Freeze Distillation story in Time Magazine

[KYB]

Hmm- isn't freeze-distilling a beer up to 40% abv starting to get dangerous? I know one of the major reasons non-professional distilling is frowned upon [other than the missed opportunities for taxation], and why they generally don't save the first fraction of distillate is the potential for concentrating methanol.

I'd be somewhat hesitant to drink a freeze-distilled beverage of hard liquor strength, since that method wouldn't remove the methanol...

Well, I have thought about this too, and my conclusion, right or wrong... is if the methanol is already in your beer or wine or fermented molasses for making rum etc. and you concentrate it and then drink enough of it to feel intoxicated... and drink enough beer to feel intoxicated, you have more or less drunk the same amount of alcohol either way.
the only difference I see, is you get a bit more water and maybe that helps.
Either way though, I think you would consume the same amount of alcohol.

Now I spoke with a profesional distiller that told me you only get methanol after you heat your alcohol in the first place, not sure if this is true or not. However methanol does come off first, what if you just heated your product to 68C or so and hold it for a few minutes, Methanol evaporates at 64.7 Ethanol evaporates at 78C. Then freeze "concentrate" Your beverage and carbonate or whatever you wish to do with it.

I'll quote my first post again:

Regardless, it's freeze concentrating. It's just freezing the beer and removing the ice since ethanol won't freeze until ~-174*F, but the water in the beer will. Removing water (dilution) concentrates the abv.

From Wiki:
"Distillation is a method of separating mixtures based on differences in their volatilities in a boiling liquid mixture."

Distilling is heating of alcohol. Alcohols have a lower boiling point than water, so they evaporate first (for the most part), and then the vapors are caught and cooled/condensed into liquid again. Methanol has a lower boiling point than Ethanol, thus the pouring out of the first runnings which maybe contain any methanol, then you start to get Ethanol.

Now, I'll put the amount of Methanol into perspective. With a system distilling 40L (a little over 10gal) of wash/"beer" that is 10%, collecting at 95%, you get 4L of Ethanol/Alcohol, about 1gal. Now you probably only collect 20ml of Methanol in the first runnings, however it's best to throw out 100-200ml just to be safe. It's not going to kill your or make you go blind if you don't toss enough, unless you drink those runnings straight or something. More methanol could lead to a worse hangover and make the alcohol taste worse since it's more than just Methanol too. At any rate.

Freeze concentrating is just the opposite of diluting with water. It's that simple. You're going to the same amount of methanol (negligible) if you drink the same amount of alcohol, whether it's 1, 12oz bottle at 40%abv; or 6, 12oz bottles at 6.75% (over the same amount of time of course). You're going to get the same amount of alcohol and methanol.

 

[Thakog]

Yes it is beer.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/36

While not as extreme, the eisbock style is a traditional one using the exact same methods. Concentration by removing ice is nothing new. Taking it to the 40%+ range is new, but this is still beer.

Wow, surprised I had to get to page three to find someone mention an Eisbock. If you haven't tried them, they're worth finding- the one I had was 12%abv, and was very fruity and malty.

One of these days (when I have a real brewing setup) I'm going to try making an eisbock.