HomeBrew Deaths

Hi all was just wondering if homebrew ( beer can be deadly ) . Just not long ago down under there was 3 out of 4 guys dead from drinking homebrew but this was grappa ! Is beer safe as can be and just taste horrible if it hasnt been done right? Or is there a hidden danger??

Most of the time,nothing that can make you sick can live in beer due to the alcohol. I imagine the co2 must have some small part in it as well. With decent cleaning & sanitation processes in place,you have nothing to worry about. Witheven decently fresh ingredients & a little common sense,you don't even need to worry about botulism either.

I'm no grappa expert but I believe grappa is basically distilled grapes which makes a brandy type liquor. Home distilling is very dangerous if you don't know what you are doing.

You have nothing to worry about with homebrew. You may get an infected batch that doesn't taste good but the worst thing that will happen is bad gas or peeing from your a$$.

unionrdr said:

Most of the time,nothing that can make you sick can live in beer due to the alcohol. I imagine the co2 must have some small part in it as well. With decent cleaning & sanitation processes in place,you have nothing to worry about. Witheven decently fresh ingredients & a little common sense,you don't even need to worry about botulism either.

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It's not the alcohol content in beer that kills or otherwise inhibits pathogens (though it helps). It's the low pH. A 5% concentration of alcohol (for example) can't really kill much.

Unless of course you drink the entire 5 gallon batch in one sitting.

Seriously though, nothing pathogenic can survive in beer. If you have netflix, check out "How Beer Saved the World". They make beer with nasty pond water and nothing is alive in it post fermentation. Heck, in the past beer was the only way to not go number one out of the number two place constantly. So long as you do not start thinking about doing anything strange like making an expanded tomato can clamato you should be fine (botulism cannot grow in beer, but the toxin will remain). Additionally, the dangerous part is when you get talking about the (forbidden here) topic of distillation, so I am not going to go into that. A quick Google search will illuminate you on what the hazards aside from legal are to that.

In short, homebrewing beer and wines is perfectly safe. The worst that will happen is that you can end up with something that tastes weird or bad due to poor sanitation or process. Though, then again, drinking a batch of bad beer every now and again helps negatively reinforce you to not make the same mistake again.

My take is that it is as safe as commercial beer or any other commercially available consumable out there. It's not going to instantly kill you unless you intentionally poison it. Long term and substantial exposure to alcohol and other substance in beer, both home brew and commercial, may have adverse health effects on some.

Things like mycotoxins from the grain, BPA and endocrine disruptors from plastics, and lead in brass and other metal fittings are a concern to some people.

If you have a true concern for these things, I say, do your own research. I mean real research, not just seek out the opinions of people on the internet. You'll find some interesting debates on here, but you should seek the research done on these substance and draw your own conclusions.

Like I said, some have a real concern and strong opinions. Others, like me, don't. I don't feel I consume enough to have a significant impact on my health.

I hear this a lot from some colleagues - especially those from abroad where there are many reports of people dying or going blind from homemade booze. I generally tell them that home distillation can cause these other alcohols that can be toxic - but honestly I'm not sure on the factual science here.

It's def the distilled products,not the beer. It's the distilation process that can produce toxins if not done properly. Brewing beer is all about yeast health.

unionrdr said:

It's def the distilled products,not the beer. It's the distilation process that can produce toxins if not done properly. Brewing beer is all about yeast health.

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....and even if you do sucessfully produce ethyl alcohol, remember that it can kill you too...very easy to end up w toxic levels in your bloodstream.

Distilling is a physical process (as opposed to chemical) which separates most of the water away from alcohol. It DOES NOT create anything. However, if you use an old radiator from a car as a heat exchanger, it is possible to get chemicals (antifreeze, etc.) into your distillate.

There are also chemical distillation processes which are required to get up to 100% alcohol, but it would take a lot of knowledge and some nice equipment to produce that.

I'm sure the people who died did not die from distilling but rather from drinking a contaminated distillate.

Curtis2010 said:

....and even if you do sucessfully produce ethyl alcohol, remember that it can kill you too...very easy to end up w toxic levels in your bloodstream.

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Idk about that,ethyl alcohol is what's in beer,liquor,etc. Besides,I cut teeth on grandma's ol' corn squeezins. And I'm still here. Now,if you drink enough,you can get alcohol toxicity,or alcohol poisoning. they claim Bon Scot died from that,not just freezing to death.

The normal cause of home distilled products injuring/killing people is due to methanol poisoning. When distilling, the first things to collect are lower boiling compounds like methanol. This first fraction is supposed to be discarded. This of course reduces the amount of "product" one can collect, so some less informed folks keep it so they get more hooch - a bad decision

I have the hunch the second someone says homebrew beer is harmless we'll here a story about a guy who used an old paint bucket as fermenter for a batch of wild hemlock beer.

I don't have the slightest idea why distilling is dangerous. [thanks to pjj2ba for explaining that it's the concentration of methonal to higher levels than would occur in homebrew. Of course, using car radiators and toxic ingredients can occur whether brewing or distilling.] A casual glancing at material simply seems to be mostly a matter of concentration of alcohol or toxic contamination from materials. But it may be more than than. (Wood alchohol or rubbing alchohol is somehow the "bad" alcohol? Beyond my ken I'm afraid.) It really doesn't seem that the process itself of yeast fermenting can produce anything harmful from something that wasn't harmful to begin with. Other than concentration, I'm not sure why that wouldn't hold true for distilling though. Or maybe it does.



