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Methanol is dangerous. But you are simply misinformed about the risk of methanol showing up in your homebrew spirits. It's not your fault: this has been a propa

Methanol is dangerous. But you are simply misinformed about the risk of methanol showing up in your homebrew spirits. It's not your fault: this has been a propagandized issue. But methanol poisoning was only a thing during the prohibition because the feds started poisoning the fuel ethanol supply with it, and people either served it to people unwittingly, maliciously, or tried and failed to separate out the ethanol. In real homebrew, you are not at risk of methanol poisoning. If you brew some beer (step 1 to making yourself whiskey), the alcohol makeup ends up being in a 1:1000 ratio of methanol to ethanol. Distilling does not create any more methanol, it merely concentrates it. Let's play out the worst possible scenario here, where you're targeting azeotropic ethanol, and specifically targeting methanol with your cuts. In order to end up with a 100ml of methanol, you would need to be running a batch of targeting 100L (26 gallons) of ethanol, which means starting with 2,000L (530 gallons) of beer. That is wildly outside the range of casual home distilling. And keep in mind in order to hit that worst case scenario, the distiller needs to know enough to be making cuts, but not know to discard the first cut, which is done normally even without methanol concerns simply because it contains a bunch of really disgusting aromatics.

hilbert42 6mo ago
"But you are simply misinformed about the risk of methanol showing up in your homebrew spirits." I did not say that. I'm sick of being misquoted (at least twice to this story). I well know that methanol only appears in trace amounts in drinking spirits (also naturally in trace amounts in one's gut/body sans drinking—it's even in fruit juice). That is not what I was talking about. What I said was: "Many ways exist for methanol to enter the food chain both accidentally and through deliberate substitution for ethanol…" In that paragraph I made no mention of homebrew spirits and it's clear I was referring to methanol manufactured in industry on an industrial scale. Industrially-manufactured methanol has found its way into the food chain and has killed people. You should read my reply to reisse where I make it clear how methanol could enter the food chain (right, I also mentioned it earlier). It's pretty obvious to me that if a large cultural rush/sudden fad to homebrew spirits were to happen (assuming the decision is upheld) then things will in all probability go wrong unless there's a broad reeducation about the potential for methanol substitution coupled with regulations covering sales especially through third parties. I'm specifically referring to the US here, the entrepreneurial nature of business being what it is this decision will be seen by some (and a few is too many) to run amok and start trading HB spirits in ways traditional homebrewers would never (or very rarely) do It's also worth reading the link on methanol poisoning in my reply to pessimizer.

hilbert42 6mo ago

"But you are simply misinformed about the risk of methanol showing up in your homebrew spirits." I did not say that. I'm sick of being misquoted (at least twice to this story). I well know that methanol only appears in trace amounts in drinking spirits (also naturally in trace amounts in one's gut/body sans drinking—it's even in fruit juice). That is not what I was talking about. What I said was: "Many ways exist for methanol to enter the food chain both accidentally and through deliberate substitution for ethanol…" In that paragraph I made no mention of homebrew spirits and it's clear I was referring to methanol manufactured in industry on an industrial scale. Industrially-manufactured methanol has found its way into the food chain and has killed people. You should read my reply to reisse where I make it clear how methanol could enter the food chain (right, I also mentioned it earlier). It's pretty obvious to me that if a large cultural rush/sudden fad to homebrew spirits were to happen (assuming the decision is upheld) then things will in all probability go wrong unless there's a broad reeducation about the potential for methanol substitution coupled with regulations covering sales especially through third parties. I'm specifically referring to the US here, the entrepreneurial nature of business being what it is this decision will be seen by some (and a few is too many) to run amok and start trading HB spirits in ways traditional homebrewers would never (or very rarely) do It's also worth reading the link on methanol poisoning in my reply to pessimizer.