After illegal distillery is found in Sandy, ABC 4 looks at the laws behind making your own booze

Updated: 2/21 10:13 pm | Published: 2/21 7:19 pm

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – An illegal distillery is stumbled upon in Sandy, Utah and police say they haven’t seen anything like it since prohibition.

Tuesday night the SWAT team went to a home in Sandy off 107th South to arrest 31 year old Derek Ouimet and 33 year old Jeremy Hiatt for possession of meth, but when police looked in the basement they found a moonshine making machine.

In Utah it is illegal to manufacture a distilled alcoholic beverage in an unlicensed premise.

ABC 4 News spoke to one alcohol enthusiast who makes his own flavored moonshine, but would actually like to distill the alcohol that goes into his drink himself. He didn’t want to go on camera but explained, “What I do is I just use grain alcohol that you buy in the liquor store and use that to make it.”

He calls it Apple Pie Moonshine. It’s complete with apples and cinnamon sticks and says everyone he gives it to loves it, but because of Utah’s liquor laws he can’t make it to share with others.

“There are still prohibition laws on the books. They’re very heavy-handed with distilling your own stuff. It’s a very dangerous thing and I’m not willing to go into.”

He explained to ABC 4 that he’s looked into what it takes to get a distillery license, but in Utah he says it’s virtually impossible. “There’s a lot of ambiguity depending on who you speak with. You’ll hear different things. The process for being able to distribute are very unclear and very expensive. There are a lot of legal issues involved. It’s nearly impossible to navigate without a lawyer and very deep pockets.”

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Dennis - 2/21/2013 10:17 PM

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How things have changed since the days of Brigham Young, who owned one of the largest breweries west of the Mississippi: "Orin Porter Rockwell, personal bodyguard to Brigham Young, U.S. Deputy Marshal and zealous religious enforcer, operated the Hot Springs Hotel and Brewery near Point of the Mountain in 1856." (Eileen Hallet Stone, "Living History: Plenty of booze in the Beehive State until Prohibition." SL Trib., 4 Sept. 2010.) "Not only did Rockwell, whom Young assigned as manager and proprietor of the business, pay 10% of his earnings as tithing to Young's church, but Brigham secretly pocketed up to 50% of the after-tithing profits. This was not Rockwell's first adventure in bar management; he had also been allowed to open a small bar in Joseph's own house in Nauvoo to earn a living while protecting the prophet." (Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippets Avery, "Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith," 2nd ed., Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1994, at 178-9.) Today, of course, the Utah State Liquor Control Comm. controls the sale of alcohol within its boundaries, but since the so-called "State of Utah" is merely an alter ego of the LDS Church, it appears that not much has changed after all. But Young's involvement in the Nauvoo brothel should not be a surprise to the LDS people. Once established in Utah as it's territorial governor, Young established his own brewery and a brothel named the Hot Springs Hotel and Brewery. It was located in Draper where the current Utah State Prison exists today. Of course, Young appointed others to run his disreputable businesses so that his name was not directly associated with what they offered to its customers. (See generally, D. Michael Quinn, "Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power," at 766, 798, 819.) But I remember as a young boy in the closing days of WW II how my grandparents used to make dandelion wine in their basement, which the LDS "block teachers" so indignantly criticized in complete ignorance of Young's practices.