Home Distiller

He wrote everything is crooked. Not many things or some things. This was for me the key word to judge it racism or nationalism. And he should have used a less demeaning word than "crooked". And I miss a word like "unfortunately". His words are full of hate and gloating. My goal was after 2 weeks still noone has deleted this post I post and then my and his posts are deleted, case closed. Didn't work. Instead I got a board warning. No problem.

nerdybrewer wrote:That said, I have had good experiences and I have had bad experiences there.
There are good honest people everywhere.
There are also assholes everywhere.

So not everything is crooked down there? Why didn't you write it Appalachia Shiner? Why do you write me?

Tater wrote:My first wife mother of my children is Hispanic so its not about race .

This is a very often heard very weak argument. My wife is female. So I cannot be a misogynist?

Truckinbutch wrote:Greed isn't a racial issue . It's just greed .

Yes. And greed isn't a special Mexican issue.

HDNB wrote:if you don't like something use the red ! up in the top right corner and admin will get to it.

Yes, agreed. This would have been the better first step in such a case.

+1 der wo

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =35&t=5090
7. No racism. I don't care what your views are regarding people who aren't the same color, sex, or ethnic heritage as you, keep them to yourself. Remember that I'm a minority as are many others of our members.

HDNB wrote: the topic of the thread is tainted booze (in Mexico) if you have nothing to add to the topic keep your opinions to yourself. use the ! thats what it's there for.

Fak. thought you maybe would have read this six posts ago.

Why on earth would anyone (other than a roofy rapist) use a toxic substance to extend their booze inventory. Beside the possibility of spending your life in a Mexican prison, it's really bad for business. Sick people don't buy more drinks, and they don't come back to your resort anymore, and they tell all their friends back home what a shitty time they had, and they all go to Jamaica next year. Now tell me they're saving so much money by using methanol. Water is even cheaper, and way more convenient. The guy who runs his business like would lose his resort before he even had time to test the roofys. Success depends on happy customers. You don't poison them to save two bits per gallon of liquor. No Mexican hotel is adulterating the booze. That is just stupid.

This is where people need to use their god given critical thinking to separate truth from bullshit. It's hard these days, and getting harder, but we have to do it. We have to fight for the truth before they destroy it, and make it meaningless. Alternative facts are lies. If not us, then who? Don't buy the bullshit. Call them on it.

skow69 wrote:Why on earth would anyone (other than a roofy rapist) use a toxic substance to extend their booze inventory. Beside the possibility of spending your life in a Mexican prison, it's really bad for business. Sick people don't buy more drinks, and they don't come back to your resort anymore, and they tell all their friends back home what a shitty time they had, and they all go to Jamaica next year. Now tell me they're saving so much money by using methanol. Water is even cheaper, and way more convenient. The guy who runs his business like would lose his resort before he even had time to test the roofys. Success depends on happy customers. You don't poison them to save two bits per gallon of liquor. No Mexican hotel is adulterating the booze. That is just stupid.

This is where people need to use their god given critical thinking to separate truth from bullshit. It's hard these days, and getting harder, but we have to do it. We have to fight for the truth before they destroy it, and make it meaningless. Alternative facts are lies. If not us, then who? Don't buy the bullshit. Call them on it.

+1

All true, but are you saying people should make sensible decisions?

In many cases, not going to happen!

Geoff

We can only hope.

skow69 wrote:We can only hope.

No we can make those judgements and go forward - the others can follow - or they can "bar" us - "C'est la vie "

der wo wrote:He wrote everything is crooked. Not many things or some things. This was for me the key word to judge it racism or nationalism. And he should have used a less demeaning word than "crooked". And I miss a word like "unfortunately". His words are full of hate and gloating. My goal was after 2 weeks still noone has deleted this post I post and then my and his posts are deleted, case closed. Didn't work. Instead I got a board warning. No problem.

nerdybrewer wrote:That said, I have had good experiences and I have had bad experiences there.
There are good honest people everywhere.
There are also assholes everywhere.

