Me and my girlfriend just went through this. She took a course in college on beer brewing and now the hallway is a full on Heisenberg level beer superlab. She was good on making hooch as long as it was beer. We inquired about making moonshine, and this was the response we got from a friend in some of our brewing circles. This was copied from an email:
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"Making whiskey is
100% illegal in any amount, anywhere in the US. You can brew your own beer or wine as long as you don't sell it, but any product that utilizes distilling for consumption is illegal. It is a federal crime to distill moonshine.
Sec. 109.21 (a) of Texas TABC laws state that:
“
The head of a family or an unmarried adult may produce for the use of his family or himself not more than 200 gallons of wyne, bier, malt liquor, or ale, per year. No permit or license is required.”
Therefore, bier is legal to brew. But once the bier or mash goes to a still it becomes illegal without a commercial liquor production license. Same goes for any method of increasing the alcohol content of any brewing product.
Information on TABC liquor and brewing licenses can be found
here. To distill ethanol you will need a Local Industrial Producers Permit:
TTB 5110.74 Form Additional Info:
Home Page TABC Licensing TABC Contact Info "
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So there's your answer. I bolded an colored some stuff, but the rest is straight from fellow brewers about moonshine. Apparently they take it pretty serously.
Kinda makes me proud to live in the USA, where nothing's free and everything's taxed.