Making homemade liquor grows in popularity

[Soft batch]

Making homemade liquor grows in popularity despite its illegality

Source: Greeley Tribune
December 13, 2014

Homebrew clubs and people who grow their own pot make no secret of their efforts - and almost always share it with others - but the possibility of being found out has kept home distillers alone in the basement.

Distilling liquor for personal consumption is still illegal in Colorado and the other 49 states, even though it's only considered a petty offense.

"Most people who distill at home don't even tell their friends," said Mike Lurbe, a member of Treehouse Brewing Club, a homebrewing club in Greeley.

Heather Bean, who owns Syntax Spirits, 625 3rd St. in Greeley, even has a hard time finding employees.

"With distilling, you can virtually find nobody," she said. "Honestly, most of the people that kind of do the clandestine home distilling, they're like retired engineers. They're not going to be the young person who comes on and is going to do the heavy lifting and do distilling. And that's because of the laws."

However, home distilling is growing in popularity. It's almost as popular as homebrewed beer, Bean said, and she knows this because of the number of people who strike up a conversation with her at Syntax.

"It's actually incredibly popular," Bean said, "and lots of people come in here and start talking about their home rigs."

Bean said there's also a reason the rise in the popularity of home distilling has paralleled the growth in homebrewing.

"People frequently actually make beer and then distill it," she said. "Some people decide they should distill because they had a bad batch of beer. Other people get more pointed about it and just make things specifically for distilling."

Making spirits for personal consumption has few monetary benefits if any, Bean said, because it takes a large amount of initial ingredients just to get a small amount of liquor.

"The people who tend to be into it are people who have been into homebrewing and into home vinification, and they're just kind of interested in fermenting things and want to round out their profile," she said. "Most of the people are just sort of the more professional who is kind of into this as a hobby, and they think, 'Seriously, how big of a deal could it be? Who is going to show up in my basement on Friday night?' Well probably nobody, unless you actually tell them that you want to sell a bunch of booze."

It's hard to understate just how the state of Colorado treats distilling in relation to other crimes. In the past three years, the Colorado Department of Revenue's Liquor Enforcement Division has had only one home distilling case, in which the department confiscated about 10 bottles and three keg stills, said Daria Serna, the department's communications director. The three stills enabled the distiller, who lived in southern Colorado, to make about 3 quarts of liquor at a time, or a little less than 3 liters. Serna said the person was attempting to sell the distilled liquor.

"I've never known anybody who has been caught for home distilling," Bean said. "The only people I've heard of just through word of mouth type stuff are people who then try to sell their wares, which is just a dumb idea."

With the advent of legal recreational marijuana in Colorado and the ability to grow plants for personal use at home, Bean said it seems almost silly to keep home distilling laws on the books. The reason they remain, she guessed, has to do almost entirely with tax revenue.

"As far as I can tell, the real reason behind home distillation being illegal is it's very lucrative," Bean said. "Even in the excise tax rates, we pay roughly 10 times more tax than beer and wine on each amount of spirit. So you can also imagine why no one wants to sort of let that slide."

Bean said those taxes and the cost of distilling licenses can put a damper on businesses like hers, in more ways than one.

"I built our whole production line having absolutely no idea if it would actually work," she said. "I'm a chemical engineer, and I fervently hoped that it would work. And it does work, it did work. But believe me, that was a lot of high blood pressure and heartburn before the first turn-on."

Nevertheless, Bean said the law is the law, and she doesn't condone anyone distilling anything other than water, vinegar or essential oils without a license. Bean pays more than $1,000 a year for her distilling license.

"This is why distillers have gotten that bad reputation, because we're kind of thumbing our nose at the law more than we should be," she said. "It is the responsibility of the distiller to abide by all applicable laws or accept the consequences."

Is it anything like brewing beer?

Liquor distillation requires a slightly different process than beer brewing, said Heather Bean, owner of Syntax Spirits, 625 3rd St. in Greeley.

"It's probably like 75 percent the same, but there's definitely not entire overlap," Bean said. "It's a different process."

The biggest difference between beer brewing and liquor distillation is malts used in brewing are not used in distillation, Bean said.

"If you're familiar with beer brewing, you grind your grain, you have your grain bed with the holes from the barley and you filter out the wert," she said. "We started out trying to do that and we realized that makes no sense when you're using all barley and when you're not using malt."

Making liquor consists of four steps: milling, mashing, fermentation and distillation.

Raw materials are ground into a course meal during milling to extract the starch. The starch is converted to sugar, mixed with pure water and cooked to produce a mash. With the addition of yeast, the sugar is converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The mixture is then heated, and because alcohol vaporizes first, it is transferred into a cooling container, where it finally condenses into spirits. This final step is often repeated numerous times to obtain optimal purity.

Each distiller can toy with the process and ingredients to determine what works best for his or her operation.

"We actually ferment on our grain," Bean said, "and the enzymes we put in keep working while we're fermenting."

Some liquors, like whiskey, rum and brandy, are aged into wooden casks to develop their flavors and aromas.

Distillers can also choose to blend two or more liquors of the same category, giving the blend a wider range of flavors.

Can't it make you go blind?

Well, in theory. There are many myths and legends that go along with home distilling, and this is one of them.

