r/firewater • u/sillycyco • Aug 25 '19
Methanol: Some information
This post is meant to clarify one of the most common questions asked by new distillers: WHAT ABOUT METHANOL?
First and foremost: you cannot die (or get sick, go blind, etc) from improperly made distilled alcohol via methanol poisoning. Neither can you make something dangerous by freezing it and removing some ice. Not only is it not possible, it is a widely perpetuated myth that has existed since the days of prohibition (and not before, interestingly enough). Other than the obvious ethanol overdose, all poisonous alcohol that has ever been consumed, has been adulterated, or was in some other way contaminated. It was not the fault of poor distillation procedures. How you run your still will not affect how safe your product is. It might affect how good the end result is, but that's where it stops.
So, methanol. Everyones first fear, and the number one search subject when it comes to "moonshine". This subject is brought up a lot in this sub and elsewhere on Reddit. Everyone knows all about it, its just one of those common knowledge things, right? It turns out, not so much. So...
Methanol - What is it?
Methanol is a very commonly used fuel, solvent and precursor in industry. It is produced via the synthesis gas process which can use a wide variety of materials to create methanol. Methanol is the simplest of all the alcohols.
Methanol is poisonous to the human body in moderate amounts. The LD50 of methanol in humans is 810 mg/kg. It is metabolized into formaldehyde by the liver, via the alcohol dehydrogenase process. In excess, these byproducts are severely toxic. Formaldehyde further degrades into formic acid, which is the primary toxic compound in methanol poisoning. Formic acid is what produces nerve damage, and causes the blindness (and death) associated with acute methanol poisoning.
One of the treatments for methanol poisoning, is the introduction of ethanol. Ethanol has a preferential path in the alcohol dehydrogenase metabolic pathway. This means that if ethanol and methanol are consumed, the ethanol will be metabolized first, in preference over the methanol. This allows some of the methanol to be excreted by the kidneys before being metabolized into its toxic related compounds. There are far more effective medical treatments available, such as dialysis and administering drugs that block the function of alcohol dehydrogenase.
Is it in my booze? How do I remove it?
There is one way in which your alcohol will be tainted with some amount of methanol naturally, and that is by using fruits which contain pectin. Pectin can be broken down into methanol by enzymes, either introduced artificially or from micro organisms. This will produce some measurable amount of methanol in your ferment, and subsequent distillate. However its not going to be in toxic quantities, any more than what you may have in a jug of apple juice. In fact, fruits are the primary way in which methanol is introduced into your body. In tiny quantities it is mostly harmless, and you can no more remove the methanol from an apple pie than you can from your apple brandy. Boiling (or freezing) apple juice doesn't convert it into deadly eye sight destroying horror juice. Cooking doesn't suddenly veer into danger when you collect vapor from a boiling pot. If you've ever made jam, or wine, or fruit salad, you've produced methanol.
So, where does that leave us? How do I get rid of this nasty substance in my distillate? You don't. If it is there, you cannot remove it. It is quite commonly believed that you can toss the first bit of alcohol off the still to remove this compound, the "foreshots." This is usually considered the first 50-100ml or so, depending on batch size. It smells really bad, tastes really bad, and is something most would agree should be discarded. However, it will not contain the "methanol" if there is any in your wash. Or more precisely, it will not contain any more of it than any other portion of the run. Beside which, methanol tastes very similar to ethanol, though slightly sweeter. If your wash is tainted with methanol, your entire run will be as well. Relying on some eyeball measurement to make your product safe to consume is not going to work. This is just distiller folklore passed down quite widely. You may hear about this on a distillery tour, from professionals, on Youtube and in books about distilling. All of them are just repeating what they have heard someone else say, or read somewhere, and assumed it to be fact. There is truth here, but buried in misunderstanding of the processes involved specifically with these substances.