Infections come from nasties that occur around the house and they, for the most part aren't deadly (or, like botulism, require unnatural conditions to thrive at harmful levels). I *suppose* if you decide to make a beer out of spoiled meat and toss in a plague infested squirrel...

I dunno. I don't like taking things at face value but I'm willing to accept "distilling is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing" but fermenting is completely different, even though I don't know why.
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Ah, that explains the dangers of distilling.

So I assume methanol is not a concern with fermentation.

They ferment a mash,then distill the alcohol off of that. It's how you distill it that can make toxins.

There is a tiny amount of methanol in fermented beer/wine etc. The problem with distilling is that process concentrates it. Just discard the first bit that distills over and you are good to go (or use it in your racing car)

pjj2ba said:

The normal cause of home distilled products injuring/killing people is due to methanol poisoning. When distilling, the first things to collect are lower boiling compounds like methanol. This first fraction is supposed to be discarded. This of course reduces the amount of "product" one can collect, so some less informed folks keep it so they get more hooch - a bad decision

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You need to read this ^^^ this is what kills you and makes you blind. Lead poisoning from lead/tin solder its dangerous and illegal strictly forbidden to talk about on this forum. Google it there are other sties for this.

FlyDoctor said:

I hear this a lot from some colleagues - especially those from abroad where there are many reports of people dying or going blind from homemade booze. I generally tell them that home distillation can cause these other alcohols that can be toxic - but honestly I'm not sure on the factual science here.

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My understanding is that it is pretty hard to get deadly levels of anything from distilling grain alcohol. Perhaps a really bad headache. IIRC blindness would come from methanol which if you dump the heads you will eliminate most methanol and other high volatility compounds. Another thing I read once from a website defending home distillation is that the average home distillation product has less methanol alcohol than does commercial hard alcohol according to some research or another. Some day it will be legalized, someday. Until then it is illegal...hope this doesn't violate the rules, if so please delete mods.

Reading a mountaineering book once they were talking about how the Sherpas kept getting into scientists alcohol used for research so they changed to wood based alcohol (methanol) which only resulted in the Sherpas dying so they just sucked it up and figured for them drinking alcohol and went back to grain based.

As far as beer production, hops kill gram positive bacteria and alcohol and low pH kill gram negative bacteria so all in all it is a very unhospitable environment for pathogens...pretty much if it looks, smells, and tastes like beer you are fine, and if it doesn't, its probably just a wild beer and needs more time .

pjj2ba said:

The normal cause of home distilled products injuring/killing people is due to methanol poisoning. When distilling, the first things to collect are lower boiling compounds like methanol. This first fraction is supposed to be discarded. This of course reduces the amount of "product" one can collect, so some less informed folks keep it so they get more hooch - a bad decision

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Exactly. When distilling, you would need to throw away the head and tail. The head has the toxins in it and the tail isn't good tasting. When people try to distill at home they either don't know to do that or they don't know when the head is over and pull it before the head is completely gone.

I don't know much about distilling but I would assume this is one reason why it is illegal.

Biggest danger of beer is probably brewing it - between the gallons of boiling liquids, flames, electricity for things like tools and pumps, and giant glass bottles.

h22lude said:

I don't know much about distilling but I would assume this is one reason why it is illegal.

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There is exactly one reason why the government makes it illegal. Taxes. They could give a **** about you hurting/killing yourself. They want their money.

My opinion, anyway.

Thanks all...

If you die from home brewing it will be because you broke your carboy and severed an artery in the process...

HoppyDaze said:

If you die from home brewing it will be because you broke your carboy and severed an artery in the process...

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^^ this!

freisste said:

There is exactly one reason why the government makes it illegal. Taxes. They could give a **** about you hurting/killing yourself. They want their money.

My opinion, anyway.

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I'm sure that is a little part of it but if that was the case home brewing would be illegal too. Though as most of us know, you spend more money on home brewing than you would if you just bought commercial beer so really the government is making more money on taxes letting us home brew so I don't see why it would be any different than distilling.

HoppyDaze said:

If you die from home brewing it will be because you broke your carboy and severed an artery in the process...

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This sort of happened to me. I had my GF pour me a beer from my keezer. When she was getting a glass it broke. She didn't realize a piece went into the glass that she got me. As I was drinking it I felt something under my tongue. It was a pretty big piece of glass. I was so happy that my tongue felt it before I swallowed it because I definitely would have been in the ER that night.

Yikes. That def would've interupted the flow of your day.

h22lude said:

I'm sure that is a little part of it but if that was the case home brewing would be illegal too. Though as most of us know, you spend more money on home brewing than you would if you just bought commercial beer so really the government is making more money on taxes letting us home brew so I don't see why it would be any different than distilling.

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Move to the south where only government approved spirits less than 150 proof can only be sold in ABC stores that are run by the government, its the only thing you can by cheaper in new york cause of taxes. Its cheaper to "D word" your own stuff