[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 07:08:48PM +0200, Ben Waxman wrote:
: What this meant for me (ie the nafka mina) was that since I don't sell
: hametz gamur, I can sell my Crown Royal.

Star K has a list of what kinds of things are chametz gamur for the
benefit of those who don't sell items for which bal yeira'eh applies
mideOraisa. http://www.star-k.org/kashrus/kk-passover-chometzguideb4.htm

To quote the relevent entry:
    ...
    Whiskey  	Follow Family Custom[1]

    [1] Some individuals sell this chometz, others do not. One should
    follow his family custom.

Back in 2001, RRW wrote on mail-jewish
http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch//v34/mj_v34i34.html#CKD
> From: Eli Turkel <Eli.Turkel at ...>
>> What about whiskey? I assume that whiskey is real chametz (chametz gamur)
>> and yet almost everyone sells the liquors they have for Pesach.

> Rabbi Zecharya Gelley of KAJ discussed this last year... and he
> mentioned that there are three variations of a term... 
> According to the most likely version
> Beer is PURE Chametz- 
> While whiskey is NOT  pure Chametz because it is distilled and is
> therefore an INDIRECT product of Chametz. 

This I can understand, rather than the rationale we were discussing
until now. The whisky was distilled out from any chameitz!

Personally, I don't get the whole minhag of not selling chameitz gamur,
but shopping after Pesach at a store that did. What, it's less ha'aramah
to rely on his sale than on my own? Or do most of us not have stocked
pantries for which switching to and from Pesach isn't a hefsed meruba?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha at aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
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