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The decision challenges a Reconstruction-era law originally intended to prevent Americans from evading federal liquor taxes.A federal appeals court struck down a longstanding ban on home distilling, ruling that it does not effectively support tax collection and is therefore unconstitutional. While home production of beer and wine has long been legal, distilling spirits at home has been prohibited since 1868, with penalties including prison time and fines. The ruling does not immediately legalize home distilling nationwide, as state laws still apply and the federal government may appeal to the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court just handed a major win...

A U.S. appeals court on Friday declared unconstitutional a nearly 158-year-old federal ban on home distilling, calling it an unnecessary and improper means for ​Congress to exercise its power to tax. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of ‌Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of the nonprofit Hobby Distillers Association and four of its 1,300 members. They argued that people should be free to distill spirits at home, whether as ​a hobby or for personal consumption including, in one instance, to create ​an apple-pie-vodka recipe. The ban was part of a law passed during ⁠Reconstruction in July 1868, in part...

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a 156-year-old ban on at-home distilling is unconstitutional, siding with a group that advocates for legalizing the ability of people to produce spirits like whiskey and bourbon for their personal consumption. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump in Fort Worth, on Wednesday agreed with, opens new tab the Hobby Distillers Association's lawyers that the longstanding ban exceeded Congress's taxing power and ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that an 1868 ban on at-home distilling is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, in his ruling on Wednesday, sided with the Hobby Distillers Association’s lawyers that the 156-year-old ban exceeded Congress’s taxing power and violated the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause. The Hobby Distillers Association is a group that advocates legalizing a person’s production of spirits such as whiskey and bourbon for their personal consumption. “Indeed, the Constitution is written to prevent societal amnesia of the defined limits it places on this government of and by the people,” Pittman wrote. “That is where...

The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology Tuesday announced that it has developed the world’s first next generation seawater distillation technology that allows consumable water to be produced in low temperatures and under low pressure, which increases energy efficiency and production capacity. Additionally, the institution has set up the world’s largest seawater distillation plant. According to the institution, it developed a membrane distillation that only allows vapor to pass through while keeping the liquids contained. The vapor is compressed to create a liquid that can be consumed or used for industrial purposes such as irrigation by removing salt...

Try the 92 per cent weapons-grade whisky that will take your breath away. LiterallyBy David Lister, Scotland Correspondent   A 17TH-CENTURY firewater, more than two spoonfuls of which was said to be enough to kill a grown man, is to be revived by a whisky distillery in Scotland. A single drop of the ancient drink of “usquebaugh-baul” was described by the travel writer Martin Martin in 1695 as powerful enough to affect “all members of the body”. He added: “Two spoonfuls of this last liquor is a sufficient dose; if any man should exceed this, it would presently stop...