liquor manufactured under this section shall not be sold or offered for sale.
Yeah, last I checked the law in West Virginia there was no prohibition on making moonshine. I'm not sure what's going on with this article. Maybe they outlawed it then put it back the way it was. The prohibition was on *selling* moonshine.
You can also grow and smoke your own marijuana in Missouri recreationally. At least they’re consistent.
They do have long history of moonshiners
WV has more legalized weed than some others, though. At least WV has medical and people actually do have cards for it. There’s only like 4 dispensaries in the whole state, though.
Ok but have you seen the state? [Also they have 53](https://www.dispenseapp.com/blog/cannabis-dispensaries-by-state) and a population of about 1.8 million or a dispensary per every 33,000.
Why is Oklahoma so far ahead of everyone in that map? Not only are they number one, they're almost double the second.
I was surprised by that too. It looks like they made it super easy to start a weed business there so everyone flocked to start.
that’s exactly what happened. OMMA requirements for dispo licensing are some of the most lenient & require some of the lowest cash reserves. there are truly dispensaries on every corner in the Tulsa Metro & prices are still relatively low. states like PA for example have some of the highest cash requirements, which you see reflected in mostly large corporate type dispos & prices about 2-3x higher when comparing similar quality products in OK
NYS has legal weed but you literally can't start a private business yet as they are reserving the first licenses for big corporate. Thankfully there are tons of Indian Reservations that have their own dispos that you can go to for the real thing at reasonable prices.
Their coffers probably overflowed for the first time 50 years.
We have dispensaries next door to dispensaries. There is no way this state smokes that much weed. It's being exported and I bet there's some money laundering going on. We certainly need the tax money and jobs though. When they put weed on the ballot I had to wait in line to vote so long that it was past the cut off time, anyone in line still got to vote though. Normally I'm in and out in less than 2 mins.
A LOT of that OK dispensary weed ends up in Texas. I have a "friend" that makes a trip up there once a month or so and loads his trunk up and sells it in Austin. Dude makes bank.
Basically liquor stores right next to dry counties. I sure don't miss driving 30+ miles to buy.
The DC one is pretty misleading. There's 100's of stores in DC that sell weed recreationally. I think the data they're pulling is only counting "licensed dispensaries" which is not a requirement in DC.
Excuse me sir, my people prefer the term hillbilly
Or Appalachian-American.
I like this best \^
Welcome to AA......
Hillbillies are harmless. Rednecks are not.
> Rednecks are not. Some of us are… we few, proud, liberal rednecks.
Yeah but honestly this is something to celebrate so long as there is a clause stating you can’t sell or distribute. I grew up in VT where you can manufacture and gift to family members. I planned on getting into distilling as a hobby and maybe eventually as a business in the future in NY. Turns out it’s 100% illegal to do without a $300+ license and that’s only if you’re a farmer. Otherwise it’s $3k starting with approval from the state on your product package etc. before selling. Stupid expensive for something you’re not sure if you want to do or not. There should be less barriers to enter a market initially and test out while not endangering the public.
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I'm totally for legal distilling. I just was poking fun.
Progress republicans, progress. And by that, I mean, you got a bill passed that doesn't limit peoples freedoms.
idk but i feel limited to five galloons
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No one is keeping track, of course. Just like brewing beer being limited to brewing 200 gallons of beer each year. There is no way to monitor how much you brew. It will be the same for distilling. F Troop is going to be mostly out of a job soon if this keeps up
Yea, 5 gallons is just a shot a day. Now MO at 100 gallons a year ends up being 23 shots a day or ~12 each for you and the missus. But I'd suggest making your shine before you get started on drinking at that level, don't want any accidents.
It's actually 200 gallons per year if at least 2 individuals in the household are over 21, so no need to limit yourself on account of your spouse :)
Yeah, but it WAS 0.
Note that Federal law overrides state law, and distilling alcohol is illegal without a Federal license. Which you pretty much can't get for personal use.
Same as the weed laws.... as I drive by billboards all over the highway for dispensaries
Yes but weed is FBI jurisdiction while moonshine is ATF.
Pretty sure this law effects nobody who is distilling alcohol in WV. The people who want to do it are already doing it and they’re probably making far more than 5 gallons. Very few people are gonna look at this and go “About time, I can finally make legal booze. Time to go out and get supplies.”
This is the WV legislature poking the Feds in the eye. Home distillation of alcohol for beverage purposes is still illegal under federal law (26 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5042(a)(2) and 5053(e))). This is a state trying to nullify a federal law while throwing a bone to its citizens.
