4 ms·

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 p

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.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        They specifically mention "homemade vodka" in the paper, which would mean grains. The whole case report title contains "due to home distillation of methanol". There's a chance they weren't precise with the vodka description, but then we're just guessing the source itself is incorrect... that's path to madness.
bhelkey 2y ago
I can't say I am convinced. Wine can have up to 329 mg/L of methanol [1]. Blindness can come from ingesting as low as 4ml [2]. I find it plausible that someone could try to make a 2000ml bottle of cognac. I imagine that should take ~10L of wine. The methanol should (mostly) be distilled first. If that person drank the first fruits of their labor, would they not ingest approximately the dose for permanent blindness? [1] https://www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SafeHandlingManual-Health-Safety-Module.pdf https://www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SafeHand... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/methanol#:~:text=However%2C%20cases%20of%20visual%20impairment,mL%20of%20methanol%20%5B19%5D https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-prof....
- jrflowers 2y ago
  If a person had the knowledge and resources to operate a still and deliberately isolate the methanol and then decided to drink it, then yes they would get methanol poisoning. If a layperson just let a still run until the batch was done distilling then the resultant booze wouldn’t have the required concentration of methanol to cause poisoning.
  - bhelkey 2y ago
    Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol. That is to say, the first ounces distilled should have a higher concentration of methanol. When I last made fresh squeezed orange juice, I took a sip of the first few ounces. That habit, which is common in cooking, could prove disastrous when distilling.
    - jrflowers 2y ago
      Yep. If you isolate the methanol and then drink it, you will get methanol poisoning. The distillate flows continuously so in this scenario you would either be letting your alcohol spill onto the ground while you gulp down methanol, or you would have a separate receptacle just for it that you then choose to drink from.
    - saithound 2y ago

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.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      They specifically mention "homemade vodka" in the paper, which would mean grains. The whole case report title contains "due to home distillation of methanol". There's a chance they weren't precise with the vodka description, but then we're just guessing the source itself is incorrect... that's path to madness.

bhelkey 2y ago

I can't say I am convinced. Wine can have up to 329 mg/L of methanol [1]. Blindness can come from ingesting as low as 4ml [2]. I find it plausible that someone could try to make a 2000ml bottle of cognac. I imagine that should take ~10L of wine. The methanol should (mostly) be distilled first. If that person drank the first fruits of their labor, would they not ingest approximately the dose for permanent blindness? [1] https://www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SafeHandlingManual-Health-Safety-Module.pdf https://www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SafeHand... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/methanol#:~:text=However%2C%20cases%20of%20visual%20impairment,mL%20of%20methanol%20%5B19%5D https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-prof....

jrflowers 2y ago
If a person had the knowledge and resources to operate a still and deliberately isolate the methanol and then decided to drink it, then yes they would get methanol poisoning. If a layperson just let a still run until the batch was done distilling then the resultant booze wouldn’t have the required concentration of methanol to cause poisoning.
- bhelkey 2y ago
  Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol. That is to say, the first ounces distilled should have a higher concentration of methanol. When I last made fresh squeezed orange juice, I took a sip of the first few ounces. That habit, which is common in cooking, could prove disastrous when distilling.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    Yep. If you isolate the methanol and then drink it, you will get methanol poisoning. The distillate flows continuously so in this scenario you would either be letting your alcohol spill onto the ground while you gulp down methanol, or you would have a separate receptacle just for it that you then choose to drink from.
  - saithound 2y ago