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Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

Australia:

To use a still of any capacity to distil alcohol such as spirits, you must have an excise manufacturer licence.

Severe penalties apply for manufacturing spirits without an excise manufacturer licence.[1]

Although, in practice, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a case of someone being fined for making spirits at home, and you’d probably have to repeatedly offend that particular law in order to be sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

1. https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Excise-and-excise-equivalent...

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For personal use, sure, you'll probably get away with it. Try selling it and see what happens.

Yeah nah.

Distillation on home premises without proper safety procedures is a recipe for explosions and for contaminated/weird distillation products.

I'm a home-brewer, and have cold-distilled a couple of things (you can get up to about 22% that way IIRC), but I'm good with it being a little difficult to get started distilling, from a safety standpoint.

"I'm good with it being a little difficult to get started distilling, from a safety standpoint."

If you screw up home canning, you can get botulism, which can very easily kill you and anyone else who consumes it. Same if you simply store some home-made garlic olive oil in your refrigerator.

Cook beans wrong and you could get very sick or even die. Cooking on a gas stove could result in your house catching on fire, or at least you could severely burn yourself or someone else.

Use power tools wrong and you could get maimed or killed, or maim or kill someone else.

Climb a ladder or walk in to a shower and you can fall and die.

Riding a bike wrong could result in yourself or others getting killed.

Yet few would argue that any of these things be made illegal to be done by amateurs at home because of the risks they pose and the fact that people have killed themselves or others doing them.

Why should making alcohol or any other drug be any different?

Harming or offing yourself isn't as a big of deal as being a food/beverage producer and handing what you make to others (even free). Distillation is one such bulk method.

Distilled alcohol with a cut of methanol will make for a very sad day for anyone who imbibes.

Few of these involve the possibility of significant explosion, which is one way in which they are different.

Only kidney beans though

Isn't that because of taxation? It is that way in Czechia as well, purely because of that; it is OK to make spirits at home though (up to some - albeit pretty large - amount).

I’m honestly not sure I know what the original motivations for that law is, but I always assumed it’s due to taxation and licensing reasons.

Sorry but it is not allowed to make spirits at home in Czech Republic.

You can use certified distillery to make spirit from home grown fruit and pay taxes (although not as much as for commercial alcohol). This spirit is used for personal use only and could not be sold.

> This spirit is used for personal use only and could not be sold.

Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry I wasn't clear.

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