Methanol?

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Noz03

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Just wondering if there is ever any chance of brewing dangerous methanol with regular brew methods? Including higher 15-20% brews you can get from using turbo yeast? I am guessing the higher the alcohol the higher the methanol, would it be dangerous?
 
I've seen this oft repeated. A few more times and it becomes internet fact.

Starting with a grain or sugar based wort, in a clean fermentor with a yeast culture from a well aereated source will result in small/none formed.
 
Sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate that distillation produces methanol - merely that it can concentrate it. The topic is a recurring theme with the OP, who is on notice from this point forward.

Hermit, your answer is well said.
 
Sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate that distillation produces methanol - merely that it can concentrate it. The topic is a recurring theme with the OP, who is on notice from this point forward.

Hermit, your answer is well said.

Yuri this post had nothing to do with distillation what so ever. After my previous naive post I decided to research about it and this brought up my topic of methanol. I already know that distilling is extremely dangerous and am off the topic.
 
How about the menthol levels when making apple jacks (i think thats what it is called), where you freeze hard cider and then let the alcohol/concentrated juice (which melts faster than water) drip out. I've heard you can get up to 30-40% alcoholic drinks from this. Is it still safe?

Sorry for being a bit anal or paranoid, just wanna make sure me and my friends are safe to drink my mostly experimental new drinks I am creating :)
 
How about the menthol levels when making apple jacks (i think thats what it is called), where you freeze hard cider and then let the alcohol/concentrated juice (which melts faster than water) drip out. I've heard you can get up to 30-40% alcoholic drinks from this. Is it still safe?

Sorry for being a bit anal or paranoid, just wanna make sure me and my friends are safe to drink my mostly experimental new drinks I am creating :)

You won't be able to produce dangerous amounts of methanol in beer and winemaking. Nothing in beer can be dangerous to you, except maybe fusel alcohols, which might give you a headache, and of course the alcohol itself, if you drink too much of it.
 
Plant material contains methyl esters some of which break down so that there is some free methanol in most fruits and veggies we eat. You can do a web search on methanol and see what some typical concentrations are. When you remove water either by freezing or doing the other thing that we're not supposed to mention here you concentrate both the ethanol and methanol. I'll leave it to you to decide, based on the numbers you find for apple juice and other fruit, whether you wish to drink apple jack or not.
 
Well I do not think that it can be dangerous as even basic brewing made a video on it (), and in this video they said it was very delicious and VERY strong so I would like to try. But if methanol is already in all alcohol, and concentrating it is what is dangerous, isnt this method of concentration also dangerous?

I personally love strong drinks so am considering to make a very cider, and freeze concentrate it, maybe even more than once to create a kind of apple brandy type of drink. I'm guessing drinking this concentrate would not be any more dangerous than drinking a larger amount of the regular cider, but I dont really like to guess when it comes to me and my friends health :) Can anyone confirm?
 
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The problem is, there isn't a lot of information on freeze concentrating here, and about zero to be talked about distilling.

I think you would be better served finding a distilling forum (they are out there) and/or doing Google searches on fractional distiling, freeze distillation, etc.

The part I can say is that with proper handling, the methanol is removed during processing of spirits. With freeze concentrating you are just concentrating everything! And the risk of getting sick from methanol from improper processes is VERY REAL.

So I think you should get help from the experts, not us beer makers.
 
Methanol is produced in miniscule amounts in all-grain ferments. It is made in significantly larger amounts in wine ferments from fruit that is high in pectin. Methanol is not removed during spirit processing. That's why they use it to denature ethanol.
 
Since methanol has a boiling point of 65C, versus ethanol's boiling point of 78C, a distiller can remove much of the methanol by discarding the foreshots. Obviously you can't do so during freeze concentration. Since apples contain fairly high levels of pectin, there's a reasonable chance that you'll be concentrating a dangerous amount of methanol when you make applejack, especially if you do multiple concentration steps. I wouldn't recommend it.
 
A minor gripe of mine:

'distillation is dangerous', especially when coming from homebrewers

If one is going to make such a statement then it should be backed up by some commentary at least. I'm not asking for citation. However I'm willing to bet if distillation were fully legal/unregulated fewer people would die from improper distillation than die from lightning strikes, falling TVs, or in a worst case scenario from falling down stairs.

