Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/18/bootleg-winemaking-operation-discovered-at-wastewater-treatment-plant.html
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Assuming those are standard-sized milk crates, that’s not much wine at all. I know some home wine makers who make that much wine every couple of years.
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As a former resident of Alabama, I never understood dry cities and counties. Living there makes drinking feel necessary.
And they have crap options for microbrews compared to the northwest.
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Yes, hardly a major operation. I make about 50 gallons of beer at home every year, but it’s harder to conceal beer brewing.
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I was wondering that myself.
If that’s all there was, it looks like it would fit in someone’s garage. Or maybe a shed or barn.
Why would you risk being caught by putting this into a public facility?
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Wonder what kind of (ahem) “bouquet” it has.
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I take beer with me when we go to the FIL’s place in Alabama. The selection of beer is Inbev, Inbev or Coors. Lame. The county was dry until a couple years ago. Don’t buy spirits there unless you enjoy highway robbery.
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I would reckon because you can do your hobby at work during slow times and be paid for it?
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I looked it up on a google maps - Rainsville is not a big city, and its wastewater treatment plant is correspondingly not a big facility. That’s probably about as much space as there is in a back room somewhere.
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Making wine is harder to conceal, because you need a vineyard, and having at leas a small tractor is useful. On the other hand making homemade grappa or “moonshine” as the yankees call it require less space and easily concealable hardware.
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Depends what type of ‘wine’ you make. There are plenty of wines that can be made from wild harvested materials (blackberry, elderberry, dandelion); all you need is a quiet place for the fermentation.
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Exactly. I strongly suspect these were fruit wines, augmented with sugar to increase the amount of alcohol (which you would definitely need for dandelion wine).
Even if they were making grape wines, though, you can get everything from frozen grapes to concentrates of various degrees of quality online. Or you can harvest and crush the grapes somewhere else and bring a bucket of grape juice into the treatment plant to ferment.
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All you need for this kind of wine is enough shelf space for sugar, yeast packets and some of these:
We’re not talking Napa Valley, here.
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One of the ‘wild’ harvests I forgot to mention is wild or fox grapes. Tiny and generally sour, but the smell is much like Concord grapes, and with a little sugar you could probably make passable wine.
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Well I assumed they would start with grape juice. When I make beer I don’t have to rely on a field of barley in my back yard (although i do grow some barley)
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Why do you hate capitalism, Sheriff Nick? Rainsville could have become the epicenter of Alabama Wine Country! /s
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Hygiene my friend, hygiene.
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The government here in the US chases down illegal distilleries, it represents a form of tax evasion.
While wine for personal use is allowed to be made in most states as long as it is not sold, the amount and conditions under which you can produce it varies a lot. Alabama limits a household to 5 gallons a year. Most other states allow 200 gallons per year.
An additional quirk of Alabama law. You can make wine for your own use, if you grew the grapes yourself. You can’t simply go to the farmer’s market and buy a bushel of overripe peaches and make “wine”, it has to be grapes and you can’t simply buy grape juice.
In Michigan we make a lot of cherry “wine”. Because the grapes are so variable from year to year due to the random weather. It’s tart cherries but the wine is usually made very sweet. It makes for a nice little sip after a meal.
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Rainsville’s always been a dry town, see? Now, scramsville, will ya!
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