Methanol scares me!

[Deerhunter]

After reading these articles about people dying in India from drinking moonshine, this just down right scares the hell out of me. Is methanol something we have to worry about when making our own spirits. Is this only present in the foreshots or is this the reason why some people don't re-run or add there feints to there next run? I've read some older posts on here where some people have stated it is present throughout the entire run. The last thing I need is to end up making some bad spirits. After doing my run today I finally was able to pick up the acetone smell in the forshots. It was pretty distinct and was amazed I didn't pick it up sooner on my first few runs. As far as the Methanol is concerned, how cencerned should I be and what precautions should be taken?

[NZChris]

What article? Link please?

[googe]

Luckily we have some.more brains than most in them.sort of articles!. With the knowledge here you should be more than safe. Just be strict with your cuts and you'll be fine. We were all a bit scared when we first started.

[NZChris]

We were all a bit scared when we first started.

Speak for yourself mate. I did my homework before I started so the only scary bit was the possibility of getting caught

[Deerhunter]

Here's one link. Never posted a link so I hope it works. If not do a HD Google search on Methanol

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=40606

[NZChris]

Was that an article about people dying in India?

[shadylane]

The antidote for methanol is ethanol.
There's more methanol in a glass of orange juice than there is in my shine.
Therefor I always add a large dose of shine to my orange juice for safety.

[S-Cackalacky]

If you did some research here and elsewhere, you would know that there is little chance of becoming ill from the spirits you make yourself. You can run everything together - fores, heads, hearts, and tails - and get yourself a raging hangover, but it won't kill you.

The fear you have is the same fear perpetuated by the government during prohibition to frighten people into thinking that all moonshine would make you go blind or kill you. Truth is - the government is the main culprit in tainting likker during that period. They denatured alcohol without telling anyone they did it and many died because of it. This happened to a lesser extent when organized crime became involved in likker production. You could probably produce a likker high in methanol if you fermented and distilled the wrong material (wood pulp?).

The long and the short - follow a T&T recipe, do good cuts, and have a good drink to calm your nerves.

[still_stirrin]

The antidote for methanol is ethanol.
There's more methanol in a glass of orange juice than there is in my shine.
Therefor I always add a large dose of shine to my orange juice for safety.

[Danespirit]

+1 Shadylane
+1 S-Cackalacky

Deerhunter..if you make the worst pile of shit potstill, distill the worst crap you have ever fermented and do lousy almost nonexistent cuts, you'll get a hangover.
Chances are you also will spend your night sitting and/or kneeling on the toilet.
And yes you are correct about those fractions being present all through the run.
The potstill would be the worst, compared to a refluxcolumn.
So..to get the most of the nasty crap out of our spirits, cuts are important.
For the distiller it means a constant task of improving fermentations and doing the right cuts and blends.
The distiller is only as good as his last batch he distilled.

[MichiganCornhusker]

To make your spirits poisonous, you would need to get methanol from an outside source and add it to your drink.
We don't produce enough dangerous product to hurt anyone with the recipes we use.
Make your cuts based on improving your drink, not on worrying about methanol.

[thecroweater]

ok so here is the deal, you can't make methanol with a still, hell you can't make anything with a still. All a still is is a separation apparatus, you can take shit out with it but is doesn't really add anything new in (well some compounds can form but lets not go there). So thing is what ever was in the wine or beer or wash is what will be in the fractions that come out the still. Methanol can't magically appear in the condenser, if its not in the wash its not in the spirit and its very unlikely to be in the wash or mash or must , as someone posted its not like we are fermenting wood pulp and there is a bit more to it on top of that. good still good recipe good cuts and you just can't go wrong
what goes on with these mass poisonings you are reading about is a case of dick heads adding toxins to the finished product
Posted same time as above

[myles]

Lets just stress this again. During fermentation the yeast makes a small, and I mean REALLY SMALL quantity of methanol. Not enough to hurt you.

Some eastern european spirits make no cuts at all. If it comes out of the still it goes in the bottle. Bad headache but not death.

Any time you hear about death or injury from methanol in booze it is a polutant that has come from outside sources. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately. But it didn't come from the fermentation process.

