Actually, it's more about the taxes, as usual, follow the money. However, you have 3 parts to the batch. The head, the heart and the tail. They head is what will come out of the still before the alcohol evaporated. The head is all the bad stuff, like acetone for one. That's what makes you blind. The heart is the good part, that the alcohol that you can drink. That happens at a certain temperature. After that is the tail, which is mostly water. Most save and re distill that.

I would not pay any mind to anything on a tv show. TV is just lies for entertainment to sell advertising. Always amazed at how many adults haven’t figured that out yet

Jimmy crack corn, and i don't care...until ol Corn Pop shows up! Lol

Yip, all about the money. With an additional 87000 IRS agents, they ain't goin' to miss much.

Even before the heads is something worse that is absolute poison. It is called the foreshots.

I used to work in the food and beverage industry, so, I know a bit about the process. As such I posted a bit of information in response to some dangerous misinformation on a thread on here many years ago. Soon after I got a PM from a retired ATF agent who was a member. I needed to promise to keep my big fat mouth shut.

Keep that in mind before sharing information that might tend to incriminate yourself.

Taxes are a given.

If you want to make alcohol for personal use drinking, medical disinfectant, or fuel do it. Before prohibition many farms had a still and would run motors off of them. Gas stations were far away as well as doctors. It was part of being self-sufficient.

If your not selling it or bragging you will have nothing to worry about.

I’m pretty sure they have a huge still about 1 mile from me right on the highway. It’s supposed to be a corn ethanol plant, but I think they’re just using that as a cover.

And the taxes are based on your percent of pure ethanol so 50% vodka would get taxed more than 35% brandy. That is why the feds want meticulous records of each and every batch if you were licensed. Serious coin and book keeping to be had to be legit.

One of the first push-backs against the federal government was the early 1790s "Whiskey Rebellion". Old Geo Washington had to do some common folk stomping to get it under the control. Its been a low intensity guerilla warfare on the people making untaxed hootch ever since ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

Still requires a lot of paperwork and licensing and it gets expensive so unless your doing it on a larger scale it probably won’t save you any money

A farmer friend looked into it a few years ago and came to the conclusion It was cheaper to buy it then make it

I know a few that would argue that with you after being busted for doing just that, hasn’t been a still busted around here that I know of for some time but there have been several that I k ow of that have and I am not talking for profit ones either but the small personal ones for home consumption or use

Have been a few big ones busted though

Pretty sure it is NOT illegal to own a still just illegal to use it for alcohol distillation unless licensed.
You can buy still all over the internet and they will work with you for discrete ordering and shipping. The bigger more well known makers do not report your order to the feds.