So not everything is crooked down there?

Exactly my point.
Also not everything is crooked in Chicago.
Or Detroit.
I have witnessed people being murdered in both of those places, but not everyone there is a murderer.

In the time I read HD I have seen two more stories like this one: one from India and one from Australia. Common factor was that both the buyers and the sellers were poor and not well educated.
But I remember a case of adultering wine in Austria with antifreezing fluid, some decades ago. And in the history of Scotch whisky and Dutch genever there are moments when the good pot still grain distillate was diluted with cheaper alcohol from continuous stills, in the case of Dutch genever not even from grain but made from sugar. These buyers and sellers were not poor and illiterate.
And it is not only with alcohol that food is adulterated. In China some years ago melamine was added to babymilk, to suggest a higher protein content. And to sell horsemeat as bovine there has been a large web of companies and persons all over Europe from Rumania to France and the Netherlands.
In some cases there is no harm for the consumer, horsemeat sometimes is even better than bovine meat.
But in all cases both the buyer and the seller are happy, at first. The buyer thinks he gets the normal quality for a low price, the seller gets a normal price for a cheap product. The buyer usually knows nothing about the forgery, but the seller does this cheating knowingly.
Plain and simple greed, on both sides.
And we all, I definitely not excluded, act the same. Maybe on smaller scale, but we all want to get good stuff for a low price or sell imperfect goods for a good price. Poor or rich, stupid or smart, high or low class, cheating is everywhere.
Shit happens, sometimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diet ... ne_scandal" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Antifreeze in wine. 1985 in Austria. Not a poor country, not poor uneducated, but a whole industry. At the end 27.000.000 liters of wine were destroyed.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/08/20 ... 682660800/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
And 1986 in Italy. Methanol wine adulterating. 19 dead and 15 blind people.

I was replied to a post on pectin earlier and read though a few articles to double check the accuracy. Anyways one link lead to another and I came across these studies relevant to the discussion here
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5028366/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Interesting read!

Anaerobic bacteria, particularly Clostridium butyricum, Clostridium thermocellum, Clostridium multifermentans, and Clostridium felsineum produce methanol from pectin (Ollivier and Garcia 1990). Schink and Zeikus (1980) reported various pectinolytic strains of Clostridium, Erwinia and Pseudomonas.

Uh oh, clostridium butyricum is one of our beloved rum microbes! Note they found a cane cachaca with .5% methanol, surprising given I wouldnt expect much pectin in cane.

Yes interesting read - It seemed to be saying that natural ferments could produce dangerous levels - and that the "unscrupulous vendors" approach may be wrong. The conclusion backtracked from that.

It was decent of teh author to recommend that traditional fermentation of beverages to produce alcohol - Not be banned outright !

Anaerobic bacteria, particularly Clostridium butyricum, Clostridium thermocellum, Clostridium multifermentans, and Clostridium felsineum produce methanol from pectin (Ollivier and Garcia 1990). Schink and Zeikus (1980) reported various pectinolytic strains of Clostridium, Erwinia and Pseudomonas.

I don't think it changes the game. Don't ferment something with much pectin, for example orange peels, and you don't have to fear that a yeast or bacteria will form methanol. Unfortunately we don't know the pectin content of all fruits and other fermentables.

Citrus contains 7–10 % pectin (Siragusa et al. 1988) I am sure they mean including the peel. Chaiyasut et al. (2013) compared pectin levels in fermented beverage containing Morinda citrifolia (9.89 %) with that of other fruits including guava (4.36 %), tomato (0.3 %), apple (0.5 %), carrot (0.8 %) and cherries (0.4 %).

At least I didn't know, that guava and morinda have so much pectin. Perhaps other fruits too which grow in our regions? I don't think. Because if there would be a cheap fruit with much pectine, they would be used to produce pectine. And most pectine is produced from the pomace of apples, citrus and beets. Those are the fruits with much pectine for little money. And here is a problem perhaps. Probably the trash of sugar cane has much pectine. If it's somewhere the tradition to ferment whole sugar cane (not only the juice), probably they get higher methanol levels.

