[narcout]

Homebrewing in decline:Hobbies are luxuries many have to forgo in a tough economy.   So… AHA-like hobby groups are shedding members and participation in the hobby itself is in decline.  People can’t justify the expense.

I don't know.  People seem to have plenty of money for like Taylor Swift tickets.

I think craft beer and homebrewing were on trend for a while, and now other things are just more popular.

[John M]

Homebrewing in decline:Hobbies are luxuries many have to forgo in a tough economy.   So… AHA-like hobby groups are shedding members and participation in the hobby itself is in decline.  People can’t justify the expense.

I don't know.  People seem to have plenty of money for like Taylor Swift tickets.

I think craft beer and homebrewing were on trend for a while, and now other things are just more popular.

Totally agree. It's not out of despair.. It's just not "in" right now. Plenty of money being spent on other hobbies.

[erockrph]

Homebrewing in decline:Hobbies are luxuries many have to forgo in a tough economy.   So… AHA-like hobby groups are shedding members and participation in the hobby itself is in decline.  People can’t justify the expense.

I don't know.  People seem to have plenty of money for like Taylor Swift tickets.

I think craft beer and homebrewing were on trend for a while, and now other things are just more popular.

Totally agree. It's not out of despair.. It's just not "in" right now. Plenty of money being spent on other hobbies.

Right, beer in general is on the decline compared to things like cocktails, seltzers, and cannabis. Which means even if DIY hobbies in general are still going strong, we're going to see less people in the homebrewing slice of that pie.

Tangent - for this reason, I think it would be a great idea for the AHA to consider expanding into advocating for the legalization of home distilling. They already went through the process for homebrewing, and since brewing is the first step in whiskey production this could provide an avenue to bring new blood into the hobby.

[CounterPressure]

Tangent - for this reason, I think it would be a great idea for the AHA to consider expanding into advocating for the legalization of home distilling. They already went through the process for homebrewing, and since brewing is the first step in whiskey production this could provide an avenue to bring new blood into the hobby.

You can already buy distilling equipment for your Brewzila or your Anvil I think. Are you saying it's not legal yet?

[Slowbrew]

Tangent - for this reason, I think it would be a great idea for the AHA to consider expanding into advocating for the legalization of home distilling. They already went through the process for homebrewing, and since brewing is the first step in whiskey production this could provide an avenue to bring new blood into the hobby.

You can already buy distilling equipment for your Brewzila or your Anvil I think. Are you saying it's not legal yet?

Home distilling alcohol is not legal anywhere in the USA.
If you read the ad copy on any distilling equipment they are careful to say the units are for distilling water of flavor essences. They cannot legally sell you equipment to make hard spirits. That does not mean the units can't be used for alcohol, they just can't encourage you to break the law.
Never mind that the same company will sell you everything you need to make bourbon. 

Paul

[BrewBama]

Home distilling is much like cannabis.  Per state law, either could be legal. For example, it is legal to distill alcohol in Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Iowa has no laws about distilling homemade alcohol, so it isn’t explicitly illegal there.

However, like cannabis, Federal law strictly prohibits individuals from producing distilled spirits at home (see 26 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5042(a)(2) and 5053(e)).

Therefore, regardless of what a state’s law may permit, an individual may not legally manufacture their own "hard alcohol" at home. Federal law does allow private citizens to own a still to make non-consumable alcoholic products, such as perfume and fuel, as long as they have the correct license. But in some states it is illegal to even posses a still.

Again, like cannabis, if you are producing amounts indicative of personal use and aren’t selling the product to others, most likely no one will notice or care. If you sell home distilled alcohol (or cannabis) you must pay taxes on the sale and therefore self incriminate.

Unfortunately, manufacturers of stills may keep records of who they sell their products to and those records could be provided to law enforcement under subpoena. There are anecdotal stories of customers being notified that sales records were handed over to Federal Agencies in the past.

As a side note, BJCP Style 9B Eisbock is made by freeze distillation to produce the style. This is commonly called ‘jacking’ and is also illegal in the US because it is a form of distillation. Applejack is made from hard cider the same way.  Unlike heat distillation where heads and tails can be cut from the hearts, when jacking you are including the heads and tails in the final product. This means Eisbock contains the concentration of an array of alcohols that are considered harmful to ingest. Therefore, it could be argued heat distillation is safer.


One day, you’ll wake up and there won’t be anymore time to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Don’t wait. Do it now.

