Home Distiller

So this fella on youtube, who I've followed for a while and who seemed to be fairly knowledgeable, states he's done some research and found some surprising info on methanol. Wondering if'n anyone else has seen this. Most of the info I've gleaned from this site (which I would consider much more credible) has a person throw out the fores so as not to go blind....I understand that there is quite a bit of other crap in the fores one may not want to ingest, however seems it may not kill you. What say you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SwP9CuNBc4

It's been proven that it wasn't foreshots that caused the blindness, but like you said, there is a lot of other stuff that isn't good for ya in fores. Cut a little too deep in the heads and your product taste crappy, i could only imagine how horrible the product would taste with fores in it.

This was discussed at length on the forum a month or so back
Basically what he is saying is true

the way i understand the discussion here is exactly what he is saying - methanol simply cannot be completely removed with our levels of kit, it will exist through the entire run

i still chuck out the 1st 100ml of each 25-30L run - it smells horrible, tastes worse but more importantly - it makes a very good fire lighter!

Gotcha. I apologize for rehashing something that's been discussed. I looked back and wasn't able to find any info on it. I apparently have poor search skills... I agree with you both and have no interest in drinking the fores, so will continue to chit can it. Just the smell gives me a headache.

LWTCS wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 3:55 am viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77287

Ah yes, thank you. It would seem that Cyrus (from the youtube vid) probably got his info from that thread right there.

Johnny_Mac wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 3:18 am So this fella on youtube, who I've followed for a while and who seemed to be fairly knowledgeable, states he's done some research and found some surprising info on methanol. Wondering if'n anyone else has seen this. Most of the info I've gleaned from this site (which I would consider much more credible) has a person throw out the fores so as not to go blind....I understand that there is quite a bit of other crap in the fores one may not want to ingest, however seems it may not kill you. What say you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SwP9CuNBc4

I watched it Johnny_Mac

I recon O’l mate is on the money .

I enjoyed reading the thread below and threads linked within that one. Hard to argue with a Gas Chromatograph…

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=77481

-Fletching

Note that this is for grain based distillations. Fruit based with pectin are a different animal.

Imho the whole methanol and heads is based in prohibition era denaturing. There methanol was added to make it undrinkable. Unfortunately there is no way our simple stills can remove the methanol and make it safe to drink.

Which is why in some countries , untaxed spirit is denatured with a percentage of Methanol . You simply can’t remove it by distillation .

Shame they don’t use bittering agents like other countries

Regardless, neither can be removed easily …. hence why they are chosen … rightly or wrongly .

The main toxic ingredient by far in our products is ethanol, mainly because it is abundant.
It is almost impossible for us to make a distillate with toxic amounts of methanol by fermenting and distilling alone.
All known cases of deadly drinks are the result of extra addition of methanol or other toxic ingredients, motivated by greed and negligence.

I believe misadventures in India can be due to the fermentation of rotted fruit (like guavas rich in pectin)… and bottling direct from the spout and those who drink an entire first bottle……. And why would the distiller bottle from the spout because customer agitated, can’t wait and wants his bottle.

..

Trapped-in-Oz wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:48 pm I believe misadventures in India can be due to the fermentation of rotted fruit (like guavas rich in pectin)… and bottling direct from the spout and those who drink an entire first bottle……. And why would the distiller bottle from the spout because customer agitated, can’t wait and wants his bottle.

https://www.healthissuesindia.com/2019/ ... ohol-woes/

Added for greed, not manufactured through fermentation. Post your source.

cob wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 5:22 pm

Trapped-in-Oz wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:48 pm
... can be due to ...

https://www.healthissuesindia.com/2019/ ... ohol-woes/

Added for greed, not manufactured through fermentation. Post your source.

While your source is valid it doesn't disprove my notion and reported cases are not from the village.

..

The notion that methanol is concentrated in fore’s or heads has been disputed. There is pretty good evidence that the idea is not accurate. There is evidence that methanol is not concentrated in fore’s and heads and may actually come over through out the run or in tails. Several threads here where it has been discussed and evidence presented.

Grains and cereal produce little methanol during a healthy ferment is my understanding.

Fruit ferments may be another thing as far as methanol production.

A lot of disinformation online regarding methanol, fermentation and distillation. Much of that info is restated and reposted without ant attempt to validate the info.

When I visited distilleries in Scotland in 2018, I had to bite my tongue on so many tours because of this type of nonsense -


This is a brand new distillery that hasn't even got their first whisky bottled. A modern, progressive distillery and the guide seems well informed about other parts of the operation, but the widely spread disinformation makes me wonder if there is an educational failure (who teaches the teachers), or whether its a deliberate attempt to keep the public ignorant and give up the idea of trying it at home. Just buy our bottles to be safe...

williams pears: high concentration in the heads ?




