Why is it illegal to distill your own alcoholic beverages?

My anonymous friend asked another question that I missed; why is it illegal to distill alcohol? The primary reason that it is illegal to distill your own alcohol is because the revenuers want their cut of the action and it’s too hard for them to track what a smaller distiller owes, without all the proper permits. Another reason is that it can be very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Alcohol, both methanol and ethanol, is flammable. The higher the concentration of alcohol, the more flammable it is. Add heat and flames to alcohol and you have the potential for serious fires or explosions. While beer is boiled to release the sugars from the grains, it does not have alcohol in it yet while it is exposed to the heat. It is only after the wort has cooled and yeast is added that beer has alcohol in it. Wine does not get heated at all; the sugars in fruit juice are easily digestible by yeast so it does not need to be boiled. Another safety issue with distillation is that if you don’t distill at the right temperatures, you can end up with methanol, which is toxic. Of course, in large quantities, ethanol is also toxic, but it takes much more ethanol to kill you than it does methanol or isopropyl alcohol.

That being said, it is remotely possible to obtain a license to distill your own alcohol. I have not done this, and would not attempt to distill near my home considering I have a young infant, but I have been told that they way around the prohibition on distilling alcohol for consumption is to obtain a permit to make alcohol for experimental fuel use. I’m not exactly sure how one would go about doing that; it’s just what I have been told is a way to get around the distilling issue. Using distilled alcohol as a fuel may be a viable alternative to fossil fuels some day, and a much more renewable resource.