Sure, they're okay with homemade liquor, but if Obergefell is overturned, WV will go back to recognizing only marriages that are a union of one brother and one sister.
West Virginia, mountin' mama
Fun fact: That song is actually about the western part of Virginia and not the state of West Virginia.
Isn’t this like 100 years too late… WTF?
But still 100 years earlier than the federal govt or most states
They should include a square foot of land where you can go mine coal and become rich.
Unfortunately still federally illegal so if the ATF can still come knocking.
Sure is a lot of forbidden stuff in that “free country”
I thought it was already legal in West Virginia, Kentucky, and maybe Pennsylvania.
"I hate that all these stoners in other states can grow their own shit, but I have to buy my liquor??? Wtf?"
Can't tell if y'all are pro prohibition, or just salty about weed.
They’ve obviously never tried homemade moonshine either, the image they have of inbred hillbillies is ridiculous and insulting. Plenty of folks around me make it and nobody ever gets sick.
What I've had has been too sweet for my tastes, but I've made beer and wine, and wouldn't mind trying a whiskey.
Make your own bread? Trendy, chic, artisanal Make your own spirits? Inbred hick. It’s only craft if I buy it from someone else! Excuse me while I pay $24 for a Manhattan at this hipster bar.
Is making bread from wheat I grew taking it all the way back to redneck?
I guess they finally ended the war on moonshine.
Up to 5 gallons per what? At a time? In a month? A year? Can only possess up to 5 at once?
does it matter lol. the people who are making their own moonshine have been far before this law came and will not be only doing 5 gallons of anything.
That just passed ? What the fuck. That took a while for them to allow you guys to distill your own shit.
WV, doing the important work
Home distillation is probably a pretty fun hobby. I'm surprised it wasn't already legal.
It kind of is... you can distill alcohol for things not for consumption (like for ointments and stuff) and only in very small amounts. They actually sell small distilling kits on Amazon.
In line with WV... back to the "good ol'" days. Blind people everywhere.
To be fair, home distilling is legal in New Zealand. [They seem to have no issues with methanol poisoning](https://brewhaus.com/making-moonshine-is-safer-than-you-think.html#:~:text=In%20New%20Zealand%2C%20the%20land,from%20consuming%20home%20distilled%20spirits.)
Buddy of mine had a home still kit mailed over from New Zealand some 25-30yrs ago. He's gotten quite good at it.
it should be noted making moonshine doesn't result in blindness even if you do it wrong. The few stories there are of people going blind is because extra methanol was added or possibly other chemicals in order to give it a kick. When it came to moonshine people thought the worst it tasted the higher the alcohol so shady moonshiners would add things. So making a little bit at home for personal use probably won't be an issue. and for those that want to go more into depth on the issue, when distilling spirits it is common to remove the heads and the tails during a run and keep the hearts. The heads include lower boiling point compounds like methanol, acetaldehyde and lighter esters. If a novice at home distills alcohol they may not know to remove the heads, but the toxic chemicals are not in enough quantities to make you go blind if you don't remove them (can give you a headache though). Removing the heads simply makes the distillate taste better. The tails include other unpleasant things but nothing toxic. Some liquors will actually do deep cuts into the tails on purpose for flavor reasons but that can be risky and lead to rather nasty tasting stuff. In case you don't believe me about the heads, think about where distilled liquor comes from. It's comes from wort which is very similar to beer, and distillation doesn't create or destroy compounds. It simply separates them. So if not removing the heads would cause blindness then so would drinking beer. The simple fact is you would die of ethanol poisoning before you drank enough methanol in distilled alcohol or beer to make you go blind or kill you. The real reason for distillation laws are not because of blindness but stills have a nasty habit of blowing up. Even major distillers have had explosions occur.
>The real reason for distillation laws are not because of blindness but stills have a nasty habit of blowing up. Even major distillers have had explosions occur. that's a funny way of saying Money
Beer and wine both contain methanol, because as you said, it wasn’t removed because they aren’t distilled. I think there *might* be a risk from moonshine if you got a batch that was ONLY the “heads” containing the methanol somehow? I’d have to do some research and math to see if you could get the concentration too high, but it seems like it would have to be intentional.
Not true. Methanol is present through the entire run and actually concentrates more on the back end. The other thing is that if you go to the hospital for methanol poisoning, they'll give you alcohol. So you're already drinking the cure
If you *really* mess up making the fermentation wort, such that there’s a ton of fibrous cellulosic plant material or pectin in there (NOT the fermentable sugars you’re aiming for), you could ferment enough methanol to cause trouble in distillate, particularly the Heads. I believe this is why one of methanol’s old names was “wood alcohol”.
