About methanol

[Cendsel]

Hi guys, i hope yall having a great day.
İ have a question. As u know methonol produced from furits and peels. i have a sugar + water and yeast batch. So thers no methanol. it got %12ABV . What happens if i dont separate head heart and tails. Just one whole distilled product. How bad it would be? is it dangerous?

[SW_Shiner]

Dangerous? Maybe not if you had some barrels and a few years to spare. But why? it would not be palatable imo. Why the aversion to cuts? If you're making it for drinking, why not try to make a quality product? The best part of home distilling is that we can make a drink better than the big guys do. If its for fuel then it doesn't matter. A lot of the burning and hangover stuff hides out in the heads, and bad yeasty flavours and oils stay in the tails. Theres a reason everybody does cuts. Even the big commercial guys makes cuts, granted, they are a lot wider cuts as they have a dollar figure to worry about. But they still do something.

[Yummyrum]

When I first started , I wondered this and on one occassion I decided to mix in the fores cut and drunk it . Didn’t notice any ill effects but it tasted worse than when I left it out .
Mindyou , I don’t get head aches or hangovers . Maybe 2or 3 in my life .

Folks have been drinking Wine for ever . Any Methanol is right there in the wine .

[Renhoekk]

Yes, it will 100% dangerous to your taste buds and to your head the morning after. No, you won’t go blind or die.

[Saltbush Bill]

As above it won't kill you or send you blind, but why would you want to drink something that tasted that bad.
People here are into making and drinking the best quality booze that they can make, not rotgut rubbish.

[Stags]

When I first started , I wondered this and on one occassion I decided to mix in the fores cut and drunk it . Didn’t notice any ill effects but it tasted worse than when I left it out .
Mindyou , I don’t get head aches or hangovers . Maybe 2or 3 in my life .

Folks have been drinking Wine for ever . Any Methanol is right there in the wine .

Yummy it sounds like you’re not drinking enough

[Rusty Ole Bucket]

When I first started , I wondered this and on one occassion I decided to mix in the fores cut and drunk it . Didn’t notice any ill effects but it tasted worse than when I left it out .
Mindyou , I don’t get head aches or hangovers . Maybe 2or 3 in my life .

Folks have been drinking Wine for ever . Any Methanol is right there in the wine .

Yummy it sounds like you’re not drinking enough

I have a buddy like that, swears he's never had a headache. LUCKY!

Rusty

[SW_Shiner]

When I first started , I wondered this and on one occassion I decided to mix in the fores cut and drunk it . Didn’t notice any ill effects but it tasted worse than when I left it out .
Mindyou , I don’t get head aches or hangovers . Maybe 2or 3 in my life .

Folks have been drinking Wine for ever . Any Methanol is right there in the wine .

Yummy it sounds like you’re not drinking enough

I have a buddy like that, swears he's never had a headache. LUCKY!

Rusty

Could be luck for some or just common sense with others. Good cuts help immensely, but hydration and sugar content is also important. For many people, the cause of a "hangover" is often dehydration or sugar crash if you like to mix with soft drinks. I don't recall having any hangovers in the last 18 years or so since i was about 16/17 years old. A glass or two of water before calling it a night seems to be a good idea, i've always done so.

[fiery creations]

When I first started , I wondered this and on one occassion I decided to mix in the fores cut and drunk it . Didn’t notice any ill effects but it tasted worse than when I left it out .
Mindyou , I don’t get head aches or hangovers . Maybe 2or 3 in my life .

Folks have been drinking Wine for ever . Any Methanol is right there in the wine .

Yummy it sounds like you’re not drinking enough

I have a buddy like that, swears he's never had a headache. LUCKY!

Rusty

My uncle was like this but I sure didn’t inherit the same genes. Every single night he was toasted, most of the time to the point of staggering. Then 6 hours later he was up before the sun heading to the gym to bodybuild. I don’t think he had a single hangover in his entire life and part of me hates him for it.

[Setsumi]

Cendsel, try this.

Early morning, take a decent shot of your fores/heads. After 10 minutes walk quite fast for a few hunderd meters. I bet you will feel not very well. It is not just methanol but rather other low boiling alchohols. If you have heart problems you will feel it.

Make your cuts in small portions, it is not just headaces and hangovers to watch for.

[SW_Shiner]

Cendsel, try this.

Early morning, take a decent shot of your fores/heads. After 10 minutes walk quite fast for a few hunderd meters. I bet you will feel not very well. It is not just methanol but rather other low boiling alchohols. If you have heart problems you will feel it.

Make your cuts in small portions, it is not just headaces and hangovers to watch for.

i wouldn't recommend telling anyone to try any amount of fore shots. It may not be as bad as TV would have you believe, but still not something i would encourage doing.

[PalCabral]

The fear for methanol in alcohols in general and for moonshine specifically is totally exaggerated, to the point it is fear-mongering.

True that certain raw materials, such as fruit, produce methanol during fermentation, but the quantities of methanol produced are generally way below, way below, life-threatening. In a normal fermentation, to be able to produce a relatively big amount of methanol, your fermentation has gone seriously wrong, so wrong, you must be beyond daft to distill it. Worst case scenario is that you get sick and have a terrible day after.

If the distiller keeps to the following guidelines, methanol is as dangerous in moonshine as picking your nose:
1. Throw away foreshots
2. Don't include early heads in your product
3. Never use someone else's beer/wine/wash for distillation unless you know for certain where it comes from
and maybe the most important guideline of all:
4. Never ever use someone else's high wines, low wines or feints unless you know for 100% certainty where it comes from

People die from methanol poisoning because they drink alcohol that has been adulterated with methanol. Methanol is very similar to Ethanol in taste and smell, a normal person will not be able to tell the two apart. Most times, even the adulterer isn't not aware themselves that they have concocted a poison that may kill. Methanol that are used to adulterate alcoholic beverages comes 10 times out of 10 from dry distillation of wood.

Methanol kills because your body doesn't have a defense mechanism to treat the poison like it does for Ethanol. If someone gets Methanol poisoning, the treatment is to administer Ethanol to the sick person, because the body's defense mechanism for Ethanol kicks in and start working on breaking down the Methanol in your body.

Edit: serious burns and fire are much more lethal dangers when it comes to moonshine. And of course, drinking yourself to death on the "good stuff".