'Moonshine'?

[PrettyCandles]

Is it legal to run a still and make your own liquers?

Not commercially, but for personal use and gifts.

What about if you want to give some to the school fair to sell?

Running a still is definitely illegal, as well as being dangerous as you can very easily poison people (leaving them blind or dead....)

But you can make things like sloe gin safely, because you use commercially-bought alcohol eg gin for sloe gin, but I think you can do the same things with other spirits and fruits.

If your school fair takes things like home-made cakes, then I don't see any reason they'd have a problem with sloe gin etc. In fact it's much less likely to cause food-poisoning as the alcohol content would kill off most bugs

So making alcohol is illegal. Ah, shame - I would have liked to try my hand at it.

You can make your own wine and beer, just not spirits.

You can brew but not distill I think.

Fermenting is fine - so you can make beer, wine, cider, perry, etc. But it's the distilling that's the problem because of the risk of making methanol by mistake.

No, it's the distilling that's the problem because it is illegal in order to protect income to the Treasury. There's 14 degrees Celsius between the boiling points of Methanol and (azeotropic) Ethanol so to end up with a dangerous mixture you would have to be either (i) really bad at following simple instructions or (ii) a criminal looking to get as much product with as big a hit as possible and not caring about the side effects.

None of the requirements for obtaining a distilling license are concerned with safety, but they can refuse a license unless you have a still which is at least 1,800 litres which basically makes legal home-distilling impossible. More details here.

I am not an expert on this area of the law, but the following is my general understanding which should be verified with specific legal advice if you intend to do this.

If you do make your own spirits without a license, your equipment can be confiscated and HMRC can make you pay the duty on whatever they estimate you have made, but it is not, I believe, a criminal offense.

It is not illegal to use or give or receive as a genuine gift, raffle prize etc. alcohol on which duty has not been paid but for a school (or anyone) to sell any alcohol without a license is an offense, punishable on conviction by up to six months imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £20,000.

Sorry, 13 degrees

Thanks, mranchovy. So the PTA couldn't, for example, sell my home-brewed beer, however weak, on the home produce stall, but could offer it as a prize in a raffle for wchich tickets have been sold?

I guess I'll continue makng macerated liqueurs, rather than branching out into distilling. I vaguely recalled from A-level Chemistry that you had to be careful not to make methanol by accident, but that it was not particularly tricky.