Sawdust brandy!?

[pjeterschornstein]

Hey all!

Wasn't really suer where to post this.
I came across this interesting thing called Sawdust brandy: cooked wood is chemically converting cellulose into dextrose then fermented and distilled.
Out of curiosity, anyone ever tried something like that?

[Mike6090]

I have never tried that. It seems like it would work but sawdust has a really bad habit of collecting just about everything from machine oil and dust to animal droppings and lint. If I had personally cut or router milled some oak boards I would have no problem using my own fresh gathered oak sawdust but I would not buy a bag from a mill or store of what would be “floor sweepings”.

YMMV.

[BlackStrap]

Hello pjeterschornstein
Is this link what you are talking about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawdust_brandy

It's not just as simple are cooking the wood, In Sawdust Brandy the wood is cooked with a diluted sulfuric acid, which causes the cellulose to be converted into dextrose and other simple sugars.

IMO I would not want to "experiment" with this recipe. To me, it would be like the fellow (s) figuring out which mushrooms are poisonous, Wonder how many mushroom tasters they went through to figure that out? Of using Lead, Brass, or Plastic when building a still... Are you able to justify taking that risk?

Should you try making Sawdust Brandy you may want to glance over these links.
Methanol Poisoning link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_toxicity
Sulfuric acid Poisoning link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid_poisoning

Remember this forum is about making a distilled beverage that is safe to make as well as ingest.

[Kareltje]

The wikipediapage in English is a translation of a German wikipedia lemma.
These lemmas cover all the problems.

Interesting chemistry, close to making cellulose products like paper.

But it can be done like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7pVDf30bqU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow too!

[pjeterschornstein]

Well, I got some maple cuttings I use to make toasted chips out of I could give it a try, just not sure if it worth getting sulfuric acid for that.
Some of those impurities could be removed by active carbon or biochar I guess. As for methanol- the normal foreheads drill but the wiki article actually said that it produce less fusel oils then other distilled products.
I know that dextrose would make a superior wash to table sugar anyway.
I am asking partly becouse am also interested in producing alcohol for fuel. Just wondering how much I could get from it and if it could be cost efficient in compare to sugar. I am though, a bit suspicious that I cannot find any info or recipes out there ( searched in german too) I don't think I wanna be the first taster but if there's some recipe I'll sure try it
Tat's the closes to recipe and stats that I found:

'SAWDUST BRANDY. In the current monthly report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, it is announced that there is an immense waster of material in our saw-mills, where the sawdust is thrown away; and that it is possible to produce from this dust a good quality of brandy. It is suggested that the sawdust of pine and of fir timber be mixed, and that a compound be prepared composed of nine parts of moist sawdust, 33.7 parts of water, and one part of hydrochloric acid, making 43.6 parts altogether. These are to be boiled under steam pressure eleven hours, when it will be found that nineteen per cent of the mass will be grape sugar. The acid is to be neutralized with lime, and the mash supplied with yeast. After ninety-six hours’ fermentation, a distillation of the mash will produce sixty-one quarts of brandy of fifty per cent strength, and free of any smell of turpentine. It is claimed that in all probability many other woods than pine and fir will prove even better adapted to the production of brandy.'

[Kareltje]

I found two journal reports of scientific reports of processes to treat wood with sulfuric acid to make bioethanol as fuel.
Both state that the sulfuric acid is recovered and I think that would be the drawback for home distillers.

But of course the story a journalist makes of a report is only half good. And amounts are not mentioned.

The report of pjeterschornstein seems to give amounts, but that is not true.
9 parts fresh sawdust
33.7 parts of water
1 part of HCl
Boiled under steam pressure (? bar) for eleven hours.
Result is a wash of 43.6 parts with 19 % sugar.
The acid is neutralized with lime and yeast is added.
After finishing the ferment in 4 days, the mash is distilled.
These are all ratios.
But it is said that the result is 61 quarts of 50 %ABV of low wines or brandy.
This is an amount.

I doubt if I would do this kind of experiments at home. I am not afraid of strong acids, but without the possibility to recycle the chemicals, I would face the need to get rid of large amounts of chemical waste.
Recycling CaCl2 or sulfuric acid at home is quite troublesome, I guess.

[Pikey]

.........I doubt if I would do this kind of experiments at home. I am not afraid of strong acids, but without the possibility to recycle the chemicals, I would face the need to get rid of large amounts of chemical waste.
Recycling CaCl2 or sulfuric acid at home is quite troublesome, I guess.

That is the main problemm I saw too K - Neutralising acid then trying to recover it - sounds hard !

Then there seems to be a difference - they are talking softwood (conifers) whereas most around here is hardwood (Deciduous) - and what I read leads to believe the result is methanol (Wood alcohol) - from deciduous timber.

[thecroweater]

Acid neutralised with quick lime or lye is not a super big problem. For fuel this seems like a good idea if you can get ample sawdust cheap but the question of methanol would shy me away from consuming any. I really don't know enough about destructive distillation to say with any authority if burning with acid would replicate any similar results. I do know I've been told since I was young that when making grappa you need to be wary of having to much sticks and litter in there, the old Europeans wood say that makes methanol. Grappa has often stems from grape bunches in there and is known to be higher in methanol than most spirits but not high enough in the presence of ethanol to be a major issue. When you have a serious problem is when you have more menanol then the ethanol can effectively counteract. Cuts will remove some/ most of the methanol but for sure not all of it. The boiling points are very similar but some of the compounds formed are not so close so the boil point are not at an act fraction but are on a bit of a sliding scale meaning methanol will mostly come off in heads but some will in ever decreasing amounts smear right through to tails. This is almost never an issue as there just is not enough even in heads to be a major risk. Now if you are using a process that may produce a whole ship ton of methanol then it is risky and good cuts might not save your life. I would you better do a whole damn lot of research before attempting this for anything you might drink. If you are making fuel maybe send a typical sample of to a lab for an analyst,
It will cost less than a headstone.

