I mean, the justification from the DOJ is taxes. But in 1978 Jimmy Carter signed a law allowing homebrewing, a law originally based on changing rules around excise taxes. The Brewing-specific aspects were included later due to lobbying from brewing groups.
The words obviously mean different things obviously, but that's just production methodology, not because of an inherent difference between the beginning and end result. At home brewing and winemaking are legal, how is distilling fundamentally different?
This appears to be the government using same reasoning for this spirits ban, as was removed for at home brewing in 1978. So there is precedent to remove the limit if that's the only justification they have. Congress removed the "excise taxes" reason for banning at-home production 50 years ago. Is there an inherent difference between distilling and brewing legally that would justify treating the production methods differently based solely on tax laws since that's what they're citing for the ban?