..

Be aware that the concentration of methanol in that chart is not by volume but by volume of pure ethanol. So what you actually want to do is see what volume of methanol is present at any given cut point. Looking at the chart at the heads / hearts cut point the abv is 80%. So for 1 litre you'd have 800ml of pure ethanol. The methanol concentration is about 1.1ml per 100ml of ethanol so 8.8ml of methanol per litre of distillate.

At the hearts / tails cut the abv is 65%. So again 650ml of ethanol per litre. Methanol is now 1.5ml / 100ml of ethanol so 9.75ml per litre of distillate.

Right at the end the abv is 5% and methanol is now 6ml/100ml of ethanol so 3ml of methanol per litre of distillate.

If you run the numbers for each of their data points you could plot pure methanol across the run. What's interesting is that it's tied to abv and comes across a little more readily as the abv drops. If you're distilling pears, green coffee beans or (possibly) plums and you intend to drink lots in a sitting then you might need to pay attention to this and apply a reduction protocol. If you're distilling beer the ethanol is going to kill you long before the methanol.

I reckon you could get methanol poisoning from your own home brew, but you would have to do every known trick to do it. I'm not up for that experiment, but if I was, this is what I would try:

Pick a high pectin fruit and use pectinase.
Strip to at least 25% low wines.
Combine the spirit run tails and re-distill them, probably more than a couple of times.
Once the methanol is concentrated to a high level, start drinking enough to get trashed every day for several days. (Methanol has a longer half life than ethanol so if you consume enough each day, you can push your methanol level above the danger zone). Now, stop drinking all alcohol, so that you are not getting any ethanol to counteract the methanol.

It would be a lot of hard work and you would have to be very dedicated to proving that you are a complete idiot, but I believe it could be done.

Trapped-in-Oz wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 10:13 pm williams pears: high concentration in the heads ?




..

Is there a similar chart for Sugar washes and for All Grain mashes?

NZChris wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 11:32 pm It would be a lot of hard work and you would have to be very dedicated to proving that you are a complete idiot, but I believe it could be done.

My experience with the internet is that if you set a challenge like that someone is going to step up.

EricTheRed wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 12:42 am Is there a similar chart for Sugar washes and for All Grain mashes?

The chart would very similar but the starting concentration of methanol would be lower. The source material won't affect where methanol comes over, just how much is in there to start with.

NormandieStill wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:19 am

EricTheRed wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 12:42 am Is there a similar chart for Sugar washes and for All Grain mashes?

The chart would very similar but the starting concentration of methanol would be lower. The source material won't affect where methanol comes over, just how much is in there to start with.

Ok, thanks
Then, is there a chart or reference somewhere (i looked, can't find it here) that indicates how much methanol is 'typically' in different types of mash/wash? or perhaps better worded as "potential methanol"
Actually would be interesting to see a table with ALL the components of our various mashes/washes and where they are likely to come over

I'm starting to get the sneaky feeling that we won't give a flying (*&^ - as long as it tastes and smells good, we'll drink it

EricTheRed wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:39 am Ok, thanks
Then, is there a chart or reference somewhere (i looked, can't find it here) that indicates how much methanol is 'typically' in different types of mash/wash? or perhaps better worded as "potential methanol"
Actually would be interesting to see a table with ALL the components of our various mashes/washes and where they are likely to come over

I'm starting to get the sneaky feeling that we won't give a flying (*&^ - as long as it tastes and smells good, we'll drink it

I think some small amount of methanol (read "trace") might be produced my the yeast under any circumstances, but the principle source of methanol in a wash is the enzymic breakdown of pectin. With the exception of one class (pectinlyases), pectinases produce methanol when chopping the pectin down to release sugars. This means that fruit washes with made from pectin-rich fruits (pear brandy was tested because it's the only distillate which comes close to or breaks the EU limit on methanol percentage) will tend to have higher levels of methanol than grain or sugar. I think grain washes can produce some from a different enzymic pathway, but it's very low and sugar washes will tend to be near zero. As I mentioned previously, green coffee pulp, pears and plums (in that order) are the most "dangerous" culprits. If you want to reduce the problem there are techniques mentioned in various papers referenced here (I don't have the references to hand) including the use of lyases, temperature control during fermentation, short fermentation times to reduce the time available for pectinase action and (eventually) methanol extracting columns,(but you're probably not going ot manage that last one as a home distiller).

I think the take-home point is that there is waaaaaay nastier shit in the "fores" cut that will have a more drastic and immediate effect on your well-being. Ethanol is a known toxin and suspected carcinogen with addictive and behavourial modifying properties. And there's a lot more of that in your dram than there is methanol.

