A Texas judge gives a nod to America’s at-home distillers

In Devils Lake, North Dakota, a man named Ray is making a batch of watermelon moonshine. A video posted to Facebook shows his ruby-red liquid bubbling. “Sounds like Rice Krispies,” he wrote. The copper still he makes it in is in his garage. Officially, he claims the set-up is just for distilling water and hand-sanitiser.

For over a century it has been illegal to make spirits at home in America. In December the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think-tank representing hobbyists bent on making bourbon in backyards, challenged the ban in court. It argued that the government’s prohibition amounted to overreach. The government’s lawyers insisted that the federal powers to tax and regulate interstate commerce justified it. On July 10th a Trump-appointed judge in Fort Worth, Texas, declared the law unconstitutional, saying the defence “miss[ed] the maker’s mark”.