In the Still of the Night
Yes, sir, I was passing through Laurel Springs yesterday afternoon and I decided to stop by Thistle Meadow Winery to take a gander at their Christmas decorations. In addition to the Thistle Meadow wine store, they also have a store called Grapestompers that sells stuff for making your own wine.
Now right there in the middle of the Grapestompers store -- in front of God and country and everybody -- sat a likker still, nekkid as a jaybird . For sale, too. Or, rather, had been for sale as some lawless snake-in-the-grass had already bought it. OK, I admit that I might have jumped to a conclusion here and some law abiding citizen may have bought it to distill mountain spring water. Nevertheless, my gut feeling is that the thing was bought with full intent to cheat the government out of that $2.07 Federal tax per 750ml of distilled spirits.
Now this still was not a big copper pot with a worm coming out of it. Nope. It was a small, high tech, all stainless steel still with a reflux column suitable for making small quantities of 190-proof moonshine in the home.
You can buy it over the Internet from any number of vendors. Turns out it's made down Texas way by an outfit called Brewhaus. What they don't tell you, however, is that under regulations in part 170 of title 27, Code of Federal Regulations, ATF has the right to require manufacturers of stills to give them the name and address of each customer.
Uh, oh! That's not good.
Now right there in the middle of the Grapestompers store -- in front of God and country and everybody -- sat a likker still, nekkid as a jaybird . For sale, too. Or, rather, had been for sale as some lawless snake-in-the-grass had already bought it. OK, I admit that I might have jumped to a conclusion here and some law abiding citizen may have bought it to distill mountain spring water. Nevertheless, my gut feeling is that the thing was bought with full intent to cheat the government out of that $2.07 Federal tax per 750ml of distilled spirits.
Now this still was not a big copper pot with a worm coming out of it. Nope. It was a small, high tech, all stainless steel still with a reflux column suitable for making small quantities of 190-proof moonshine in the home.
You can buy it over the Internet from any number of vendors. Turns out it's made down Texas way by an outfit called Brewhaus. What they don't tell you, however, is that under regulations in part 170 of title 27, Code of Federal Regulations, ATF has the right to require manufacturers of stills to give them the name and address of each customer.
Uh, oh! That's not good.
Comments
Post a Comment