4 ms·

Huh, I was under the impression the ban was due to the dangers of home distilling (e.g. blindness).

saithound 2y ago
Home distilling for personal use is legal in e.g. New Zealand, as well as many Eastern European EU countries such as Slovenia [1]. Blindness is certainly one possible risk of moonshine consumption, but if you thought it was a danger of home distilling, you had the causal mechanisms badly messed up. Blindness and kidney failure may result from methanol poisoning: as the name suggests, you get this by ingesting methanol, an alcohol which looks and smells similar to the alcohol (ethanol) in alcoholic drinks. Does moonshine contain methanol? Only in trace amounts. Even if you made deliberate efforts to maximize methanol content, alcohol distilled from fermented cereal grains or fruits would still only contain about 5g of methanol for every 1000g of ethanol. Even if you wanted to, you won't obtain methanol by fermenting/distilling. Why is moonshine associated with methanol poisoning, then? Well, remember how methanol has a similar taste and smell to ethanol? It is also a cheap to produce, low tax byproduct of many industrial processes. So people wanted to a increase their profits on the moonshine they sold deliberately adulterated it by mixing in some methanol, sometimes in what they thought were non-dangerous amounts, sometimes because they didn't care and thought they'd get away with it [2]. This is called lacing moonshine; it's always a deliberate act and not something that can happen by accident or by making a mistake during home distillation. This is not a danger of home distilling, though. It's a danger of buying adulterated products from dodgy people. And people dodgy enough to distill alcohol at home to commit tax fraud (or previously to skirt prohibition laws) are often not above poisoning people for profit either. This has nothing to do with home distilling, though. If you buy cheap alcohol from dodgy people in countries where home distilling is banned, they still might have just bought 10 liters of vodka from the government regulated distillery then mixed it with 2 liters of methanol and sold you the higher volume mixture for profit. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_i...
- quantified 2y ago
  Note that advice on distilling is to remove methanol that is there from fermentation. Picking at random: [https://whiskyride.com/whisky/whisky-distillation-explained-double-vs-triple/ https://whiskyride.com/whisky/whisky-distillation-explained-...] It's there, get rid of it, it's easy to do and easy to screw up by missing that step.
  - saithound 2y ago
    As I wrote above, you cannot get significant quantities of methanol from fermented grains or fruits. You cannot "screw up" and poison yourself by "missing a step" during distillation. You are correct in that you can screw up and get a subpar, less enjoyable product by e.g. not discarding the foreshot, but that's very different from the dangers GP asked about above. There are no recorded incidents of accidental methanol poisoning resulting from improperly distilled fruit or grain mash ever. If people get methanol poisoning from moonshine, it is because of laced moonshine, not an accident or mistake.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      > There are no recorded incidents of accidental methanol poisoning resulting from improperly distilled fruit or grain mash ever. It took just a moment to check: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352007822000336?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23520... > Herein we present three patients belonging to the same family, who admitted to our emergency department (ED) after consuming the alcoholic drink they made at home, but died despite the optimal treatment.
      - saithound 2y ago
        Next time I recommend spending more than a moment, then. The linked article does not contain any evidence whatsoever of accidental methanol poisoning which resulted from improper distillation of fruit or grain mash. They call out the "fake or unknown content" for a reason.
quantified 2y ago
Revenooers. Taxation of alcohol has been important for centuries. If danger was really a problem, riding bicycles, driving cars and rock climbing would be banned.
red-iron-pine 2y ago
Blindness is mostly a prohibition-era meme that was explicitly pushed by the government, and there hasn't really been any impetus to correct it. Toxic products (that aren't ethanol) are trivially easy to avoid during routine distilling. Basically, the most nasty, toxic stuff is also the stuff with the lowest boiling point; it comes out first. So collect the first 20-50 milliliters of output, toss it out, and you've removed the vast, vast majority of it. Repeat that again during 2nd and/or 3rd distillations and it's not a risk at all. And remember: all of that stuff that makes you go blind is already in your beer / wine / etc., it's just more concentrated after distilling. Methanol production from higher rates of pectin in grapes is why red wine hangovers are the worst, for example. The receptors that are damaged and make you go blind also react to ethanol, so the reason methanol-heavy wines don't make you go blind is that the ethanol gets there first and in higher volume. Really, the bigger risk IMO is fire and explosions. Ethanol is not just flammable, it's combustible and can absolutely burn your house down if you're not condensing and ventilating your still. Trivially easy to avoid, however, with working tap water and a $15 box fan, or even a garage with a good breeze.

