This page exists because the archived retailer sold stills, spirit essences and filtration gear beside beer kits. The rebuilt site will not. Home distillation of alcohol without the correct licence is illegal. The source of that statement is the Australian Taxation Office, not a forum.
What the ATO says about spirits
The ATO classifies alcohol products as spirits or other excisable beverages if they are not beer (including home brew) and not products that wine equalisation tax applies to. Spirits are “alcohol products created through distillation (that is, using a still).” Examples the ATO lists include brandy, whisky, rum, vodka and gin.
You need an excise licence to manufacture them. On stills used to distil alcohol, the ATO writes:
To use a still of any capacity to distil alcohol, you must have an excise manufacturer licence. Penalties apply if you manufacture spirits without one.
On personal use, the same page is explicit:
We don't grant licences to distil spirits for personal consumption. There needs to be a commercial purpose involved.
The ATO’s unlicensed manufacture page repeats the same points and adds that severe penalties apply if you distil alcohol without a licence.
Those sentences are the policy of this website.
When you do not need a manufacturer licence
The ATO also describes the fermented-hobby side. Beverages that are not produced by distillation, and do not contain any spirit produced by distillation, can be made without an excise manufacturer licence where they are made:
- for non-commercial purposes
- using non-commercial facilities and equipment
The ATO says these typically include fermented products such as home-brewed beer, cider and wine. That is the activity beginners, cider and mead and wine describe.
If you mix distilled spirit into a new beverage as manufacture, you can fall back into excise. Do not treat a kitchen as a bonded blending hall.
Stills that are not used for alcohol
The ATO allows you to own a still of five litres or less without permission only if you are not using it to distil alcohol. For a still over five litres, if you are not a licensed excise manufacturer you must have ATO permission to manufacture, move, set up, sell, buy, import, or have possession, custody or control of the still. The still permission form states that permission for the still is not a licence to distil alcohol, and that it is illegal to distil alcohol without an excise manufacturer licence.
This guide will not help you fill that form, and it will not help you choose a still.
What we removed from the archive
Heritage URLs about carbon filtration of spirit, foreshots, alcometers, turbo stills and spirit essence ranges 301 here. They were shop or how-to pages on the wrong side of the ATO line. Rewriting them as distillation instruction would be a different site.
Cheese-making and delicatessen paths from the old catalogue are also outside this niche; they redirect home.
Other regulators
The ATO notes that to manufacture or sell alcohol you may also need to check state or territory liquor licensing, health agencies, the Food Standards Code, and local government. A household ferment for personal use is not a market stall. The moment you sell, you have left this guide.
FSANZ Standard 2.7.1 sets labelling rules for alcoholic beverages if you are in the business of selling them.
Health is a separate duty
Even a legal home beer is alcohol. The NHMRC 2020 guidelines advise healthy adults to drink no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than 4 on any one day. People under 18 should not drink. Women who are pregnant, planning pregnancy or breastfeeding should not drink alcohol. DrinkWise publishes public reminders that sit beside those guidelines.
How to use this site instead
Brew beer. Ferment cider, mead or wine. Ferment kombucha with your eyes open about alcohol. Clean your gear. Measure gravity. Package with a plan. If a page on this domain ever sounds like a still manual, it is in the wrong voice — contact us so it can be fixed.
Primary sources: ATO spirits and stills, ATO unlicensed manufacture, ATO still permission.
What “commercial purpose” is not
A household that distils “just for us” is the example the ATO refuses to licence. Calling it a gift, a club project, or a farm experiment does not change the sentence. The ATO’s alcohol excise guidance says the Excise Act is directed towards controlling commercial operations and that it would not be consistent with those controls to grant a licence for personal-use home distillation.
If you are actually starting a distillery business, you are not this site’s reader in the same way. You need the ATO, state liquor licensing, and advice this information page cannot give.
Essences and kits from the old shop
Flavour essences that assume you already have a distilled base were a retailer category. They 301 here because the missing step in those products is often the illegal one for a household. This guide will not reconstruct their instructions.
Kombucha and “accidental alcohol”
Fermented tea that wanders above a labelling threshold is a food-standards issue, not a still issue. Do not “fix” it by distilling. Refrigerate, drink within the NHMRC guidelines, or discard. See kombucha and FSANZ.
A closing line you can quote
Home distillation of alcohol in Australia requires an ATO excise manufacturer licence; the ATO does not grant that licence for personal consumption; penalties apply if you distil without one. Home fermentation of beer, cider and wine for personal use on household equipment is the activity this website is willing to teach.