[denny]

Tangent - for this reason, I think it would be a great idea for the AHA to consider expanding into advocating for the legalization of home distilling. They already went through the process for homebrewing, and since brewing is the first step in whiskey production this could provide an avenue to bring new blood into the hobby.

You can already buy distilling equipment for your Brewzila or your Anvil I think. Are you saying it's not legal yet?

Totally not legal

[CounterPressure]

Home distilling alcohol is not legal anywhere in the USA.
If you read the ad copy on any distilling equipment they are careful to say the units are for distilling water of flavor essences. They cannot legally sell you equipment to make hard spirits. That does not mean the units can't be used for alcohol, they just can't encourage you to break the law.
Never mind that the same company will sell you everything you need to make bourbon. 

Paul

Hey that's cool! You know, I drive to work everyday at 75 in a 65 and I don't give it a thought. Lol

[Lazy Ant Brewing]

I've never entered any competition past the local level so I'm not about to offer comments on the feedback.

However, I'm so grateful for the advice I get on this forum, and that alone is worth the membership to me.

At my local brew club I receive good advice and perhaps some not-so-good advice from various members and don't always know whose opinion to trust on a particular topic.  In addition, once the evening's program is over and brew sampling begins in earnest, there's a lot of background noise and it's hard for me to hear.  And then perhaps a couple of minutes later something else is being discussed and I'm not sure my question was fully considered or answered.

Here you soon learn whose opinions are well regarded and who seems to have lots of experience and topics can be revisited over a number of days.

I can't praise the forum enough.

[dbeechum]

Home distilling alcohol is not legal anywhere in the USA.

Want to point out that while distilling is illegal at the Federal level, several states do make it legal at their level - Missouri, for instance - and West Virginia just passed a law to allow a home distiller to make 5 or 10 gallons of distilled spirits per year based on adults in household.

So, right now, home distillation is in the same place that homebrewing was prior to the 1978 federal omnibus bill that included the legalization of homebrewing.

[CounterPressure]

About a year ago I watched a video on the Brewzilla on the MoreBeer site.  There, at the end they talked about a prototype distilling head which mounted on top of it and they showed it in the video.  It was scheduled for launch sometime later.  Impressive looking gizmo, made the entire rig stand over 6 feet tall with all sorts of copper and glass.  I have no desire to do that, but I recall telling a few folks about it. I can't find a single image of it now so who knows if they killed the project.  I see there's other equipment, but that thing they prototyped was far and away more impressive looking.

[dmtaylor]

A law isn't really a law if it's not enforced by anyone. 

Crud... I probably shouldn't be typing this on a nuclear company computer.... oh well......... 

[dbeechum]

A law isn't really a law if it's not enforced by anyone. 

Like a great many laws and rules in this world they exist mostly as a general form of guidance and to give the state a way to pop someone in the nose (legally speaking)

For the most part, law enforcement has little interest in going after you until you start causing obvious harm. Don't go selling your hooch - no one's going to give a damn until you run afoul of the state apparatus for some other reason. Start selling your hooch and cause harm - in the form of say bad moonshine hurting people or kid's crashing cars with your provable stuff on them - then the state has a hammer to whack a mole you into the anvil of the judge's bench.

Again, most laws and rules are on the books because of blood or people being assholes and violating common decency.

[Village Taphouse]

To the OP:  Is part of your issue that you got negative feedback or did you just get incomplete or very short feedback?  I suppose that if I went through the effort and paid $29 and then received feedback that my beer was subpar, it would put me in a bad mood.  But ...

I've been brewing since 1999 and I do not enter comps.  I don't need someone else to tell me my beer is good or bad .. I will already know it either way.  That's just me.  The money I spend to be part of the AHA is money well spent (IMO) because I have access to a lot of other minds and in most cases someone else has already been where you find yourself right now and they're also (usually) very willing to help if you have an issue.  The forum is invaluable to me.  I used to brew the occasional clunker and it's been awhile since that happened and that's probably due in part to the sharing of good information here.  I also get AHA emails with access to award-winning recipes, some of which I have brewed and I like very much.   Everyone finds value in different places.  If I received negative feedback about my beers from judges, the last thing I would want to do is abandon a forum full of good beer minds. 

[chumley]

The last time I entered the NHC was in 2011, when I won a gold medal for a gueuze. One of the judges wrote "I would drink the sh!t out of this beer."

That seemed like good enough feedback at the time.