I suspect for most the idea of distillation being dangerous is embedded with the alcohol poisoning stories from prohibition. What occurred during prohibition was not a product of the dangers of distillation but was a product of the dangers of prohibition of any product which produces violent desperate black markets. Heck the federal government murdered over 10,000 of it's subjects on purpose with secret poisoning efforts.

I concede the point that due to a myriad of reason it's more dangerous than homebrewing, however terming it dangerous in general is pretty ludicrous.

stepping down from high horse... ;)
 
Also, if the issue of the danger for the OP is methanol poisoning, just for his own information, the current treatment I know of for this is ethanol. So is a rather crude statement, if you're worried about there being too much methanol in it, have a few homebrews after your apple jack, that should wash the methanol through you well enough, of it's worth the risk.
 
Much of the danger associated with distillation during prohibition were caused by lead poisoning - both in the form of dissolved lead and in the form 0.45" diameter pellets of the metal. Dissolved lead derived from lead based solder in the equipment remained a danger well past prohibition. Explosive vapor near fire was doubtless also a problem.

And yes, EtOH is an 'antidote' for MeOH poisoning. ADH preferentially binds to it so that the MeOH can't oxidize to formaldehyde and then formic acid which are the things that really do the poisoning. The idea is to keep the ADH busy with EtOH until the the MeOH is disposed of via other pathways. Thus it would seem that the inclusion of EtOH in products like apple jack and cider would offer some measure of protection from the MeOH also found in those products. A distiller will, nevertheless, throw away (or sell to a chemical company) the heads which are higher in MeOH than the mids.
 
Huh, I didn't know the danger originated from lead equipment. Where did the lead pellets come from? Bad polishing/grinding of equipment that left things behind?

I thought the major danger was blindness, which I believe is due to the formic acid, as well as mitochondrial inhibition, again, from the formic acid build up.
 
Huh, I didn't know the danger originated from lead equipment. Where did the lead pellets come from? Bad polishing/grinding of equipment that left things behind?

Long chain sugars were nitrated and placed in small brass containers with the lead pellets fitted into the mouths of the containers. These assemblies were then placed into the mouths of long tubes and locked into place. After a shock to the opposite (from the lead) end of the brass container the nitrated sugar molecules rapidly decomposed into oxides of nitrogen and carbon and water. These gasses, being under high pressure, propelled the lead pellets through the tube at high velocity. One of the most popular providers of the apparatus was named Thompson.

I thought the major danger was blindness, which I believe is due to the formic acid, as well as mitochondrial inhibition, again, from the formic acid build up.

AFAIK it is and formic acid is the culprit.
 
Long chain sugars were nitrated and placed in small brass containers with the lead pellets fitted into the mouths of the containers. These assemblies were then placed into the mouths of long tubes and locked into place. After a shock to the opposite (from the lead) end of the brass container the nitrated sugar molecules rapidly decomposed into oxides of nitrogen and carbon and water. These gasses, being under high pressure, propelled the lead pellets through the tube at high velocity. One of the most popular providers of the apparatus was named Thompson.

This has the be the best/most nerdy explanation I could have hoped for then the lead 'pellets' were asked about. This makes my day. Now...time to leave work a bit early and go have a pint.
 
When freezing, the problem is not in the concetration of different types of alcohols within the product. In the body, Ethanol and Methanol bond with each other and can cancel each other out. Most cases of MEthanol poisoning are a result of adultarents being added into a product to cheaply boost its ABV. (This happens in a lot of third world countries) Fractional freezing simply removes the ammount of water contained within the total beverage; it does not change the ratio of methanol to ethanol, so while you may get a ripper of a headache from drinking "More" of the methanol, the frozen beverage shouldn't kill you as long as sanitation is followed, and nothing foreign is added to your brew RDWHAHB
 
In the body, Ethanol and Methanol bond with each other and can cancel each other out.
No (at least not AFAIK). The reason ethanol is an 'antidote' for methanol is that that ethanol dehydrogenase preferentially catalyzes the conversion of ethanol to acetaldehyde so that there is little formaldehyde formed and so little formic acid.
 
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