It’s This Week in Bourbon for December 29th 2023. Marianne Eaves is suing Castle & Key, RD1 Spirits in Lexington has announced plans to build a new location, and a look back on 2023.
Show Notes:
- Anthony Dias Blue, founder of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, has passed
- Marianne Eaves is suing Castle & Key
- Algoma Capital has closed a strategic transaction with Off Hours Bourbon
- Lawrenceburg Bourbon Company joins the KDA
- A new lawsuit against the federal ban on at-home distilling
- Federal tobacco regulators ban Luckee Vape Daniels branded products
- RD1 Spirits in Lexington has announced plans to build a new location.
- Chattanooga Whiskey Experimental Single Batch Series: Batch 035: Centenary Cask
- Very Olde St. Nick Winter Maple
- Look back on our biggest accomplishments this year
- @mariannebmd @castleandkey @drinkoffhours @lawrenceburgbourbon @rd1spirits @chattwhiskey @preservationdistillery
- Support this podcast on Patreon
One thought on “TWiB: Marianne Eaves Sues Castle & Key, RD1 Spirits Plans A New Location, A Look Back on 2023”
On home distilling … I wrote a book on it back in 2015 (The Home Distiller’s Guide to Spirits). Back then there were an estimated 250,000 (not a typo) people distilling spirits at home across the U.S. Making potable alcohol on a small still set takes no more skill or safety precaution or common sense than it does to smoke food. Properly made booze and brisket both rely on controlling time and temperature. They also require a well-ventilated place to conduct those operations. There are countless recipes and books devoted to distilling at home, and people are doing it safely all the time. So why is the government so strongly opposed to it? 1. They don’t want people selling it untaxed. 2. They want to have some guarantee that it’s safe to consume. The first problem is easily solved: Home distillers do it as a hobby; they like the process; they’re not looking to make it a commercial endeavor–just like people who make beer and wine at home. Most know their hooch isn’t better than what’s on retailers’ shelves, but they think making the stuff is fun. And given how much legal booze is on store shelves, how would they compete on price anyway?
Secondly, there’s no incentive for the hobbyist to produce poisonous booze as was done in Prohibition. There’s too much great tasting legal booze out there to do something so dumb as to put an uncut run of booze into a batch of hooch. Plus, since so little home distilling is done, as soon as someone was harmed by it, they’d know exactly who made it and there’d be real hell to pay. Again, we’re not talking moonshiners who create larger volumes to sell, we’re talking hobbyists who might get a gallon of good whiskey from a run.
Home distilling has been legal in New Zealand since 1996, and despite government concerns that tax revenue would drop, it didn’t. Why? Because home distillers were already making their booze, and those wanted legal booze kept buying it as usual. There are two ways in NZ to get in trouble for home distilling: 1. selling your hooch, and/or 2. handing it over a fence to your neighbor. Make it at your home and keep it at your home, and, if you like, serve it to your friends there, and all is well.