As a man from a place where recreational distilling is perfectly legal, there's really not too much "professional" in it: heads(methanol, acetone and some other stuff) have lower boiling point(around 64-69° Celsius vs 78.4° for ethanol) and have a very distinct strong smell, so what you do even if you don't have thermometer is set the heat in a way that you get 1 distilled drop every 2-3 seconds and wait until it stops smelling aceton-ish. After that you can crank up the heat so you'll get about 1liter/hour(a little stream that separates into droplets) and get going. If you don't trust your nose, you can just calculate the total amount of alcohol you have in your mixture and assume that 15% of it is heads-that should eliminate all the methanol for pretty much any fermented stuff you want to distill
I went to school for craft brewing and distilling and this was a facility built 3 years ago with state of the art equipment and an 'overkill' amount of lab equipment for just about anything you can test in beverages, as well as even plants for hops. And when they taught us how to distinguish the difference between the foreshots and the heads, all they had us do was let it hit your finger. You can smell it, you can feel it, and you can see it interact with your hand differently as well. It's much simpler and less risky than it sounds on paper
@@ExpiredFreedom oh, since you went to school, could you please explain: is there anything that a designated column with plates/rings does better than just a tube packed with copper scrubbers and spiral prismatic packing other than looking cool? I mean, scrubbies and SPP definitely provide more surface area for contact, which means MOAR COPPER FOR DA BRU and, I suppose, more graduate fractions separation and thus overall more clean product on a shorter column, but for some reason a lot of people and, if I recall correctly, big distilleries insist on using the plate columns. Why is that?
@@ДимаВеселов-в8и Ah sorry, while I did learn the basics of distilling in the program, I specialized in beer so didn't learn a ton more on the distilling side. I do work in a big brewery/distillery now (as a brewer) and of course they use plate columns like you pointed out but the facility I work at is on native land, and lemme tell ya $ is no problem for them lmao so wouldn't be surprised if it's just cus it looks nicer. my only thought with the other option you pointed out is the equipment maybe doesn't sound as durable/reliable
@@ExpiredFreedom well, durability and reliability wise I can't tell much because I've been using this stuff only for 3 years, but to think of it, maintenance on big scale could be real pain in the bum because after distilling like 2-3 tanks(in case you use the column for different drinks-after every single distillation) you need to clean the copper from the oxide and for that you'll have to take all the packing out of the tube because you can't really wash it all away while it's inside. For me it's not much of a deal since I use 2 inches wide and 1-2 meters tall columns, but for industrial level monstrosities...
One thing with distillation: If you distil your batch into one container, and all the methanol that comes over first is collected into the same jug as all of the other ethanol and water, you have the same ratio of alcohol to methanol than if you hadn’t distilled in the first place. But the concentration of both is higher. So, if you drink the same amount of ethanol from your distillate as you would when drinking homemade wine to get an equal amount of drunk, you will consume the same amount of methanol as well. So drink for drink, it shouldn’t contain any more methanol. Volume for volume it will contain more, but you’d be VERY drunk because it contains equally as much ethanol. You may drink 750ml of wine for a night but you’d drink like 1/4 of that in spirits, or less, so methanol consumption remains the same. The danger is specifically when you take the first fraction of distillate and drink it since methanol is more volatile and comes over first, so you end up with a cup of methanol. With a very basic safety step of discarding a little bit of the first fraction your subsequent bottles of distillate will actually contain less methanol per drink than the undistilled home brew wine and beer. Honestly unless you REALLY fuck it up and drink straight head fraction you will never go blind, because in most cases that first 750ml bottle of distillate will not even contain enough methanol to poison you if you don’t throw it out, it’s just a worst case scenario if your fermentation was exceedingly poor. I’ve heard of nasty headaches though. Kinda foolproof unless you literally have no idea what you’re doing and you mess up almost every step.
You can make a very high methanol brew by mucking up your ingredients. For example adding high pectin fruit (skins are particularly high pectin) or wood pulp will significantly increase methanol content and make the batch a lot less safe. If you have a high methanol brew taking off a bit of head may not be enough.
I have heard it's borderline impossible to actually do, and most of these stories relate to prohibition-era booze being cut with methanol to save money
False. Going from a cold start, distillation removes methanol first. Impatient moonshiners drinking the first still went blind, most people that make moonshine know not to drink the first distillation. It's like drinking soda out of a glass with ice, you won't draw any water up the straw till the ice gets warm enough to melt. I've definitely fucked up fermentation and had a decent amount of methanol in my wine, a couple sips in and the liquor told me I'd go blind if I kept drinking, it tastes horrible and you have to force yourself to drink literal poison against your body's instincts to go blind. I doubt the methanol was enough to make me blind but once the drink starts talking you should stop drinking.
Just got legalized this year buddy. Supreme court over rules state laws. Look it up, was passed either July or June, but it just got federally legalized at home. Still can't sell which is not the same
i dont know in my country its legal to make your own booze but selling is illegal still some people buy local alcohol and i wont be surprised if tomorrow news comes that a dozen of people died because of local booze its not that uncommon
Well, central America, the United States is a social experiment since it's creation.... since it wasn't full proof from corruption though it's obviously been going downhill a lot. @@nexstbob6911
What's interesting is ethanol is preferentially metabolized in the body over methanol, so most of the methanol gets peed out before it gets metabolizied if you're drinking lots of water and alcohol. But if this doesn't happen, then your body has time to create formic acid. Because the methanol comes out first when you distill, if you retain that methanol in its concentrated form, you end up with a fluid with a totally different methanol:ethanol ratio with a lot less water encouraging you to pee it out.