[ranger_ric]

In my (somewhat limited) understanding of the govt and media use of the word "moonshine" it simply means illegal likker. They use scare tactics like methonal and blindness and even death to get their taxes (or their sensationalized story).
Now, Illegal likker for consumption could include alcohol that has been "denatured" typically using something cheap like methanol that would still be an alcohol.
During the depression many unethical bootleggers were stealing denatured alcohol and selling it (by the truckload). When the govt figured this out they increased the amount of methanol used for denaturing. The medical community screamed against the govt doing this but they carried on anyway and in the course of a few weeks many were killed and blinded by this new highly denatured and stolen alcohol. And the governement got this in history to show how deadly "moonshine" is. Even though the Government is the one who upped the methanol. The moonshine made in a still would not have enough methanol to cause any of these problems.
The dangerous levels of methanol are caused by adding methanol AFTER distillation. The incident in India I am confident (if investigated properly) will show that the illegal booze was either:
A. Stolen denatured alcohol or,
B. The bootleggers added cheap methanol to increase product levels for a higher profit..

Just my .02 .... Hopefully someday we will KILL this myth from the depression and prohibition era about blinding moonshine...

[bearriver]

Just my .02 .... Hopefully someday we will KILL this myth from the depression and prohibition era about blinding moonshine...

You can't kill it. It's a stupid idea from the old world. Unfortunately so many people are clinging onto what mom and dad told them growing up. The old world is full of facts that aren't facts. Like bigotry, it is spread orally from parent to child. Blindly accepted as truth. I run into this stuff on a daily basis. It's easy to let most of it go but sometimes like in this case it really jerks my chain.

I got dobermans for example, and many people are completely convinced that one day their brains will outgrow their skulls causing them to turn into uncontrollable killing machines. Despite being one of the dumbest myths I have ever heard, it somehow has the power to completely control how people perceive the animal. Like this hobby it ultimately demonizes it for better or for worse.

[MitchyBourbon]

Being afraid of methanol is like being afraid of the dark. Once you arm yourself with a little knowledge, you realize there is nothing to be afraid of.

[Deerhunter]

Ok I feel a lot better. But quite honestly I've been mixing some of my heads with my hearts and tails. I still need to work on making good cuts. From now on I'm saving my heads and tails for my next run. My last run I was very satisfied with the outcome. Took off 200ml of fores, so I was already well into my heads. I stopped collecting at 40% ABV. But then turned up the heat and collected well into my tails down to 20% ABV to add to my next run. Those 2 pints were cloudy. I think I'm getting the hang of things.

[MichiganCornhusker]

Here is a great how-to for helping you make cuts.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=11640

I've taken it from this thread, which is a great how-to for everything else!

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=52975

[Hound Dog]

The antidote for methanol is ethanol.
There's more methanol in a glass of orange juice than there is in my shine.
Therefor I always add a large dose of shine to my orange juice for safety.

Never too careful I see Shady!

Hell, I have drank some pretty rank shine in my past. I'm still here to talk about it. Heck it's what made me want to distill. The desire to have something better.

[hexed]

Methanol when drunk with lots of ethanol is not harmful to you. Methanol is metabolized by the body to form formaldehyde, in turn which is very toxic to the human body. Fortunately, when ethanol is present in large amounts in the same drink, the methanol is neutralized and cannot turn in to formaldehyde. The amounts of methanol in beer and wine (yes there is methanol in your store bought beer and wine) is not a problem. The problem exists when you purify methanol through distillation. Fortunately, there is enough ethanol even in the foreshots to neutralize methanol from causing any major effects. The bigger issue is the ethyl acetate and the acetone in the heads and foreshots. These, when drunk, will give you a headache almost instantly... at least for me. Within about 20 minutes I'll get a stomach ache followed by a headache which will last for about 30 minutes if I drink any acetone or try a jar in the heads. Some people say they'll get headaches the next day - I get them immediately.

When you first start making cuts, you will get headaches. You will make wrong decisions... You learn from it pretty quickly haha.

Make sure to take notes... trust me. Take them. Once you start to run the same run over and over, you'll start to see a pattern and can make judgments quickly without getting headaches. You will be able to make tighter cuts and start to realize that some heads may be useful for taste.