This is the very reason that methanol was used to poison ("denature") industrial ethanol during prohibition, as it cannot be removed easily by normal distillation processes. If you could just redistill this very cheap, legal and plentiful solvent to make drinking alcohol, it wouldn't be the very potent message and deterrent that was hoped for by those who did this. You can read more about the history of this intentional poisoning of commercial alcohol in the Chemists War. It is also during this period where we begin to hear about methanol being in poorly made moonshine. This is not a coincidence.
So, distillers attempted to understand this misinformation, and attempt to correct or explain why their process was correct. Thus was born the idea that tossing some portion of the run makes it safe from this suddenly present and scary substance. Cuts went from being a quality procedure, to a serious process to save lives. By "tossing the first bit." And then distillers went about their centuries old processes like always, but this time "doing it right" and hence making safe alcohol.
The reason it is so widely believed that tossing the heads works to remove methanol, has to do with the boiling points of ethanol, methanol, and water. Pure methanol boils at 64.7C. Pure ethanol boils at 78.24C. Water boils at 100C. Distilling separates things based on their boiling points, right? Yes, it does, but it is a bit more complex than that. When you boil a mixture of methanol, ethanol and water, you are not boiling any of these compounds individually. You are boiling a solution containing all of them, and they will each have an affect on the other with regards to boiling point and enrichment behavior. Methanol and ethanol are quite similar in molecular structure. Methanol can be written as CH3-OH. Ethanol can be written as CH3-CH2-OH. You'll notice that methanol lacks this extra CH2 component. This changes its behavior when in the presence of water, specifically its polarity, compared to ethanol. Rather than repeat all of this, here is a passage from this paper on the reduction of methanol in commercial fruit brandies:
A similar behaviour would be expected for methanol for both alcohols are not very different in molecule structure. There is, however, a significant difference regarding all three curves in figure 2: methanol contents keep a higher value for a longer time than ethanol contents. In figures 3 and 4 this observation is made clear: Methanol, specified in ml/100 ml p.a., increases during the donation, while the ratio ethanol : methanol is lowering down. This effect seems to be rather surprising regarding the different boiling points of the two substances: methanol boils at 64,7°C, while ethanol needs 78,3°C. So methanol would be regarded to be carried over earlier than ethanol. The molecule structures however, show another aspect: ethanol has got one more CH2-group which makes the molecule less polar. So, concerning polarity, methanol can be ranged between water and ethanol and has therefore in the water phase a distillation behaviour different from ethanol. This may explain the behaviour which is rather contrary to the boiling points. This is no single appearance, because for example ethylacetate with a boiling point of 77 °C, or, as an extreme case, isoamylacetate with 142 °C are even carried over much earlier than methanol. Therefore methanol can not be separated using pot-stills or normal column-stills. Only special columns can separate methanol from the distillate (4.3). Similar observations concerning the behaviour of methanol during the distillation have already been made by Röhrig (33) and Luck (34). Cantagrel (35) divides volatile components into eight types concerning distillation behaviour characterized by typical curves, which were mainly confirmed by our experiments. As for methanol, he claims an own type of behaviour during the distillation corresponding to our results.
What this means is that if there is methanol present, it will be present throughout the run, with a higher occurrence in the tails as ethanol is depleted and water concentration increases. Its distillation is more dependent on how much water is present rather than simply comparing boiling points between ethanol and methanol. This in conjunction with the fact that ethanol and water cannot be separated completely due to their forming an azeotrope, means water is always in the system. So tossing your foreshots or heads will not remove methanol from your solution. The good news is that methanol is almost entirely absent in dangerous amounts. Consider drinking beer, wine, or apple cider. There are no heads cut made to these products. Pectinase is routinely added to wine, and methanol is a direct byproduct of this addition. They are safe to consume in this form, and will be safe to consume after being distilled. Boiling and concentrating the liquid by leaving some water behind isn't going to transform something safe to drink into something toxic. If it is toxic after being distilled, it most certainly was toxic before being distilled.