Heather Bean, owner of Syntax Spirits, 625 3rd St. in Greeley, said the rumor has roots in reality, but the danger has long passed.

"You're fine unless you're doing a distillation and add crazy impurities to it or cut it with toxic chemicals - which was popular 100-500 years ago, and that's where most of that came from," Bean said. "A really popular thing during the gin age in London, when gin was kind of both a good and bad thing, was that they would actually add industrial waste to alcohol because it gave it a bite. It made it taste good. A little industrial waste or sulfuric acid waste just gives your alcohol a real zing. Nobody does that anymore, but the urban legends remain."

Bean also said distilling vodka in particular removes a number of impurities present even in wine and beer, which is why some find there's less of a hangover to accompany it.

"In reality, even if we never cut out the nasty stuff at the beginning and the end, the worst that would happen is it would not taste delicious and you'd probably have a headache," she said. "You'd actually have to work to do anything harmful."

The distillation process, however, still has inherent hazards, Bean said.

"It's not hard to do it safely but, by the same token, it certainly can be dangerous if good practices aren't followed," she said. "Like all activities with potentially bad side effects, distilling in general shouldn't be approached lightly or without proper education and preparation."

Is there an effort to legalize home distilling?

Yes. The Hobby Distiller's Association is a lobbying effort started by Rick Morris, who owns Brewhaus America Inc. in Keller, Texas.

Morris said his organization has made headway in legalizing home distilling at the federal level, but progress has been understandably slow.

"It moves at the speed of government," Morris said. "And I don't necessarily mean that in a derogatory way. We've definitely made progress."

Because Morris lives and works in Texas, he said the group's efforts have been targeted mostly toward Texas' delegation, in particular U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

"We're leaning on Sen. Cornyn, and he's been extremely supportive," Morris said. "We've actually had very good support from all senators and representatives we've personally met with."

The tricky part, Morris said, has been convincing a member of Congress to take the lead and sponsor a bill.

"Everything is in line and ready to go if we can get one person to step forward," he said. "I don't think there's too much doubt that it would pass rather easily. It's just getting it to that point."

Morris encouraged licensed distillers, home distillers and even people who just support the effort to contact their Congressional leaders and ask them to get on board. So far, he said, the reaction from the Centennial State has been flat.

"We haven't managed to get any action out of the competitors out there in Colorado, unfortunately," he said. "They would reap the benefits, but they're sitting back waiting for it to happen."

The association has facts and other resources available on its website to allow interested parties to make their case to Congress. To read the association's case for legal home distilling, learn more about the HDA or to sign up as a member, go to the HDA's website.

[Soft batch]

This was the lead article in Mark Brown's (Buffalo Trace President) periodic "Industry News" email.

[Bushman]

I also enjoyed the read, interesting the only guy she knew that was busted by the law made very little or at least had very little product but as seems to happen time and time again they tried to sell. It was interesting while shopping yesterday at Costco I went to their alcohol section and I was surprised they had a generic rum and gin for under 6 dollars a bottle but with our State tax and our State Liter tax it raised the price to over $10.00 a bottle almost double.

[bearriver]

Yup. Seen tax outweigh the bottle sticker price in this state on bottom shelf. Now figure in the taxes that production paid which in turn also ups the sticker price. F+%-ing goobernment makes more $ off liquor than the company making it does... Its disgusting!

Good read, the author painted a very interesting picture.

[Jimbo]

Yup. They justify the exorbitant tax by calling it a 'sin tax', but thats just a load of horseshit to reach deeper in your pocket.

Good writeup!

[Coyote]

Good read IMO

Don't forget you Apple Knockers voted to take the booze away
from state stores

Just saying


Coyote

[S-Cackalacky]

Well, we have state stores here in VA and they still seem to jack the taxes up. You might even say that the profits are taxes robbed from would-be private retailers.

[woodshed]

Thanks for posting this. Cool to see.
As mentioned the CO yearly fee is 1,050.00.

[MitchyBourbon]

Interesting read, thanks for posting it.

[Truckinbutch]

Thanks for posting this. Cool to see.
As mentioned the CO yearly fee is 1,050.00.

I understand that you have to jump through the hoops to go the legal path you are following . It still just plain SUCKS ! The tithe you are forced to give to CO would
buy all me and my family need for good drinkin for a whole year and more .
>Small wonder Grubberments don't want individuals making their own .
>I know ....... It's all about the safety of the CHILLLDRENNNN ................. Standard ploy

[goose eye]

Becomein popular? That aint round here.
There is folks that is jammed up at least once a month
it don't even make the paper an mostly its the youngins
Bringing the law to the door. Mostly they runnin one barrel
a year goes along with killing hogs
Who is it runnin likker? From judges an mayors on down.
Its a heritage thang.

So I'm tole

[Truckinbutch]

Becomein popular? That aint round here.
There is folks that is jammed up at least once a month
it don't even make the paper an mostly its the youngins
Bringing the law to the door. Mostly they runnin one barrel
a year goes along with killing hogs
Who is it runnin likker? From judges an mayors on down.
Its a heritage thang.

So I'm tole

Yep . Dry counties remain 'dry counties ' because of what ? Churches ? I don't think so ! Politicians get paid more money by bootleggers to keep a county dry for their own profit than what is ever recovered in low level violation fines .
>Follow the money if you really want to know who the real crooks are .