[aircarbonarc]

This is funny because in some Scandinavian county they produce and sell ethanol that is produced as a byproduct of the wood pulp industry. It's a chemical process I think to produce the ethanol but they sell it as a neutral for beverages.

[seamusm53]

Interesting but 'don't try this at home folks'. Remember that another name for methanol is 'wood alcohol'.

[aircarbonarc]

Fancy some birch Vodka, Pine whiskey or Cedar brandy

[Kareltje]

The association with methanol is quickly made, indeed. But this is not about destructive distilling, but about some sort of cracking or hydrolizing long chains of sugarmolecules. The chemical equivalent of the enzymatic process of brewing.
The wikipedia page clearly states that methanol is not a problem and that the produced alcohol is safe and sound for consumption. It is only forbidden in Germany because of a political decision.

A link in the German wikipedia indeed refers to sulfitespirit: alcohol made from the sugars (2 to 5 %) in the spent lees of the sulfiteprocess of pulpmaking. But the sulfiteprocess seems to be abandoned, as the sulfateprocess makes better pulp.
And for making alcohol a starting % of 19 % sugar is better than 5 %.

I think I will browse around a bit, for although I do not plan to do this at home, it would be nice to know!

[Kareltje]

Found 2 accessible pdf's:

A broad overview of different methods to use cellulose:
http://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/ ... sequence=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Experiments with hydrolysis of sawdust with acid:
http://engineeringjournals.stmjournals. ... le/449/228" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

And some links that I can not access fully from my home computer, but have a nice first page:

Often cited is:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie50421a005" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

A few years more recent is:
http://engineeringjournals.stmjournals. ... le/449/228" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I think this could be a good starting point for further studying! Especially the study of Addis Ababa University.

By the way: the given recipe with hydrochloric acid can not be right. 9 parts of fresh sawdust means only about 50 % dry matter of which max. 50 % is cellulose. So only 2.25 parts can be hydrolyzed into sugars. After neutralizing the 1 part acid with 1 part of slaked lime, there are only 42.7 parts left, which means a sugar content of only 2.25 / 42.7 = 5.3 % w/w of sugar.

[aircarbonarc]

A link in the German wikipedia indeed refers to sulfitespirit: alcohol made from the sugars (2 to 5 %) in the spent lees of the sulfiteprocess of pulpmaking. But the sulfiteprocess seems to be abandoned, as the sulfateprocess makes better pulp.
And for making alcohol a starting % of 19 % sugar is better than 5 %.

I think I will browse around a bit, for although I do not plan to do this at home, it would be nice to know!

The Sulphite process is used to make specialty pulp, it's also called "Red liquor" pulp. We have 3 mills in the world that uses this process. This is for food grade cellulose, stuff for clothing, explosives, ammunition wedding, pill bottle wedding, pill and capsule coatings and more. Also the red liquor mill smelled a bit like alcohol when I worked there. It's been closed a few years now.

[pjeterschornstein]

Thanks for all the great input guys! Kareltje, that's a good point. I wouldn't like to use those chemicals without a way of recycling them.
I actually Found a different approach by mistake, I was looking at ways of discarding spent mushroom (the mushroom mycelium on straw after it been used from oyster mushroom I grow) and apparently you can use mushroom mycelium growth to release the enzyme that breaks down the cellulose into dextrose. Would need to kill the mycelium at some point since it would also consumes the sugars. If I'll find some more about it I'll add it here.

[I am Still Standing]

Hello pjeterschornstein
Is this link what you are talking about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawdust_brandy

It's not just as simple are cooking the wood, In Sawdust Brandy the wood is cooked with a diluted sulfuric acid, which causes the cellulose to be converted into dextrose and other simple sugars.

IMO I would not want to "experiment" with this recipe. To me, it would be like the fellow (s) figuring out which mushrooms are poisonous, Wonder how many mushroom tasters they went through to figure that out? Of using Lead, Brass, or Plastic when building a still... Are you able to justify taking that risk?

Should you try making Sawdust Brandy you may want to glance over these links.
Methanol Poisoning link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_toxicity
Sulfuric acid Poisoning link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid_poisoning

Remember this forum is about making a distilled beverage that is safe to make as well as ingest.

Just read this post . I am new to distilling , know lots of theory ,but have never run a batch as yet. Ithought distilling wood was a bnig no no? As i understand the cellulose produces Methanol. Reading on in the post , there'sd mention of The use of Sulphuric acid to convert Cellulose to dextrose? Surely there is some acid by product so you would have to add an alklie to render it fairly neutral. Isnt this what the expats used to try in Saudi and ended up Blind due to the Methanol?

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

This thread was not going any place good from the beginning. I originally moved it to research and theory from fruits and vegetables, but this just feels like "what not to use"

[brewmaster2014]

I made few times apple sawdust ice cream, I guess you can do brandy as well! If you google the ice cream you will find the recipe

[8Ball]

This thread was not going any place good from the beginning. I originally moved it to research and theory from fruits and vegetables, but this just feels like "what not to use"

+1
I’ll pass on this idea. I’ll just ‘stick’ to using wood to age with.