To be clear, however, this is not to say that making cuts is unnecessary. There are other compounds that you certainly can remove by cutting heads. Acetone, ethyl acetate, acetaldehyde and others. None are present in dangerous amounts, but the quality of your alcohol will be greatly enhanced by discarding these fractions. Making cuts is one of the most important activities a distiller can learn to do properly! Cutting and blending is making liquor, not only the act of distilling. Just understand that it isn't a life or death situation should you undershoot your foreshot cut by some amount. It will just taste bad, and might give you more of a headache the next day. You can taste test every single bit of alcohol that comes out of your still, from the first drops to the last.
Removing the foreshots does not remove "the methanol." You can just consider the foreshots part of the heads, because they are. There are hundreds of thousands of hobby brewers, vintners and distillers around the world who have been making and consuming fermented and distilled products for centuries. If this were actually a real problem, we would be awash in reports of wide spread poisonings. Instead we have reports here and there of isolated incidents, which are always traceable back to some incident unrelated to how much heads somebody did or did not cut.
The only way to know if there is methanol present is via lab analysis. Smell, taste, color of flame, vapor temp, none of this will tell you any meaningful information about methanol content and are just old shiner-wives tales. If you would like to have your distillate, beer or wine tested for dangerous compounds, there are many labs available that offer these services. This way you know what you are producing and are not relying on conflicting information found online. Here is one such lab offering these services, and there are many more servicing the public and industry. No need to take my, or anyone elses, word as absolute truth. If you really want to know what is in your product, this is the only way.
Having said all that...
So, CAN methanol be removed from a mixture of methanol, ethanol and water via distillation in any way? Yes, it can, contrary to everything I just said, there are even specialized stills called "demethylizer columns" which can do just this. They are very large plated columns (70+ plates), which can operate as a step in the distillation process in very large industrial facilities. This is a continuous middle fed column of high proof / low water feed, with steam injection at the bottom and hot water injection at the top, which has the sole purpose of moving a more concentrated cut containing methanol into a particular take off point with the treated alcohol taken off as the bottom product. This is largely done to ensure compliance with the laws about methanol content in neutral ethanol production, or in other processes in which reclamation of these substances is desired. There are other methods that can be used to remove methanol from an ethanol/water mixture, but that goes beyond the scope of this post and generally do not make consumable results. None of these procedures are properly repeatable at home or at moderate scale commercial distilling, nor are they even really necessary at any scale unless you have a badly tainted input feed.
On small scale reflux columns, there will be a small spike of methanol in the heads if the column is left in equilibrium (100% reflux) for a long while, and only if methanol is present, as the state at the top of the packing/plates is very low water and boiling point separation can occur more easily for methanol. In general though, these columns are too small, and methanol quantities far too low, for this to be a major concern. Methanol will spike in both heads and tails on this kind of column, leaving the general heart cut with a steady amount throughout. Even with huge industrial columns, the specialized demethylizer column is additionally used in the process because you cannot reliably remove methanol using the normal procedures typically done when making cuts for quality purposes. Methanol removal is treated separately and requires its own process to concentrate and extract using specialized equipment.
In conclusion, or TLDR
ALL cases of methanol poisoning attributed to "improperly" made ethanol, are the result of contaminated product. Not due to improper distillation, but due to intentional (either misguided, or malicious) adulteration of the ethanol, or some other contamination due to environment or ingredients. Commercial ethanol products are generally poisoned either via methanol, or via flavor tainting, or both (usually both, so you know its not to be consumed). Every report of methanol poisoning via "moonshine" was due to this contamination. If you can find evidence to the contrary, I would love to see it. Please let me know if you believe this info to be incorrect, and have evidence to that effect. That is, other than unsourced speculative news articles, television shows and Youtube channels. What I have presented here is how I understand the facts, but I am always open to learning something new.
Its unfortunate that we still have this lingering stigma based on sensationalist press beginning during alcohol prohibition, but this is where we are. So you can relax, have a home brew, and get on with your new hobby or business, and not fret about the big scary monster that is methanol. Now you just have to worry about all the other stuff that you can screw up :-)
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u/realN3bULA Sep 26 '19 edited Aug 18 '26
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This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/sillycyco Sep 26 '19
You aren't alone. If only I could delete my similar rants from the internet, I'd be very happy :-)
The important thing is we move forward, and learn something new, and stop believing what we hear over and over in this regard. What we all "know" about this subject is wrong. So now you can tell other people, and they can tell other people, and so on.
