Last autumn I had a huge glut of apples, well over 100 kg. The tree was there when I moved in and I have no idea which variety it is, other than it is very late ripening, the fruit is green and red, not exactly sweet nor bitter and crops heavily in alternate years. I tried making wine by chopping them and adding water, sugar and yeast, but the result was only drinkable by me and only because it took so much time and effort to make it!
A second attempt turned into jelly, on account of the pectin in the fruit. The third attempt was much more successful because I used a pectin destroying enzyme and added grape concentrate, dried elderflowers and honey, effectively removing any taste of the apples themselves!
So I decided to try cider, using just pure apple juice and yeast with no water or sugar, but the prospect of cutting up hundreds of apples was too daunting. So I bought a whole fruit juicer, which speeded up the process considerably. After a couple of weeks I had gallons of dry still cider, but as I actually prefer wine, I didn't drink much of it.
Then I hit upon the idea of turning it into brandy, like calvados. As I understood it, distilling alcohol for making beverages without a licence is illegal, so I applied for one. This was the written reply I received from HMRC:

'Thank you for your application for a Distiller's licence. Can you please confirm the size of the proposed still? Please note that a distillers licence is not required if the proposed still to be used has a capacity below 10 hectolitres and if the distillation of spirits is for personal use only.'

That's 400 gallons in old money! So it would seem that I can go ahead. Another urban myth bites the dust? Too good to be true? I rang them up, read out the letter and was told this was correct, referring me to Notice 39 on their website. I published the good news on a homebrew forum and got a quick response from the moderator to say the posting had been censored and warning me not to refer to the subject again. When I explained that I was quoting from HMRC, he seemed confused and asked me to double check.
It transpires that it is a civil, not criminal offence to distil alcohol for beverages without a licence, carrying a £250 fine or the relevant duty due, whichever is the higher, but apparantly no one has been successfully prosecuted. It is perfectly legal to buy, build and own a still (below 400 gallon capacity), and use it to make distilled water, 2000 litres of bio fuel, herbal essences, medicinal tinctures and for experimental purposes. Now I understand the phrase my father always used when having a glass of brandy: 'Purely for medicinal purposes!'
Admittedly there are some genuine health and safety issues justifying discouraging people from distilling and drinking spirits, but driving it underground, like other drugs, only makes matters worse. A recent explosion in a building used as a distilling plant was not caused by escaping alcohol vapour. It was the propane gas used to heat the still which caused it. Alcohol is toxic. Only humans intentionally drink it. Muslims ban it (punishing by public flogging in certain regimes we like to cosy up to) and certain Hindus and other religions ban it too. But if everyone followed the 'drink sensibly' rule, the Treasury would have a big hole in it's pocket, like the one they'd have if everyone stopped smoking or stopped driving their cars to reduce carbon emissions, for that matter.
Regularly drinking large amounts of high concentration alcohlic beverages rots your liver. George best destroyed 3 before pegging out.
Viv Stanshall said, 'If I had all the money I had spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink!' Sadly these two sample great talents met an early demise, although they lived lives most of us can barely imagine and made great contributions to our collective entertainment.
On the other hand, regular 'moderate' drinking of red wine and small amounts of brandy have proven health benefits, acknowledged but at least some doctors, but the first 3% run off from a still is rather high in acetone (paint stripper) and methanol, a teaspoon of which will kill you, while lower amounts merely permanently blind you. Meths is not naturally blue. That's the colour of the stuff they put in it to make it totally unpalatable. Another great cleaning agent. This portion is called the foreshots, smells quite nice, is 90 % alcohol and is almost pure evil. But then Listerine was originally marketed as a heavy duty cleaner, not a mouthwash! I know someone who drank bleach in a suicide attempt, which failed.
I know someone else who brews up sugar, water and yeast in an old 10 gallon aluminium milk churn and distills this into an unpleasant 60% alcohol clear liquid. He admits that some of his friends and relatives died as a result of drinking it. He was totally unaware of the fact that the temperature needs to be controlled and that the initial distillate should be discarded. This is what I mean about the hazards of driving it underground. I was a bit concerned about the aluminium too, but that is not a health issue compared with certain underarm deodorants, for example, which force aluminium into your body.
A you may surmise, I did distil the cider into 'brandy'. It was an expensive, time-consuming process, yielding 0.5 litres of not particularly pleasant liquid from 5 litres of relatively pleasant cider over 4 hours. The plan was to make 5 litres of the stuff and put it in an oak barrel for 2 years. At great expense, I bought a new 5 litre oak barrel, but fell well short of the 5 litres of brandy to fill it. I got a few bottles and it was an interesting way of usefully disposing of a huge amount of apples. I added some oak chips, caramel, glycerin and raisins to improve the taste, but really it's only fit to enhance instant expresso coffee!