George Washington ran one of the largest whiskey distilleries in the early republic.
Today a federal agency would arrest you for doing what he did in your own kitchen.
Now an Ohio engineer is asking the Supreme Court to explain why making one ounce of bourbon at home is still a federal felony.
The Agency Defending a 158-Year-Old Law
Meet the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
The TTB is a division of the U.S. Treasury Department, and it is the agency currently fighting in federal court to preserve a law that Congress passed in 1868.
That year, Reconstruction-era politicians needed tax revenue and banned home distilleries as a way to prevent liquor tax evasion.
The penalty today, over 150 years later: up to five years in federal prison, a $10,000 fine, and forfeiture of your home.
The TTB doesn't just defend the law in court – agents have enforced it with raids.
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In one operation, TTB investigators joined state agents in Florida and arrested eight people, seizing 46 home stills.
The agency's official statement warned that possessing an unregistered still or producing distilled spirits without a federal permit are federal felony offenses that can result in seizure and forfeiture of your land and property.
John Ream is a former aerospace engineer from Newark, Ohio, who opened Trek Brewing Company with his wife after years of home-brewing beer.
When he wanted to take the next step – distilling whiskey and gin at home for himself and his wife – the TTB stood in his way.
His attorney, Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute, put the absurdity plainly: "It is perfectly legal to make beer at home or to make wine at home, but if you make even a single ounce of distilled spirits at home, it is a federal felony."
Two Courts, Two Answers
On April 11, 2026, the Fifth Circuit struck down the 1868 law – ruling it violated both the Taxation Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution.
Circuit Judge Edith Hollan Jones wrote that the government's theory of its own authority would impose no limiting principle whatsoever on federal power over what Americans do in their own homes – and that the ban actually works against the government's stated goal by preventing the very activity it claims to be taxing.
Eleven days later, the Sixth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion and upheld the ban in Ream's case.
That circuit split sent Ream's legal team to the Supreme Court in July 2026, asking the justices two questions: whether the home-distilling prohibition exceeds Congress's enumerated powers, and whether the Court should revisit its 2005 Gonzales v. Raich ruling – the precedent federal agencies have used for decades to justify regulating purely local, noncommercial activity inside private homes.
"To what extent can Congress regulate local non-commercial otherwise lawful activity that you engage in, in your very home?" Alt told Fox News. "That really is the core question in this case."
What Happened When Beer Got the Same Freedom
Jimmy Carter legalized home brewing in 1978.
The United States had fewer than 100 breweries at the time.
Today there are more than 9,000 – the overwhelming majority being small craft operations that employ real Americans in real towns.
Carter's reform didn't teach anyone to brew beer – Americans were already doing it, hidden away in basements and garages across the country.
Bringing that activity into the open let talented hobbyists monetize their skills and ignited an industry that now generates billions in economic activity every year.
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The same thing would happen with home distilling the moment the TTB's wall comes down.
The Hobby Distillers Association – the nonprofit behind the Fifth Circuit case – has 1,300 members who want exactly what Ream wants: to make bourbon or gin at home for themselves and their families, the same way your neighbor makes IPA in his garage.
The federal government calls them potential criminals.
George Washington Would Be a Felon
Here is the part the TTB doesn't want you thinking about.
When Alexander Hamilton imposed a federal liquor tax in 1791, armed farmers in western Pennsylvania marched on Pittsburgh in what became the Whiskey Rebellion – one of the first direct confrontations between American citizens and federal power under the new Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson hated Hamilton's centralized vision so much that he repealed the whiskey tax the moment he took office.
Home distilling flourished for decades after that – until Reconstruction-era politicians locked in the 1868 ban that the TTB is still defending in court today.
The TTB is spending your tax dollars defending that position.
The Supreme Court receives between 7,000 and 10,000 petitions each year and accepts roughly 60.
If the justices take Ream's case, they won't just be ruling on whiskey – they'll be drawing a constitutional line around what the federal government can ban inside your own home.
That line doesn't exist right now.
And until it does, an Ohio engineer who wants to make a bottle of gin for his wife is a federal criminal – while the bureaucrats who raided homes and confiscated stills call it law enforcement.
Sources:
- Teresa Mull, "Man challenging 150-year-old ban on making liquor at home hopes Supreme Court takes his case," Fox News, September 22, 2026.
- Ream v. United States, Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Supreme Court of the United States, No. 26-93, July 2026.
- "Fifth Circuit Strikes Down Home-Distilling Prohibition," Federalism.org, April 2026.
- "Home Distilling Ban Faces Test as Courts Rethink Federal Power," Bloomberg Law, August 1, 2025.
- "Feds Take a Sudden Interest in Busting Home Distillers," Reason, July 2014.
- "Texas Distilling Laws (2026): The Fifth Circuit Ruling, TABC Permits, and Where Home Distilling Actually Stands," Boozemakers, June 2026.