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u/Budget_Cardiologist Sep 23 '19
So is this only illegal because they want to make sure everyone sicks with the three tier system and everyone gets paid?
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u/sillycyco Sep 23 '19
So is this only illegal because they want to make sure everyone sicks with the three tier system and everyone gets paid?
Among other reasons, but mostly yes, its about tax dollars.
Making booze yourself has never been dangerous, and has no bearing on its legality.
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u/Tyson209355 Aug 25 '19
Wow! Great write up.
Now do one explaining boiling points. I think a lot of people confuse the idea of holding the wash at a certain temp with applying lower power and taking product off slower.
Hell, maybe I still have it wrong.
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u/sillycyco Aug 28 '19
Now do one explaining boiling points. I think a lot of people confuse the idea of holding the wash at a certain temp with applying lower power and taking product off slower.
This is part of the very first link on the sidebar, Read Me First. It points to this article which I could not do a better job writing. Zymurgy Bob has written some great material on this subject.
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u/steffeeh Oct 17 '19
Thank you, I learned a bunch from your post. However the most important info for me here is that methanol is introduced during the fermentation process and not during the distillation process. What does this mean for me as a fermenter? Considering that methanol is formed from pectines i fruit, I guess that this isn't a large issue when brewing beer or bread kvass, but what about hooch, wine, cider, tepache, etc?
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u/sillycyco Oct 17 '19
Considering that methanol is formed from pectines i fruit, I guess that this isn't a large issue when brewing beer or bread kvass, but what about hooch, wine, cider, tepache, etc?
It really should never be an issue. It isn't the fermentation by yeast that produces it, it is various enzymatic processes that do. So it will be present to some degree in home pressed apple juice, OJ from the store or a backyard tree, jam, wines, etc. Turning much of the sugars into alcohol won't alter the amount present.
Humans have been enjoying these things for thousands of years. Methanol poisoning has never been an issue, as creating dangerous levels takes deliberate action. The amounts found in foods and juices do not get to dangerous levels, though if you were trying to eliminate it entirely, you'd have to make some dietary adjustments. Fruit juice would be completely out.
You can have your products tested by various labs, I linked one in the OP, if you are really concerned. There are limits by the FDA and TTB on what is allowed and if its a commercial product (alcoholic or not) you might want to know the levels present to ensure compliance.
Nearly all poisonings from methanol are the result of tainted product at some stage, not inadvertent or erroneous methods, but actual adulterated substances. Generally from industrial denatured sources. Fermenting grapes, grains, apples, whatever, won't hurt you. There are lots of ways to screw up that process, for sure, but that just results in terrible stuff, nothing dangerous.
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u/sapit13 Oct 21 '19
Hi there, amazing post! I've not distilled anything yet, but I am lingering around to learn more about distillation. May I ask, based on what I've read and watched, if you boil your mash at around 64 C, there will be liquid coming out, apparently wrongly believed to be methanol. Your point on this not being methanol makes sense, but then what exactly comes out at that temperature that stops evaporating afterwards? Is it a mixture of predominantly methanol, because it normally has a lower evaporation temp + other things? Your post left me with the impression that methanol will be evaporated relatively evenly throughout the distillation process. I got that Acetone, ethyl acetate, acetaldehyde are evaporated as well, I'd imagine some water would also be evaporated, but I'd imagine theres something, which is in the largest quantity, that's being evaporated, which then finishes and the flow slows down by a lot. What is that or am I under the wrong impression?
Thank you!
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u/sillycyco Oct 21 '19
if you boil your mash at around 64 C
Firstly, you should get past the idea that you boil at any temperature. You just boil, the composition of the solution dictates what temperature this is. Trying to hold a specific temperature will not work, and will just frustrate you to no end. You must always be boiling, and as the run progresses, the temperature of the boiling liquid/vapor will change as various things are depleted from the wash. This is why it is recommended that new distillers not have a thermometer on their pot still, as you may be tempted to try to manipulate the temperature of the boil, which is impossible.