But what happened to the notion that the antidote for methanol poisoning is ethanol? Is that not true? In the Background section he appears to blame over 400 deaths on methanol. Could it be that, in all of these cases, the hapless distiller managed to accidentally produce only methanol? Or is the ethanol-antidote connection just a myth?

Interesting author too -

Elijah Ige Ohimain corresponding author
Ecotoxicology Research Group, Biological Sciences Department, Niger Delta University Wilberforce Island, Amassoma, Bayelsa State Nigeria
Elijah Ige Ohimain,

Not really "mainstream" imo. - doesn't even say whether he has any qualifications or not - just "member" of an "Eco-group"




[Edits - working out how to do quotes ]

skow69 wrote:But what happened to the notion that the antidote for methanol poisoning is ethanol? Is that not true? In the Background section he appears to blame over 400 deaths on methanol. Could it be that, in all of these cases, the hapless distiller managed to accidentally produce only methanol? Or is the ethanol-antidote connection just a myth?

My guess is he doesn't even know that !

I was also surprised by the idea that our bodies could produce methanol. (I admit I didn't read the articles that he referenced, and I should.) He seemed to stop short of saying that this "endogenous" methanol was solely responsible for any fatalities, but clearly, someone thinks it contributed. Are there other cases where a healthy human body produces toxins in any significant amount, or would methanol be unique in this? (If this sounds snarky, it is not meant to be. I am sincerely interested, or maybe I should say concerned.) I would think that this possibility deserves more research. I hope it is getting some attention.

Our exhaled breath certainly contains measurable amounts of methanol - drink or no drink - I've seen that elsewhere.

Interesting read! Thanks for sharing!!
I read it only briefly, so I may have missed it, but I did not see a remark about lethal doses of methanol produced during fermentation.

Methanol is produced, we know that. And some sources, like mango, seem to produce more than others. It also depends on the enzymes/organisms involved in breaking down the pectin. That is clearly explained in this article (and the preceding articles!).

And I am not surprised methanol is produced in the human body: we all eat foods with pectin, so during digestion aither in our bowels or in our own body there will be some methanol.

But as I said: I may have missed it but I did not see something that convinced me that the death of so many drinkers was caused by unclean fermenting.

I think it was a little more subtle than that Kareltje - I found the implications there, but not any statement of positivity.

Pikey wrote:
It was decent of the author to recommend that traditional fermentation of beverages to produce alcohol - Not be banned outright !

Did you find that part ?

Why make that recommend, if you have not expressed the opinion that anthropomorphic ferments can be responsible ?

Pikey wrote:I think it was a little more subtle than that Kareltje - I found the implications there, but not any statement of positivity.

Pikey wrote:
It was decent of the author to recommend that traditional fermentation of beverages to produce alcohol - Not be banned outright !

Did you find that part ?

Why make that recommend, if you have not expressed the opinion that anthropomorphic ferments can be responsible ?

They make the suggestion, if only by starting their investigation because of all the disasters. But I saw no confirmation, no clear contradiction to the common belief of purposely adulterating.

I smiled when I read your remark, as I had the same feeling.
Well, all these ferments are made by humans, be they harmful or not. (well: less!) Throwing away all these efforts is a waste, so using them as fuel for machines is at least partly putting them to use.

But to put this in practice, you need some more steps: you need to find the ferments that went wrong, so you need a system of monitoring all ferments, including the illegal, Then you need a system to buy these spirits for a price that can compete with selling them on the drinking consumers market.

I think the conclusion is very telling, yes all these things are possible to produce a small amount of methanol but it seems but it would seem none were found to be in doses likely to be harmful. It might not point out specifically because its produced with methanol but I think you can take that as read as without ethanol almost everyone commercial and otherwise is probably producing a harmful amount of methanol from time to time. The way I read the conclusion this study group came to is its much more likely that all the deaths are actually due to adulterated spirit.

