Stills for sale – Is It Legal?

Have you ever wondered if advertisements for home distilling equipment are legal? Is offering stills for sale legal? Are using stills and/or purchasing stills against the law?

What does the law say?

According to the United States Department of Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, offering stills for sale depends on how the still is to be utilized.

Alcohol may not be produced from these stills unless one qualifies as a distilled spirits plant. A distilled spirits plant is an establishment authorized to distill  warehouse or process spirits or any of its combination. Regulations do not classify distilled spirits plant due to size. Mostly, a distilled spirits plant proprietor could produce specially denatured alcohol, beverage distilled spirits, tax-free alcohol or completely denatured alcohol.

A Beverage Distilled Spirits Plant is established to produce, rectify, bottle, process, store beverage spirits such as alcohol or neutral spirits, whiskey, blended applejack, brandy, gin, Tequila, rum, liqueurs, cordials.

An Industrial Distilled Spirits Plant is established to produce / package or bottle denatured spirits for industrial use and not for beverage use.

An Industrial / Beverage Distilled Spirits Plant conducts non-industrial and industrial operations in a single place.

An Experimental Distilled Spirits Plant is established for limited and specific time periods for experimentation or for the development of industrial spirits or source materials utilized to produce processes or spirits for refining and producing such spirits.

Can you buy stills for sale?

Buying stills for sale as well as owning a small still is allowed. However, you might need to check with authorities in your locality as rules could differ.

Essentially, a still is an apparatus that is able to separate ethyl alcohol from a mixture that consists of alcohol. Take note that small stills (which has a distilling cubic capacity of 1 gallon or less) utilized for laboratory purposes or for water distilling or distilling non-alcoholic materials are not subject to these rules. 

If you purchase a small still and utilize it to extract essential oil or distill water, you are exempt from the requirements of the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. If you create essential oils through a solvent method and you acquire alcohol as a consequence of the process, this is considered as distilling. Any instance you use and recover purchased alcohol, you are essentially separating alcohol from a particular mixture and it is therefore considered as distilling.

Stills for sale – Are there requirements?

Under the regulations of the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the TTB has the authority to require stills manufacturers to provide the name and address of customers.

Spirits for the purpose of beverage use may not be produced without paying taxes and with no prior paperwork approval as these are required in order to operate and manage a distilled spirits plant.

Take note that specific requirements needs to be met such as paying a special tax, filing a bond, filing an extensive application, providing proper equipment in the measurement of spirits / adequate tanks and pipelines, the availability of a separate building, maintaining records and filing reports.

About the Author:

Jason Stone is the owner of Whiskey Still, a company which manufactures different still products such as whiskey still and moonshine still. The company is located at Houston, Texas. They provide quality and effective products for Scotch, Rum, Bourbon, Cognac, Schnapps, Tequila and Vodka production. To know more about Whiskey Still and their products, click here.