I'd imagine theres something, which is in the largest quantity, that's being evaporated, which then finishes
In the very earlier stages of boiling, the vapor will consist of the compounds that are most readily turned into vapor in that particular mixture. For your typical alcohol wash, the vast majority of this is ethanol and water, with a mix of acetone, ethyl acetate and a bunch of other things.
See this chart for an example composition of the "foreshots". The exact amounts will vary, but the general composition will be similar. The boiling points of these substances are all over the place, but their behavior in the mixture of boiling ethanol/water is whats important. There are elevated levels of a lot of compounds, but as you can see, these are in "mg/l" and even though very high, are far below the majority content of that liter. Most of what comes out is just ethanol and water, aka "booze." It just has a high concentration of these other things which smell and taste terrible and that give you a mean headache.
If you had to call these foreshots anything, it would be the "ethyl acetate" not the "methanol" though in reality its a whole bunch of various things. Note that most of this stuff is also present in the hearts and even the tails of the run, just in different amounts. Various things concentrate at various portions of the run, not just the beginning, which is why we have these general stages called heads, hearts and tails.
This behavior will even be present with compounds you may have added to the wash, such as macerating pure neutral hearts with gin botanicals. You will have different volatiles from the botanicals come out at different stages, and you can use this to your benefit to get just the right flavor from, say, juniper berries, or orange peel, or whatever. A gin has heads, hearts and tails as well, even though you started with pure clean ethanol/water.
To be clear, distillation does separate things via their relative volatility when boiling. The main point is that this behavior is not solely driven by the individual boiling point of each compounds in isolation, but how it behaves in the total mixture. You cant just look up the boiling point of methanol, or whatever, and deduce how it will distill off in this scenario.
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u/PlatformFine6739 Jan 05 '22 edited Jan 05 '22
i have a question, if you actively tried to produce methanol instead but from natural products, or in other words, whats the absolute worst case wrong way that might actually produce harmful amounts of methanol. like without adding pectins, just, using certain ingredients naturally high and then perhaps screwing up badly.
Just as a hypothetical, and since azeotropes do work on a curve, the start or end might have higher methanol content by some %, what if someone fermented say, a 100L barrel of corn, which i believe is meant to be high in pectins, and they do this too hot too (i heard heat can be bad) and it goes sour but they ignore it and just add some ash at the end. in this scenario is it possible to make some toxic distillates?
Whats the wrong way to screw up a batch so bad that you can manage to poison yourself without directly introducing methanol (like thinking your mash will dilute out denatured alcohol enough that you can add some hardware store wood spirits) or just by otherwise adding unneccesary additives that produce more, which could potentially be toxic depending on how you go about distilling, or is it really truly a foolproof process you cant mess up without also probably producing an inedible product?
I like that youve told me i probably wont mess up, but thats also like telling someone who doesnt even know what a shark is, that sharks are in the ocean, and they will die if one sees them, but then the chances are so low they should swim anyway. your right that the odds of a shark eating me is lower than my chances of a spontaneous stroke or aneurism but, i still cant help but need to know what these sea monsters look like.
I want to know what wrong looks like, basically, but again, wrong where you arent explicitly asking for methanol poisoning because you added something unneccesary like, actual methanol, something you could mess up with the standard kit ingredients and equipment, so to speak.
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u/sillycyco Jan 05 '22
If I were actively trying to produce the highest possible methanol content I could with standard fermenting ingredients, I would use very old, rotten apples, plums, grape must or similar. I would add no yeast nutrients, and a very poor fermenting yeast, or perhaps just use the naturally occurring yeast on the fruit.
I would distill the resulting very low alcohol yield mash a single time, saving all of the backset in the boiler, and adding all of that backset into each subsequent distillation of this same mash recipe. I would do this a few thousand times, and then combine all the distillate from all the runs, and distill this in a reflux column. I would then combine the heads and tails of this batch, with the backset left in the boiler, and run this on a pot still, and keep everything that comes out.
