Fruit Washes -- Do We Have Methanol All Wrong???

[DaveK]

I was doing a little internet dive on making spirits from fruit, and discovered that one of the issues with fruit-based spirits is that they tend to have a relatively high methanol content compared to other wash bases. And then I ran across this article https://encyclopedia.pub/10419 that discusses the reasons for elevated methanol in fruit washes, as well as various measures to mitigate methanol as a fermentation product and in distilled product.

Two things they recommend are not what we usually see in preparing washes... very low pH, and very low temperature for the fermentation. They also claim that our efforts to eliminate methanol from distilled product are somewhat futile; because of the complex relationship between ethanol, methanol, and water, the methanol actually comes through throughout the distillation run, and our efforts to eliminate it in the heads are somewhat futile. The "nasty" stuff that we are getting rid of in the heads is not the nearly tasteless methanol, but acetaldehyde and ethyl acetate, according to the article.

Anyway, I thought it to be a very interesting article, and would hope that anyone knowledgeable in this might chime in to comment.

And yes... there's a link in here, and I hope I did it right, and I hope the moderator lets it through.

[Stonecutter]

Unfortunately methanol is a part of the hobby. Controlling temperature and ph is part of a successful ferment. It’s well known that methanol is present throughout the run. I’m not sure that anyone who is knowledgeable about the hobby really bothers too much about methanol at all. Make your cuts and you’ll be fine.

[NZChris]

I don't have methanol all wrong. I did few years back, but research proved me wrong.

[Saltbush Bill]

What you have read there has been common knowledge on this forum for quite a long time.
If youve been watching certain youtube vids you would have been lead to believe otherwise.

[Twisted Brick]

.
Thanks for sharing your research, Dave. Its these kinds of contributions that add to the value of forum. There are other threads, but a while back, one of our members, a lab-tech at an industrial-pharmaceutical distillery posted some first-hand tests he had made on methanol as well as some general methanol observations.

[NormandieStill]

There was a discussion relatively recently on methanol based on a relatively new article. The existing knowledge is that if you want to reduce it, it needs to happen in the wash, not in the still. The article compared different types of pectinase as there are some (lyases from memory) which do not create methanol when breaking up the pectins. I had a look for them and while you can get them, they're lab grade, undiluted (so require precise measuring equipment) and highly expensive.

All that being said, while there's an EU limit on methanol in spirits and some pear brandies do flirt a little with the limit, every (broad statement but I'm confident it's true) case of methanol poisoning was due to contaminated spirits.

* I can't seem to find the original thread now. I'll have another look because the article was interesting.

Edit to add: The original article is here