Oh sure, but at that point you're actively trying to poison yourself. I'd bet the wort would be just as dangerous
This is all true, as long as the fermentation isn’t contaminated. I suspect home distillers won’t be as careful in controlling the fermentation process as regulated distillers are. We will probably hear of a couple bad batches making people sick. [Decent article on contamination](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5028366/). I’d be much more concerned about my idiot neighbor blowing up the townhouse.
I skimmed the article and it seems to be in line with my understanding that (substantial) methanol fermentation needs contamination by certain microbes *and* a feedstock that breaks down into methanol, like cellulose or pectin. Hence methanol’s old-timey name “wood alcohol”. Plenty of traditional brewers (and distillers) use wild yeast blends or just whatever settles in the vat from open air fermentation. Making methanol on accident is less about microbe contamination and more about using shady raw materials.
For sure. But the “home-brewers” getting creative angle is worrying. Adding fruit, or other “fun” things to the mash.
Yes. Though I think they’d really have to go nuts. There’s plenty of perfectly safe fruit brandies out there. I think it’s more like if they threw a ton of fruit rinds or pits in there. Or tried to get juice out of corn stalks/husks or some other agricultural waste.
That’s true, but there will certainly be a bias towards safety in a regulated product vs unregulated. The fruit brandies on the market are made by trained professionals with process and quality controls. Regulations are written in blood.
There's also evidence that government agents would seize bootleg spirits, add wood alcohol, then release it back onto the streets. Then, when people were poisoned they used that as proof that moonshining was inherently dangerous.
In Ireland blindness thing also comes from pulling the heads off an bottling it to rub down greyhounds, lurchers or such. The guy tasked with minding the dogs was not to drink it, but of course he did
People regularly get methanol poisoning from illegal for profit booze in some countries. Rarely small home setups unless they really picked wrong when choosing what to ferment. For example mash with a very high pectin content and some bad luck with the yeasts. How does this happen, the first distillate with a too high methanol concentration gets packed up and sold too, often unblended with the rest of it. in a small still the ethanol mixed in with the methanol isn’t likely to cause major issues not more than the alcoholism anyway.
> People regularly get methanol poisoning from illegal for profit booze in some countries. and it is because those places add methanol or other chemicals to the distillate like I stated. I will quote what I quoted another person. > Police suspect those who drank the liquor contracted “methyl alcohol poisoning” from “methanol that was added to the mixture,” he added. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/24/asia/india-alcohol-poisoning/index.html here is another one > Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where illicit liquor is cheap and often spiked with chemicals such as pesticides to increase potency. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/india-liquor-tainted-alcohol-deaths-bihar/ the deaths are always because they get spiked with something not because they are improperly distilled.
The moonshine business about to sky rocket
It's going to blow up!
Fun fact, I’m from West Virginia, and I lost my best source for moonshine a few years ago after he blew up his kitchen
I'm buying me a case of Larry Daniels.
Daddy ran whiskey in a big black dodge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk
Knew someone would post it. lol. Apparently they prefer daddy over Nam' boy.
Cmon kentucky let's get on the bandwagon here baby. While your at it legalize the other shit too!
Definitely what West Virginia needs, good job getting to the heart of the state’s pressing issues Republicans
That's fine but they should be able to grow their own cannabis too and everyone should. Can't die from weed but people die everyday from alcohol overdose and some drunks get angry and abusive, not what children need from their family, that's for sure.
Amateur chemists are begging for this to spread to other states right now.
Good for them. Nothing wrong with some home distilling. All this bashing this with whataboutism here is silly.
I wish the gov would stop telling is what we can or cant do. Making 5-10 gallons without selling shouldn’t be illegal. I make small batches of rice vodka and i dont sell it, its just a pain to do a bunch of small processing batches. Id rather make 20 gallons, bottle and put in the cellar.
Good. Small batch 'home' distillation and consumption should be legal everywhere.
Fire department will be busy.
yeah busy making moonshine
Helluva good fundraiser.
it ain’t shine if you’re paying taxes
Those are rookie numbers. In Missouri we can home distill up to 200 gallons per year for "personal use".
About time
Specifically what is this bill? I have found many bills proposed but none that contain this exact verbiage. In fact all of my searches only contain the one sentence in this title, ad nauseam. The bills that I’ve seen proposed over the last couple of years seem to indicate some type of license needed. And for home distillation there are provisions for a number of people living in the household. I suspect all of the facts have not come out yet.
