cdew4545

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Ok, so I've done some batches of beer and obviously it is perfectly safe to drink. However, where do bad alcohols like methonal come into place with fermenting anything? I'm not about to try any kind of distilling, but if a spirit wash is made from grains and such just like beer, wouldn't there be methonal in beer, or is that formed in the process of distillation?

david_42

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Methanol is present in most fermentations, but around 2-3 ppm. LD50 is around 5 gm/kg for primates, so with beer the ethanol will kill you first.

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web250

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Methanol is not a huge issue in beer. I'm a chem major, forgive me:
Ethanol gets broken down in the body to acetaldehyde, which your liver breaks down using alcohol dehydrogenase.
Methanol gets broken down to formaldehyde, the nasty carcinogen they use to preserve stuff.

Good thing is the methanol and ethanol fight for dominance in the body, and ethanol always wins. The cure for methanol poisoning is therefore drinking ethanol (regular drinking alcohol)

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g_rath

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Here is to always striving to prevent methanol poisoning

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malkore

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I also believe methanol is only of concern when drinking distilled liquor...moonshine. If the distillation process isn't done correctly you get a lot of methanol.

I've heard that bad moonshine does eat away at the optic nerve, slowly making you blind. That is where the whole 'homebrew makes you go blind' myth started.

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dpt222

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I concur!!

web250

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Correct, methanol destroys your optic nerve.

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RadicalEd

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But let's clear something up; drinking one unit of distilled alcohol is no worse for you than drinking the same quantity of product it was distilled from. Ie drinking a bottle of wine, or the distilled equivalent, should have little difference if distilled poorly. If distilled well, then the product should have significantly fewer lighter and heavier alcohols, and thus actually be significantly better for you when it comes to methanol and fusel alcohols. It is exceedingly difficult to concentrate what small quantities of methanol exist in the standard wash into a dangerous dose. Furthermore, even harder to drink it; it smells and tastes like death incarnate. Your body knows what's up.

The myth of highly methylated moonshine comes from the days of prohibition, wherein some unscrupulous shiners mixed in industrial methylated spirits to their own, as it was significantly cheaper to buy industrial products than produce their own. However, my understanding is that most shiners these days are doing it for their own, personal enjoyment, and so they have something of a vested interest in keeping their spirits as pure as possible .

Sea

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Another item to add to the long list of reasons for drinking.

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Corrupt Brewers

beala

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^What he said. I don't distill myself, but I did do a lot of reading about it a few months back because I was interested in it. In the end, I decided not to because it wasn't worth the legal risk. My decision had nothing to do with the health risks. From what I've read, the health risks are pretty much non-existent if done properly (which isn't hard). The risks are so small that I eventually came to the conclusion that shining isn't illegal to protect people, it's illegal to protect the government's tax revenue. After all, a $2000 a year distilling license is a pretty sweet deal for the government.

The only reason some people think it's dangerous is because of a few horror stories where shiners made condensers out of carburetors. Why do things like that happen? Because making it illegal also limited the amount of information out there on the process. If it was better known that metal containing lead should never be placed in the vapor trail, then these types of accidents wouldn't happen. Further, the laws make it so people can't buy professionally made stills without fearing the government breathing down their necks. This causes people to have to fabricate their own out of carburetors and the like. Allowing people to easily buy safe professionally built stills would be a better way to protect people against badly made moonshine, rather than simply outlawing it.

Anyway, that's my little libertarian rant on the distilling laws.