Distilling methanol out of beer?

[z987k]

Oops I did mean 200F. What's wrong with that?

Ethanol boils at 173F. Methanol boils at 148 and water boils at 212. Think about that, it was already mentioned in the first post.

 

[pjj2ba]

Ethanol boils at 173F. Methanol boils at 148 and water boils at 212. Think about that, it was already mentioned in the first post.

It is not quite as simple as this. This is true for pure compounds, but make a mixture and it gets complicated. Even though water boils at 100 C, when you boil a water alcohol mixture at the boiling point of Ethanol, what one collects after the condenser will contain 5% water, even though the temp is 22 C below the boiling point of water. This is known as an azeotrope. For a water:ethanol mix, the ratio is 5:95. This is why you can only get to 190 proof with a simple distillation.

So the ethanol in a 7% ABV brew will boil off when 78 C is reached taking some water with it. Once all of the ethanol is gone, the temperature will go up to 100 C and the rest of the water will start to boil off

 

[Poindexter]

It is not quite as simple as this. This is true for pure compounds, but make a mixture and it gets complicated. Even though water boils at 100 C, when you boil a water alcohol mixture at the boiling point of Ethanol, what one collects after the condenser will contain 5% water, even though the temp is 22 C below the boiling point of water. This is known as an azeotrope. For a water:ethanol mix, the ratio is 5:95. This is why you can only get to 190 proof with a simple distillation.

So the ethanol in a 7% ABV brew will boil off when 78 C is reached taking some water with it. Once all of the ethanol is gone, the temperature will go up to 100 C and the rest of the water will start to boil off

Exactly. It would take a cloumn still of some kind with a carefully controlled temp gradient to get 100% of the methanol to the head at the top of the column, with lower temps lower in the column to recondense the water and ethanol that evaporate with the methanol. The final beer would have a flavor I would not expect to find pleasing.

I suppose one could pour a 12 ounce beer into a sauce pan and hold it at 148F for 15 minutes or so to get out "a lot" of the methanol.

Some of the revenuers I met while setting up an ethanol fuel still would think of even that 12 ounce experiment as "concentrating alcohol", a federal felony, as the final ethanol content of the brew would be raised if your technique was any good.

Better, and legal, to invest in a fermentation temperature controller system, I get milder hangovers from my HB than I do from commercial stuff, glass for glass.

 

[lazybean]

according to Wikipedia Methanol isnt even mentioned as one of the root causes of hangovers. The top 2 are from ethanol:

Ethanol has a dehydrating effect by causing increased urine production (diuresis), which causes headaches, dry mouth, and lethargy. Dehydration also causes fluids in the brain to be less plentiful. This can be mitigated by drinking water after consumption of alcohol. Alcohol's effect on the stomach lining can account for nausea.

Another factor contributing to a hangover are the products from the breakdown of ethanol via liver enzymes. Ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, and then from acetaldehyde to acetic acid by the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde (ethanal) is between 10 and 30 times more toxic than alcohol itself,[5] as well as being cocarcinogenic (not carcinogenic solely by itself) and mutagenic.[6]

 

[StMarcos]

With a compound reflux still you are separating the components in the column before boiling off the component in question and condensing it. With methanol you would be talking about boiling just the methanol so the temperature before the condenser would be that of the boiling point of methanol - 65C.

The original poster was talking about a 'still' with one theoretical plate, a pot still, so you would be boiling a mixture, not 'pure' methanol. Because the methanol is a small component compared to the ethanol and water, you can assume it is just water and ethanol. A 7% ethanol : water solution would boil around 200F.

 

[StMarcos]

It is not quite as simple as this. This is true for pure compounds, but make a mixture and it gets complicated. Even though water boils at 100 C, when you boil a water alcohol mixture at the boiling point of Ethanol, what one collects after the condenser will contain 5% water, even though the temp is 22 C below the boiling point of water. This is known as an azeotrope. For a water:ethanol mix, the ratio is 5:95. This is why you can only get to 190 proof with a simple distillation.

So the ethanol in a 7% ABV brew will boil off when 78 C is reached taking some water with it. Once all of the ethanol is gone, the temperature will go up to 100 C and the rest of the water will start to boil off

No, you can't boil a water and ethanol solution at the boiling point of ethanol. It will boil at the boiling point of the mixture. In your second paragraph, you are talking about separating the components through many prior distillations in a column in equilibrium, and vaporizing only one of them before condensation. And you are talking about the temperature of the vapor at the point of take-off, not the temperature of the solution (beer). Holding beer at the boiling point of methanol will hasten evaporation of methanol (as it would 10deg below or above this T), but it will also hasten the evaporation of ethanol and water. You would loose plenty of ethanol along with the methanol.

 

[StMarcos]

And the azeotrope has nothing to do with the question at hand....

 

[Orfy]

Lets just say it's a bad idea for many reasons and it would not work.

Want less hangovers them may I suggest sensible and moderate drinking.

 

[Kass_Brauhaus]

For the wayward high school chemistry student that wanders onto this forum from a Google search, it bears saying that all those boiling points are at sea level. Up here it's down around 204 F for water (according to my uncalibrated brew thermometer).

 

[oldschool]

There is very little methanol in beer, if any at all. There is only methanol in distilled grains because of crude mashing techniques and certain yeasts strains used. Keep in mind our beer yeast can not ferment cellulose, nor is there enzymes present(cellulase) to break it down to fermentables. If there were cellulase present in our grains the plant would decompose it's husks naturally.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

And the azeotrope has nothing to do with the question at hand....

Neither does a pot or column still. The OP simply wanted to know if he could evaporate specific volatile compounds from his beer, and if that would lessen the effect of hangovers and/or damage the final product. I think he got his answer.

 

[oldschool]

I hate myself for spending so much time reading this thread.

 

[BuzzCraft]

like a bad tv show....just kinda sux you in.

 

[StMarcos]

They were talking about boiling it off. That's a pot still - with one plate (the pot).

 

[Yuri_Rage]

StMarcos, why are you so insistent on correcting everyone? Nearly every one of your posts is not helpful to the OP, but rather nitpicking the ensuing discussion to a point where the entire thread has gone OFF TOPIC. Please cease.

 

[StMarcos]

What's wrong with presenting the correct information that's needed to understand the answer to the original poster's question? I'm just trying to help and feel that I'm qualified to do so. When there's faulty information it doesn't do anybody any good to let it sit there. Sometimes there is a need to explain the reasoning behind an answer and not simply give a yes or no. I don't think this forum would be all that informational if every answer was given as a yes or no. I think most of the members here are interested in knowledge that goes beyond the basics.

The original post was about removing methanol by boiling it off. They thought that you could do this by bringing the beer to the boiling point of methanol, which is near the temp for pasteurization, the idea being that it wouldn't significantly hurt the beer as many manufacturers pasteurize. The answer is not one dimensional and several of the posts were misleading or incorrect. I'm not trying to antagonize those posters, just trying to get the correct information on the table.

 

[Orfy]

A boiling pan isn't a pot still unless you have a condenser fitted.

 

[oldschool]

Hmm..talking about extracting alcohol is moderator bait.