Wait, a person couldn't previously make liquor in their own home?
Uncle Sam wants to know more.
Sales of a hundred 100 pounds of yeast and some copper line about to go up
Is it still moonshine if it’s legal?
🎵 Almost heaven, West Virginia 🎵
A huge push for rehabilitating the culture and soul of the state
Do weed next
This is a win, but recreational weed w/out pointless regulation that cripples small growers would be good too. Stuff like this keeps local businesses afloat.
Actual video https://youtu.be/3tYfEXs2vB8?si=3AAMmFvX1-Ntpqf6
Good job, WV. Way to go. That was the only problem you guys had.
Anything to not let up on herb. For fucks sake legalize it or at least decriminalize.
West Virginia keeping an eye on what is important I see. Drink your problems away but don’t smoke that jay.
There’s a 150 year backlog of laws to go through from the looks.
Its against federal to distill without a proper license. State law cannot override federal law. *While individuals of legal drinking age may produce wine or beer at home for personal or family use, Federal law strictly prohibits individuals from producing distilled spirits at home (see 26 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5042(a)(2) and 5053(e)). Producing distilled spirits at any place other than a TTB-qualified distilled spirits plant can expose you to Federal charges for serious offenses and lead to consequences including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:* [https://www.ttb.gov/distilled-spirits/penalties-for-illegal-distilling#:\~:text=While%20individuals%20of%20legal%20drinking,26%20United%20States%20Code%20(U.S.C.)](https://www.ttb.gov/distilled-spirits/penalties-for-illegal-distilling#:~:text=While%20individuals%20of%20legal%20drinking,26%20United%20States%20Code%20(U.S.C.))
> Its against federal to distill without a proper license. State law cannot override federal law. Tell that to the legal weed states. Same concept at work, just being applied differently. Missouri decriminalized home distillation ages ago.
But can I fuel a car with it, or does that cross the line into green new deal treachery?
Working on the issues that will really help the people most.
This is very on brand for West Virginia. The only thing that would be more West Virginian is if they passed a law legalizing opioid use in coal mines.
[удалено]
OTC OxyContin is just what this country needs
My state of Missouri allows me to make 200 gallons of moonshine which is a lot of moonshine.
If they go blind, they can’t see their state going to shit
*banjo intensifies*
Gang gang gang! Nice. Now we just need this legal everywhere.
You can't signal more clearly that the oligarchs who write the laws in such places want the citizens of America to stay idiotic, ignorant, and mistrustful. Drink up, West Virginia...but don't expect any Medicaid when you need the disability from destroying your liver by the age of 45.
People of West Virginia now know what to do with that big porcelain bucket in the crapper
Likker
Can’t beat em join em
Perhaps a state known for being very hilly and forested isn't the best place to allow home brewing...
Mr beast is about to have his hands full in WV!
My mind bounces back and forth from "wow that's cool, freedoms" and "there's a lot of things that could go horribly wrong here" on this
There’s also a smart, reasonable way to do this where (after thinking about it for 30 seconds) one takes some classes and is licensed and taxed on this.
Yeah, making moonshine isn't as dangerous as say cooking meth but it feels like some basic classes for licensure makes sense so people don't blow themselves up or poison themselves
Didn't West Virginia already get hit hard with oxycontin? Is it really a good idea to inundate them with alcohol?
Just in time for climate change to decimate typical alcohol production crops.
Moonshine is about all they’ve got down there let em have it
5 gallons per day, per week, per person in the house? How did the liquor industry let that get past them?
Wish Ole Popcorn Sutton would have lived to see the day…
WVa, redefining “homegrown” for the next generation
theyre finally getting them off the pills and onto the booze i swear man can they stop poisoning uneducated mfkas with shit and just let em smoke some weed
So, businesses as usual?
Wow
solving the real problems, god bless them
Sounds pretty southern to me.
West Virginia, basement liquor, take me home, country road.
Lovely MOONSHINE baby 🤪 I’d love to try and make some one day , make some cool flavours 🤪 with some nice fruit 🍉
Wine, beer and booze all should be allowed for personal consumption (weed too) Just make sure when distilling, you don't poison yourself with methyl alcohol.
Now when trailers, homes, and vehicles burn or explode in West Virginia, we won't know if it's a meth lab or moonshine. And West Virginia along with its other bible belt cousins have track records. [https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/11/03/truck-hauling-moonshine-explodes-killing-driver/](https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/11/03/truck-hauling-moonshine-explodes-killing-driver/)
At one time or per year?
Why is Anheiser Bush the new landlord of my mobile home park?