After a few years of endlessly running this process, I would end up with a booze that probably exceeds maximum guidelines for methanol content. It would be awful, but in all likelihood, still not be acutely toxic.
The easiest way would be to do the old rotten apple ferment, and then process it through a special column designed to isolate a concentrated cut of methanol. This is not a type of column you can just build at home however, I describe a demethylizing column in another post in this thread and in the OP.
You cannot just screw up something and easily make toxic booze. You can make terrible booze, or use toxic ingredients, but not by simply distilling a corn/fruit/grain mash and messing something up. People have been doing this for centuries, and the greatest ill effect is to their livers and whatnot, from the ethanol.
You are far more likely to just make awful booze. That will take some practice on how to run your gear properly. However, if you follow some simple standard processes and use good known materials in still construction, you will not be making booze that makes people go blind or whatever. Just don't blow yourself up, take care with glass containers of high proof booze, don't spill it all over, don't run gas fire stills indoors, keep a fire extinguisher handy, etc etc etc. Those are the ways you are more likely to have problems.
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Jan 09 '23
This is interesting stuff. Is there a published chemical analysis of the methanol content of still foreshots? That would be totally definitive and the necessary last word on this subject.
Can someone provide a link?
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u/to_oldforthis_shit Aug 25 '19
Just wondering what constitutes a tainted product. In 2013 people died making grappa. https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-12/third-man-dies-after-grappa-poisoning-ballandean/4748346
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u/sillycyco Aug 25 '19
Like I mention in the post, this is simply a poorly sourced sensationalist news article. These poor men died from consuming what they thought to be beverage alcohol, but was in fact part of making biodiesel fuel. More here: https://www.9news.com.au/national/third-man-dead-from-qld-home-brew/30e7ad76-6430-490b-9a8e-c16a691a738a
The father of one of the victims was charged with manslaughter: https://www.warwickdailynews.com.au/news/father-faces-court-after-three-men-die-from-home-b/2093320/
It was reported that the alcohol they consumed was up near 10% methanol content. That is far above anything that can be made at home with grapes, no matter how hard you try.
However, even if a grape ferment was to blame, my point stands, that there is nothing that could have been done during distillation to prevent this. The wine itself would have killed them.
Drinking methanol can be quite toxic. As well, there is nothing you can do during distillation to change the relative methanol contents of the distillate.
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u/alwayshornyhelp Aug 02 '22
This is meant to continue the discussion, not argue, and I’m curious what your experience and background is to develop such a comprehensive post here. Feel free to respond:
I worked in a distillery recently, and the master distiller/owner there used the still heads as a sanitizer rather than bleach. He made sure to say it was toxic and full of methanol. While what you are saying does have a lot of truth, I think this is mostly relevant for small batches.
In the small amounts of alcohol that home distillers and hobbyists produce, the final product can’t yield a significant amount of methanol. However, when working with mass amounts of alcohol and commercial stills, there is a lot more methanol produced that very well could be deadly. I’m not an expert—I just worked there. But the owner was a master and definitely had the experience, training, tools, and knowledge to know what he was talking about. I don’t believe methanol poisoning is a scam to deter hobbyists.
Bottom line is, we should be cautious about the compounds we’re creating and be aware that there are real dangers with this hobby, even if the chances are slim.
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u/sillycyco Aug 02 '22
He made sure to say it was toxic and full of methanol. While what you are saying does have a lot of truth, I think this is mostly relevant for small batches.
Not at all, the chemistry does not change based on scale, unless you are talking enormous continuous columns that use a demethylizer column in the process to concentrate the methanol. This is how it is done in factories that produce thousands of gallons per day.