Also see NZChris' protocol for getting methanol poisoning from home-distilled products. You really have to want to.

Note: I am a biochemist by training, although I've not applied that training in some 20-odd years. As far as I know the EU limit for "safe" ingestion of methanol is not based on empirical data, but on an extrapolation. It could be that we've all got it wrong. But that above is my understanding of the science as it stands today based on the only two papers published which have researched methanol levels and reduction as relates to distilling.

Thanks NS - appreciate the view from a scientific brain!
And yah - had a serious chuckle when i read NZChris's approach!

Wise words from NormandieStill and NZChris. Nothing to add.

On second thought: see also:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ying_still

In this study amounts are given, so one can calculate the amount of methanol per sample, like NormandieStill advises.

https://www.academia.edu/65609810/Metha ... load-paper

The oposite of NZChris's advise!

Dirk Lachenmeier has also done some studies about reported catastrophies with home made alcohol. Note that these cases all were related with large scale production, like in Moonshiners, not small scale like on this forum.

EricTheRed wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:39 am
Then, is there a chart or reference somewhere (i looked, can't find it here) that indicates how much methanol is 'typically' in different types of mash/wash? or perhaps better worded as "potential methanol"
Actually would be interesting to see a table with ALL the components of our various mashes/washes and where they are likely to come over

I'm starting to get the sneaky feeling that we won't give a flying (*&^ - as long as it tastes and smells good, we'll drink it

Clearly, methanol is created from pectins during fermentation. This chart shows the respective methanol measured for apples, plums, cherries and (gin) herbs. The data is presented to highlight the accuracy of a hand-held methanol testing device (compared to an expensive gas chromatograph) but according to the study in this article , methanol is indeed produced and tracked over the entire distillation cycle. Interestingly, the concentration starts to drop significantly after an elapsed time (in this test 80min).

. .
Noteworthy was the mention of the buildup of methanol in tails, (an increase in concentration percentage relative to the low ABV of late distillation) the same warning cited by NZChris above.

Finally, all fruit distillates featured increasing specific methanol contents toward the end of distillation consistently exceeding (up to 2.7 times) the corresponding legal limits. This, however, is associated rather to the rapid drop in ethanol content after roughly 70 min of distillation (Figure S9), since methanol content declined slower, as shown exemplarily for plum in the Supporting Information, Figure S10. This had been recognized (7) and attributed to the change in the azeotrope mixture at low ethanol contents. (39) In fact, late distillates have a higher water content that also leads to higher methanol concentrations due to its higher solubility in water than ethanol. (39) Such high ethanol-specific methanol contents in the last part (i.e., “tail”) of distillation are problematic if this fraction is kept in the final product or redistilled.

Twisted Brick wrote: ↑Fri Jun 03, 2022 7:42 pm

EricTheRed wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:39 am
Then, is there a chart or reference somewhere (i looked, can't find it here) that indicates how much methanol is 'typically' in different types of mash/wash? or perhaps better worded as "potential methanol"
Actually would be interesting to see a table with ALL the components of our various mashes/washes and where they are likely to come over

I'm starting to get the sneaky feeling that we won't give a flying (*&^ - as long as it tastes and smells good, we'll drink it

Clearly, methanol is created from pectins during fermentation. This chart shows the respective methanol measured for apples, plums, cherries and (gin) herbs. The data is presented to highlight the accuracy of a hand-held methanol testing device (compared to an expensive gas chromatograph) but according to the study in this article , methanol is indeed produced and tracked over the entire distillation cycle. Interestingly, the concentration starts to drop significantly after an elapsed time (in this test 80min).

.
GC Methanol by time JPEG.jpg
.
Noteworthy was the mention of the buildup of methanol in tails, (an increase in concentration percentage relative to the low ABV of late distillation) the same warning cited by NZChris above.

Finally, all fruit distillates featured increasing specific methanol contents toward the end of distillation consistently exceeding (up to 2.7 times) the corresponding legal limits. This, however, is associated rather to the rapid drop in ethanol content after roughly 70 min of distillation (Figure S9), since methanol content declined slower, as shown exemplarily for plum in the Supporting Information, Figure S10. This had been recognized (7) and attributed to the change in the azeotrope mixture at low ethanol contents. (39) In fact, late distillates have a higher water content that also leads to higher methanol concentrations due to its higher solubility in water than ethanol. (39) Such high ethanol-specific methanol contents in the last part (i.e., “tail”) of distillation are problematic if this fraction is kept in the final product or redistilled.

Thanks. Most informative

Awesome information everyone. I appreciate the knowledge base this site provides.