@ skow69 no it is no myth perhaps they just didn't state the obvious.
A few years back four young fella's got into a cube of methanol purchased for making biodiesel that belonged to the father of one of them. Two died before the cause and treatment could start and the other two were in a bad way. They were put on ethanol drips, sadly to much damage had been done to one and his life could not be saved the other lad did recover but did have some ocular nerve damage so some permanent vision impairment. Naturally the main stream media has reported this as deaths by bad moonshine as is always the case here. You can Google moonshine deaths in Queensland if you're into reading fiction, it'll all be there but if ya dig a little deeper you'd find coroner's and police reports indicating what actually took place . For a while you couldn't as the boy's father was facing charges of criminal negligence but as he has now been found guilty and sentenced those public records should all be accessible. Point being if you Google the case the first thing you'll get is pages of horse shit about 4 guys getting poisoned by bad moonshine. You won't fine any retraction or emendation in the media, it seems those concepts are a thing of the past at least in our media and going by this tainted booze in Mexico story the media yonder too .

skow69 wrote:But what happened to the notion that the antidote for methanol poisoning is ethanol? Is that not true? In the Background section he appears to blame over 400 deaths on methanol. Could it be that, in all of these cases, the hapless distiller managed to accidentally produce only methanol? Or is the ethanol-antidote connection just a myth?

Not just a myth, ethanol and dialysis seems to be the the preferred treatment. There is a paper linked in this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1306022/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow article.

OK, then let me ask the obvious question. How can anybody die from methanol poisoning by drinking 1) spirits that inadvertently developed a little more than the usual amount of methanol during fermentation? or 2) spirits that have been adulterated by replacing some of the (supposedly expensive) ethanol with (supposedly cheap) methanol?

Relative quantities come to mind, but the case that croweater cited suggests that a kid who had been drinking pure methanol in party amounts could be saved by a drip, so it doesn't seem like you need lots of e. to counteract the m.

EDIT: I just looked it up and it appears that ethanol is indeed around 50% more expensive than methanol, so I will stop beating that dead horse.

ah OK by drip I mean intravenously fed ethanol as in shit tons. They weren't kids but young adults.
OK so after read page after page of fake news I finally found a report on the cock up that lead to that particular tragedy.
https://m.thechronicle.com.au/news/home ... f/3045373/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

All right. I knew what you meant by drip. I had a morphine drip once. Didn't feel like shit tons to me. Perhaps "infusion" would be more descriptive. You are right, 21 yo are young adults. Age is relative. Being nearly 50 years their senior, they seem like kids to me. And their drinking habits didn't show a lot of maturity, since three of them drank almost all of a two litre bottle. And apparently drank it fast enough to get it all down before the symptoms showed.

Regardless of that, this was a tragedy of epic proportions. I can be especially empathetic, as I lost a son in 2003 in a car wreck at the age of 24. Alcohol was involved there, also, albeit legal alcohol. Those parents will never be the same, including the old man who made up the mixture for them. There can be no doubt that using the methanol, instead of ethanol, was an innocent, if unbelievably stupid and careless, mistake. That old boy will have his own special hell to live in for the rest of his life.

This case stands out because it is clear that methanol was the toxin, we know exactly how it got into someones glass, and we understand the motives of everyone involved. I don't see that clarity in any of the other examples here.

ah yes in this one singular years after the fact report it becomes obvious. The other 50 odd reports at the time ran with the "bad old moonshiner dun killed folks with his dodgy shine" story. That was kinda one of my points and I posted that link to show what actually happened. Damage done to home distillers and the misinformation once again it what made the national news. There is another case similar sounding from northern NSW at the moment that makes no sense the way its been reported.
Edit saddened to read about your loss, lost my aunty the same way in 1997 and I can still see those ambulance tail lights driving off slow like it was yesterday