Home distilling for personal use is legal in e.g. New Zealand, as well as many Eastern European EU countries such as Slovenia [1]. Blindness is certainly one possible risk of moonshine consumption, but if you thought it was a danger of home distilling, you had the causal mechanisms badly messed up. Blindness and kidney failure may result from methanol poisoning: as the name suggests, you get this by ingesting methanol, an alcohol which looks and smells similar to the alcohol (ethanol) in alcoholic drinks. Does moonshine contain methanol? Only in trace amounts. Even if you made deliberate efforts to maximize methanol content, alcohol distilled from fermented cereal grains or fruits would still only contain about 5g of methanol for every 1000g of ethanol. Even if you wanted to, you won't obtain methanol by fermenting/distilling. Why is moonshine associated with methanol poisoning, then? Well, remember how methanol has a similar taste and smell to ethanol? It is also a cheap to produce, low tax byproduct of many industrial processes. So people wanted to a increase their profits on the moonshine they sold deliberately adulterated it by mixing in some methanol, sometimes in what they thought were non-dangerous amounts, sometimes because they didn't care and thought they'd get away with it [2]. This is called lacing moonshine; it's always a deliberate act and not something that can happen by accident or by making a mistake during home distillation. This is not a danger of home distilling, though. It's a danger of buying adulterated products from dodgy people. And people dodgy enough to distill alcohol at home to commit tax fraud (or previously to skirt prohibition laws) are often not above poisoning people for profit either. This has nothing to do with home distilling, though. If you buy cheap alcohol from dodgy people in countries where home distilling is banned, they still might have just bought 10 liters of vodka from the government regulated distillery then mixed it with 2 liters of methanol and sold you the higher volume mixture for profit. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_i...

quantified 2y ago
Note that advice on distilling is to remove methanol that is there from fermentation. Picking at random: [https://whiskyride.com/whisky/whisky-distillation-explained-double-vs-triple/ https://whiskyride.com/whisky/whisky-distillation-explained-...] It's there, get rid of it, it's easy to do and easy to screw up by missing that step.
- saithound 2y ago
  As I wrote above, you cannot get significant quantities of methanol from fermented grains or fruits. You cannot "screw up" and poison yourself by "missing a step" during distillation. You are correct in that you can screw up and get a subpar, less enjoyable product by e.g. not discarding the foreshot, but that's very different from the dangers GP asked about above. There are no recorded incidents of accidental methanol poisoning resulting from improperly distilled fruit or grain mash ever. If people get methanol poisoning from moonshine, it is because of laced moonshine, not an accident or mistake.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    > There are no recorded incidents of accidental methanol poisoning resulting from improperly distilled fruit or grain mash ever. It took just a moment to check: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352007822000336?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23520... > Herein we present three patients belonging to the same family, who admitted to our emergency department (ED) after consuming the alcoholic drink they made at home, but died despite the optimal treatment.
    - saithound 2y ago
      Next time I recommend spending more than a moment, then. The linked article does not contain any evidence whatsoever of accidental methanol poisoning which resulted from improper distillation of fruit or grain mash. They call out the "fake or unknown content" for a reason.

quantified 2y ago

Revenooers. Taxation of alcohol has been important for centuries. If danger was really a problem, riding bicycles, driving cars and rock climbing would be banned.

red-iron-pine 2y ago

Blindness is mostly a prohibition-era meme that was explicitly pushed by the government, and there hasn't really been any impetus to correct it. Toxic products (that aren't ethanol) are trivially easy to avoid during routine distilling. Basically, the most nasty, toxic stuff is also the stuff with the lowest boiling point; it comes out first. So collect the first 20-50 milliliters of output, toss it out, and you've removed the vast, vast majority of it. Repeat that again during 2nd and/or 3rd distillations and it's not a risk at all. And remember: all of that stuff that makes you go blind is already in your beer / wine / etc., it's just more concentrated after distilling. Methanol production from higher rates of pectin in grapes is why red wine hangovers are the worst, for example. The receptors that are damaged and make you go blind also react to ethanol, so the reason methanol-heavy wines don't make you go blind is that the ethanol gets there first and in higher volume. Really, the bigger risk IMO is fire and explosions. Ethanol is not just flammable, it's combustible and can absolutely burn your house down if you're not condensing and ventilating your still. Trivially easy to avoid, however, with working tap water and a $15 box fan, or even a garage with a good breeze.