Home distilling myths, and where the law actually sits

Home distilling attracts more confident misinformation than just about anything else we sell gear for, and a fair bit of it gets repeated as fact in the shop. So here are the five we hear most, sorted out plainly, starting with the one that actually matters.

Myth 1: it's all illegal, or none of it is

People arrive believing one of two things and both of them are wrong. So here it is straight.

Owning a still is lawful and selling them is lawful, which is why we have them on the shelf. Distilling spirits at home is the part that needs an excise manufacturer licence from the Australian Taxation Office, and that applies whether you sell a drop of it or drink every bit of it yourself.

That catches people out because beer, cider, wine and mead are a different thing again and you can make those at home without any of that. Spirits sit under excise, and excise is where the licence comes from.

None of which stops you buying a still, and plenty of people do. It just means the licence question is one to sort out with the ATO before you run it rather than after, and it's their answer to give, not ours.

There is also a route that avoids all of it, which is Myth 3 below.

Myth 2: you need expensive gear to make anything decent

If you've searched distilling supplies online and fallen off your chair at the price of some of the setups, that's fair enough, but it isn't the starting point. You don't need the space age looking contraption.

A basic setup, a hydrometer, a fermenter and a recipe you follow properly will take you a long way, and the gear you buy later is the gear you've worked out you actually want. Everybody who is good at this started with something small.

If you want the full list before you spend anything, I wrote it all down in The Definitive Guide to Getting Started with Homebrew Spirits, which goes through the equipment piece by piece.

Myth 3: what you make at home will taste rough

This is the one from people who reckon the bottle shop does it better anyway, and sometimes on a first batch they've got a point. But you control every ingredient and every step, which nobody does with a bottle off a shelf, and the second batch is always better than the first because you know what you changed.

Worth knowing here: flavouring a base spirit you bought with an essence is a completely different activity from distilling, and it needs no licence at all. That's how a lot of people get into this. You buy the spirit, add a Still Spirits or Edwards essence, and you have a gin or a whiskey character without ever running a still. It is genuinely good and it is the easiest possible start.

Myth 4: it's too complicated for a beginner

It isn't rocket science. It's a set of repeatable steps, and once you've done them once the whole thing stops feeling mysterious. Temperature control and knowing what to cut at the start and the end of a run both sound harder written down than they are in practice.

Nobody starts out knowing any of it. Even the bits that sound technical, like reading a hydrometer to check where your alcohol content is sitting, are a thirty second job once somebody has shown you. If you get stuck halfway through, come in and ask us.

Myth 5: it's dangerous by nature

There are real risks if you ignore the basics, the same as with anything involving heat and flammable liquid, but the danger is in the shortcuts rather than in the activity. Homemade contraptions built out of unsuitable materials are where the horror stories come from.

Use gear that was designed for the job. Keep the airflow good and don't walk away from a run that's going.

So why bother

Because you get to decide what it tastes like. You tune the flavour, you play with essences, and you end up handing somebody a bottle of something that only exists because you made it. That's a better gift than anything you can buy on the way over.

Shop related products

• The Definitive Guide to Getting Started with Homebrew Spirits. My own run through of the gear and the steps.
• Still Spirits Top Shelf Whiskey Essence 50ml. The no licence route, straight into a bought base spirit.
• Still Spirits Pure Turbo Yeast. For the wash, if you're licensed and running your own.
• Still Spirits Universal Z Carbon. Cleans up a neutral before you flavour it.

Did you know we also stock alcometers and hydrometers in the shop, along with digital and glass thermometers, 30 and 60 litre fermenter systems, bourbon barrel chips, glycerine and glass flagons. They're not all on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest of it is in the homebrew collection, and if you'd rather talk it through with something that doesn't get sick of questions, Brewhilder is there for it.

Read next

• How to flavour a spirit at home with essences
• 3 ways to age and flavour whisky at home
• What fermentation actually does, and how to keep yeast happy

I'll answer almost anything across the counter, but the licence question belongs to the ATO and I'm not about to pretend otherwise.

Cheers

Candeece