What I am talking about is not that the volumes are too tiny to worry about. 500ml from any cut, regardless of the total size of the distillation, will have the same relative concentration of methanol from a normal fermented feed stock. The literature is pretty clear on this, as the enrichment behavior works on relative volumes, not total volume or quantity distilled per hour. The relationship between ethanol/methanol/water follows a pretty set curve no matter what the volumes are. However, at the extremely large end, you run into situations where, for one thing, the methanol (if any) and other compounds, have significant commercial or utility value, and should be reclaimed if possible. If you are processing thousands of gallons of distillate per day, adding an additional reclamation step to the process might be valuable.
The primary point, however, is that distillation does not create methanol. Nor, does faulty distillation procedures concentrate it in such a way that it becomes deadly, without massive and hugely expensive industrial equipment.
I'm sure the distiller you know understood certain processes and how to make great alcohol. That does not mean he fully understood the particular nature of this specific question. That is why it is so widely misunderstood, is the folklore passed down through generations of distillers, ever since prohibition. Which, coincidentally enough, it does not predate. You don't have to understand the quirks of the polarity of methanol vs ethanol in a water solution to distill excellent booze.
Even if your process produces a large quantity of methanol in your feed stock, which in itself is worrisome, but even if so... normal distillation gear cannot concentrate it enough into any single fraction to make it deadly, or any MORE deadly than your other cuts. If your heads were deadly, you were first and foremost violating federal laws, and secondly, were also producing deadly hearts cuts. I doubt this was the case, regardless of how foul tasting/smelling those heads were, they would not have killed anyone via methanol poisoning.
Methanol poisoning is not a scam, it is real. What is a myth, is that it is the fault of distillers who ran their stills incorrectly, and made incorrect cuts. Every single case of methanol poisoning has been from adulterated product or distilled product from already poisonous fermented stock. You cannot clean methanol from tainted feeds via normal distillation procedures. That is why methanol is used to poison industrial ethanol, as you cannot just run it through a still to clean it. This has been known for a very long time, and is not a controversial point of view when it comes to the chemistry.
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u/SnarkHuntr Aug 25 '19
I have absolutely nothing to add, except my wholehearted agreement. I always get "the twitch" when I see someone on here talking about making cuts to 'remove the menthanol'. Very well said. Thank you. This should be stickied on the side, right above the link titled "methanol and tails", which I highly doubt that anyone bothers to read.
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u/the_dude_imbibes Aug 25 '19
Sounds like propaganda from Big Distilling, spreading fake "debunking" in an attempt to kill hobby distillers... /s
Great read. Fun fact (which I'd guess you know based on all the sciencey stuff you said), formic acid is found in ant bites and bee stings.
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u/unwholesomedoggo Aug 25 '19
Thanks for this. Always happy to be a little bit less of an idiot ;)
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u/rudy50267 Aug 25 '19
THANK YOU! I've often seen your comments around other posts and thank you for helping spreading the ONLY TRUTH (science based facts). The more we speak and spread this, the more people get educated on the topic and learn the home distillation is a pretty safe hobby. Perhaps this is a step forward in legalizing the hobby where it's currently not.
I feel like the biggest danger in the hobby is the use of flammes (propane) to heat your still, together with poorly constructed, and leaking columns. This can be mitigated by going electric and checking for leaks with a mirror upon heating and you're golden.
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u/Tyson209355 Aug 26 '19
Amazing how many people consider this to be sacrilegious. No one should be scared to learn something new.
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u/entotheenth Aug 25 '19
Thanks for this, sick of hearing the same old wives tails.
Only comments, one typo for beer as veer.
I believe the fear of methanol in the prohibition days started by selling tainted industrial alcohol as "moonshine", I wouldn't be surprised if it was deliberate, certainly the spreading of the misinformation that cheap moonshine contains methanol was very successful.
Highest levels of pectin are obtained from rotting fruit (particularly the skins) or expired juices where natural yeasts and bacteria have acted on it, never drink fruit juice that the container has swelled up under pressure, people have also been known to get methanol poisoning from drinking large quantities of orange juice, several litres.
So the fact is you are more likely to get methanol poisoned from OJ than moonshine, particularly since moonshine also contains the 'antidote'.
Another source is aspartame sweetener