Newb methanol question.

[Jokester]

Beer and whiskey start with the same base - whiskey is rarely hopped while beer is. As I understand it that's the basic crux of it.
Now why is there no methanol in beer, while they have to make a "cut" to remove methanol in new make ?

Thanks.
Srinath.

 

[bucketnative]

Methanol is present in beer, to a very small degree. When you distill the "beer" in making whiskey, you are concentrating the alcohols and removing a large fraction of water.

http://www.uvm.edu/~dmatthew/Beer-Green_Mt_ACS.pdf - Methanol is addressed starting on Slide 12

Plus, methanol is not the only thing being removed from the heads and the tails in distillation. There are a lot of other undesirable compounds and alcohols that end up there.

 

[bernardsmith]

Sure methanol in large volumes is toxic, but every wine, beer, cider, and mead will have a tiny amount of methanol. If you were to drink 5 gallons of beer over a time period t you would be consuming exactly the same amount of methanol as you would be if you distilled those 5 gallons, collected, say 1 gallon of distillate and never removed a drop of methanol. Distilling does not create methanol. Fermenting does. And it is the methanol and the other volatile alcohols in the wine or beer or cider or mead and in the distillate that gives you a splitting headache the next day, if you gorge on alcohol. Makes good sense to toss out the heads, but there is nothing to panic about.

 

[Jokester]

My freeze concentration process obviously can not remove all the methanol, and as I am doing it, its likely removing none, because I'm shooting for 30-32% but the odd thing I found is that methanol freezes at a higher temp (-144) than ethanol (-173). Ofcourse my freezer is -20 at the coldest but its possible to freeze out methanol in theory.
Also the fusels and acetone etc, when I used to freeze some beers and there would be some co2 trapped and not fully deflated, when I open the bottle I'd get the soda bottle fizzing out effect and sometimes get a strong whiff of some combo of acetone, turpentine, paint thinner type of smell. On occasion I'd get a spoon or 2 quantity of something with a super pungent smell which I would pretty much throw out. I basically was under the impression I was tossing out methanol. Looks pretty unlikely that it was methanol, it still not drinkable, but likely had acetone or other liquids instead.

Oh I measure my drinks - I assume I am at 30% for the homemade ones and 2oz is a drink. After say 4 of those vs 4 drinks of whisky with the home made stuff I feel sleepy and heavy. I don't feel that way with the base beer or whiskey. That is a strange phenomenon, and I am optimistically assuming I got 30% mind you. So for likely a smaller amount of alcohol I get heavy and sleepy. No other food plays into it, I usually don't eat in this 6-8 hr window I am talking about.

Cool.
Srinath.

 

[bucketnative]

Those freezing temperatures are for pure methanol and ethanol. You are working with an aqueous solution, which means that the freezing point will not be the same for the individual components. Your freezing point of solution would change as the alcohol is more concentrated in the liquid, and it would eventually fall below that of the pure methanol. With ethanol in the mix (not to mention all of the other molecules), it becomes a very complicated phase diagram. And, with all that said, I am not sure you could remove methanol from the ethanol solely via freezing, without resorting to a zone refinement-type process.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/je60022a017 - Water-Methanol phase diagram, here.

 

[Jokester]

Methanol and water don't form an azeotrope, and methanol and ethanol don't either. Only water and ethanol do. So its fathomable that you take a mix of these 3 (all others are irrelevant for this experiment) and freeze it at even say -20, and let it melt and see if you are getting ethanol or methanol and likely stop when you start seeing methanol.
Secondarily, you can take a mix of these, freeze it to -145 and sort of put it in a blender and make a Slurpee. Maintain that Slurpee at -145 while mechanically moving it a little here and there and I'll pretty much guarantee all methanol will stay frozen.
I actually am making a second run at warming this to see how much ethanol I even have in the mix. If its stupid like 15%, its time to give up and toss the frozen bottles in the fridge and just drink my 9.2% "brut" jai alai.

Cool.
Srinath.

 

[bucketnative]

Azeotropes have nothing to do with freezing.

 

[Jokester]

Oh azeoptropes only boil at a lower temp than either liquid, not freeze at a higher temp ?
Now I warmed 20gm of the concoction in a 150-160F toaster oven. I got 4-5gm of it evaporate rather soon smelling pretty much like I was burning a musky incense. Then the alcohol smell faded and by the time I got to 7-8 gm down it pretty much smelled like I was burning a very rich wood. I mean it was a very faint aroma in both cases, you pretty much have to be sniffing the toaster oven to get a whiff of either.
My guess is, I am 20-25% ABW, too bad my nose, my scales and my toaster are pretty inaccurate. But likely some of these errors are cancelling each other out. I mean I may be reading 5 when it actually is 4.6 but after the stronger smell of alcohol I am missing the fainter smell etc etc. So 25 to 32.5% abv just about hitting the theoretical ceiling here.

Cool.
Srinath.

 

[samal88twit]

Ok guys i really want ur help!!


I fermented 5 litres of rice and raisins wine 22 days ago! And right now i want to distilling it
The problem i wanna know how to measure the fore shot or the heads from the heart from the tail?