A member of our dutch forum dutchdistillers.nl, Snurrebreut, offered to have methanol tests of our distilled products done by gas chromatography. The tests were performed by students of a lab-school under the supervision of a teacher. The teacher re-did some or all of the tests, not sure about that, to ensure correct results.
Just wanted to share those results here, might be of interest. Maximum allowed levels (EU regulations) are in the sheet aswell.
The excel sheet will be updated in the future to include some unknown items in the table.
Regards,
Matt
Updated 06 MAR 2020 - Apparently some can't open the ODF spreadsheet so I replaced it with an Excel version. Let me know if you run into more issues.
Wanted to add that there's stripruns, fores, heads, tails and a number of different mash types, sugar, melasse, grain, fruits (apple, plum, berries) in the mix. Single distillation, multiple distillations.
Interesting .If I read it correct , Seems to again suggest that there was more Methanol in the tails than the hearts and even less in the Fores of the Quince fruit samples .
Simply underscores what has been repeated here before - there just isn't enough naturally occurring methanol to be toxic. And if there are toxic levels someone deliberately added it.
RC Al wrote: ↑Fri Mar 06, 2020 11:18 pm
Would loved to have seen a turbo yeast on that list...
Look again Arsey....Vodkastar is marketed as a turbo yeast.
Fair call, I was referring to the ones that give you 20% in a day or two
The vodkastar packets are only 66g, the "classic 8" still spirits one commonly used here in oz is 240g, obviously a very different product even to the similar "high performance" offerings from alcotec which have double the weight of the vodkastar in the packet
Corsaire wrote: ↑Sat Mar 07, 2020 12:18 am
People only worry about methanol. It's nice to be able to debunk a myth that only serves to demonize our hobby.
As an aside, I can tell you from having worked with pure methanol, it sucks. For several years I was making biodiesel from used fryer oil for my own use, and would break down drums of methanol into 20L HDPE containers. A couple times I was less methodical about ventilation than others, and a methanol headache is uniquely bad. But that was probably exposure to a hundred times the amount that might be in a five gallon ferment, before or after distillation. I've never understood the irrational idea that the methanol is safe in beer but not once it has been distilled, after intentionally tossing the parts in which it's likely to be most concentrated.
Corsaire wrote: ↑Sun Mar 08, 2020 9:48 am
Thanks. So that means that 5 gallons of the stuff could kill me. I think I'll stick to apple brandy
Haha!
Yeah nobody is going to drink more than their body weight in OJ.
140 mg isn't really remarkable when comparing against the above data. It's just that so many folks would never regard "fresh" OJ as toxic.
I gave the oj example in a rum tasting once where clairin was sampled. Someone at the tasting broke into a panic when he saw the equipment used to produce said clairin, thought he was going to turn blind any minute.
I couldn't readily find any numbers in my native language though.
20200306-Methanoltest.xlsx
