There’s been quite a lot of coverage in the local press recently of shops having illicit booze stocks confiscated. Now I’m guessing that the shop proprietors are buying this with their eyes wide open but what about the public – do they know they are buying bootleg or innocently buying potentially dangerous shit?

What is this illicit booze? Is just the same stuff imported without paying tax or duty and therefore not dangerous?
Or are your neighbours the Dukes and do you live in Hazzard County?

No it’s backstreet brewed but badged up as the real stuff. So you could buy a bottle of Hardy’s Stamp shiraz that was made in an industrial unit off the A38.

You do live in Hazzard County then. 😉

In that case, surely the public can’t know. Why would you knowingly buy fake booze!

If it’s dirt cheap, I’d like some to clean my chain with.

In that case, surely the public can’t know. Why would you knowingly buy fake booze?

If money’s tight and it works, why not? Why buy a fake anything?

Because Methanol and Propan-2-ol are not very good for you

I dont think they are copying known brands they are making the cheap vodka and labelling up with their own labels – have a look at any corner shop, and I’ll guarantee that there are brands that you have never heard of.
They are selling these home-brewed drinks to unscrupulous shop owners, who then sell them on.

Up our way there is a lot of it coming from Eastern Europe and being rebadged. Result is that you can get two litres of Vodka for £15.

Down the river from me is the distillery of the UKs most down-market vodka. Despite being the cheapest, nastiest booze you can buy, its also the brand which is most widely counterfeited.

The counterfeiting happens on industrial scales, its not a kitchen sink operation.

Hazzard County, Lincolnshire

This was mentioned on the radio this morning; made me chuckle when they interviewed a pub landlord who’d been caught be HMC&E and he said ‘I bought a couple of boxes of vodka from this guy, looked eastern european, who delivers it in his car and I pay him cash for it. I thought it might be suspicious when I asked for a receipt and he drove off a bit quick so I didn’t put it on the shelf’ or words to that effect. Yeah, right – paid cash to a guy off the street and thought it would be legit 🙄

Simple. They buy it because it’s cheap. It’s cheap because there is no tax paid and no expensive advertising costs to cover.

Yes, a badly-operated still can allow poisons into the product, but a well-operated illegal still cwill give a product just as good as legal commercial operation. It’s only chemical engineering, isn’t it?

Yes, a badly-operated still can allow poisons into the product, but a well-operated illegal still cwill give a product just as good as legal commercial operation. It’s only chemical engineering, isn’t it?

Opperating a still is easy as an easy thing.

Gin for example is just a single stage batch distilation.
Vodca is (usualy) a 7 stage batch distilation with carbon filters downstream.
Wiskey/whisky is (usualy) a 3 stage distilation
etc
etc
etc.
All fairly straightforeward, you could do it with a pressure cooker and some copper piping.

Unfortunately buying paint thinner and badgeing it as vodca is even easier. IPA, methanol, heavies, etc would only present in small quantities even in badly distilled vodca, the problem is it’s quite easy to buy these as industrial chemicals and mix them into somethign that tastes like cheep vodca.

booo… I thought we were gonna be talking about a nice bottle of Poteen.. which I can assure you is bought by those in the know.. not those in the dark.. 🙂

So you could buy a bottle of Hardy’s Stamp shiraz that was made in an industrial unit off the A38

Interesting – hadn’t noticed many vineyards off the A38.

Dominic Littlewood’s, Fake Britain had a feature about fake booze a couple of weeks ago. All the booze in the programme was branded. Some of the fake brands discovered were Smirnoff, Bollinger and Corona Beer. In most cases the labelling was nearly as good as the original. The fake Corona came from China (I think) and it was bottled in real Corona bottles! Most of these fake products end up in independent off licences. However there was even a case, where fake wine got into one of the major supermarkets supply chains and ended up on their shelves. The owners of some indepdendent office licences are buying the booze really cheaply, however they still sell it at normal retail prices, which means their mark ups are fantastic (Well they are pocketing what should be the alcohol duty). Some of the fake booze was over 50% proof (most legal brands are 37%) and was made of industrial ­alcohol and methanol, that would be used in cleaning fluids & anti-freeze. The programme also mentioned that there had been 5 deaths linked to fake alcohol.

So in response the the OP, some people are buying branded alcohol from off licences and are totally unaware that it is counterfeit (Well at least until they taste it anyway).

I’d imagine lots of it is bought by people who just desperatly need to get as drunk as possible, as cheaply as possible, and don’t really give a toss where it came from.

I guess its probably with the same with other drugs, you know its cut with all sorts of crap, but you’re so desperate, you don’t care, as long as you get the fix.