@@MRMORGAN817 Yh man, It's not dangerous at all, if you know what you're doing, I make homemade gin and when making base spirit I always check the vapour temperature, if I see 78-80°C I know it's only ethanol, I discard the head and I'm still seeing fine, even though in Italy where I'm from it's not so legal lol.
Love the channel and absolutely agree in promoting homebrewing and pointing out that home distilling is illegal, but this information is kind of misleading: distilling normally fermented grain, juice, sugar, etc won't result in dangerous methanol concentrations. You can't really concentrate anything that wasn't there in the first place by distilling, and even the highest concentrations of methanol in mead, cider, beer, or wine aren't dangerous. The distiller's process of taking cuts and remixing/redistilling is more for making a better tasting product (with fewer hangovers) than safety. The myth of methanol resulting from distilling comes from prohibition when the government, or other unscrupulous actors, would use wood alcohol. Either to discourage people from redistilling industrial solvent ethanol to drink, or to make a cheap liquor without understanding the dangers. As long as no one has put wood alcohol in your homebrew, any distillate won't make you blind. If anyone is interested, r/firewater has a great pinned explanation on methanol and distilling.
To add on to this, oftentimes supplies used in distilling equipment were made with dangerous chemicals to prevent distillation, which definitely would contribute to distillations bad rep
@@gizmo_gadgets6482 Eh, it's not very easy to add chemicals to a still that last past a few vinegar runs to cause damage past the regular ethanol. It's all the deliberate denaturation and use of methanol for that purpose, after all, why wasn't blindness a problem during the Founding Father's days? They fermented and distilled even more then!
It all depends on what you ferment. If you ferment pure sugar, there is no methanol produced. As easy. Methanol comes by the fermentation of different substances within the fermantation base... I think it was the pectine (or however its called in english) which is usually part of peels and that stuff, what ferments into methanol. There are even fruit wines you cant drink without destillation, because they have a too high concentration of methanol. Oranges and other citrus fuits have a pretty high content of pectine...so yeah...you probably can get blind when fermenting those...
As long as you have a good amount of ethanol in your wine, trace amounts of methanol are nothing to worry about. And it's all trace amounts without distillation.
There has never once been a proven case of home distillation causing blindness or anything else related to methanol. Research will show you that any instances during or after prohibition have happened due to contaminants inside the distillers, as people used to use things like old car radiators. You already posted this on your instagram months ago and didn't learn anything from all the people in the comments telling you this?
During prohibition the fbi decided to curb the demand for moonshine by poisoning alcohol and then selling it to the public. What a fine and ethical approach
Home distillation causes blindness. In our country, excise tax is very high on alcohol so during certain festivals homemade alcohol flows rampant. I have known more than 3 dead and several others gone blind for methanol contamination in our district alone in the last 12-15 years
@@tamimtahsin8082 Methanol poisoning is real but it's probably not from homemade alcohol produced by traditional methods. Attempting to increase yields by using methylated spirits (which have added methanol) at any point in the distillation process is the usual cause. Methanol can't actually be separated from ethanol, since it's not just about boiling point.
@@tamimtahsin8082 methanol poisoning usually becomes a risk at large batch sizes. Small-batch home distillation will usually not have enough even if you drink the head (still not a good idea though). The issue comes from large batches. I would guess that the 3+ dead and blind bought from large-scale homebrewers looking to make untaxed profit.
I would like to point out that the only reason that at home distillation is illegal is because the government can’t tax they pretend like they care about peoples vision and stuff but it would be a huge market value loss for them to not be able to tax every drop of liquor
If that methanol is mixed with ethanol (as is the case with a batch distillation process) it becomes far less dangerous because the enzyme that causes all of the issues with methanol (alcohol dehydrogenase) has a 20x binding affinity for ethanol compared to methanol. Thus even up to 2% methanol concentration in a batch of ethanol will have effectively no ill effect. So all of these stories about methanol poisoning were not due to the distillation process, they were due to accidental or even deliberate contamination.
PSA: issue is methanol evaporates at 64C vs ethanol at 78C and then water at 100C. If you distill a VERY large quantity of a fermented base like a dummy directly into individual bottles as the distillation proceeds, then the first bottle(s) will be pure methanol. That is the real danger, but we are talking industrial scale here. If instead, you discard the first part of distillation, then you eliminate the methanol. Or if you distill everything in one go before bottling, you retain the methanol but it will be distributed throughout all your bottles and will have negligible effect. TLDR: it’s not possible to get methanol poisoning if you distill a small amount of alcohol at home. All non-distilled fermented drinks (wine, beer, etc) have methanol but in tiny quantities that pose no harm.
@randod1683 hey I watched other shorts from this channel and one of the things they showed previously was a clay binder that helps it clear by removing all the stuff and then you can siphon to another container. Their raspberry mead took around 3 mo the to clear normally
If you die or get severely disabled the government can't tax you at all in any of your economic activities, thats the primary reason. Public health exists for a reason and the government isn't nearly as shortsighted as you might believe.
@@angrypastabrewing The video you just watched explained how to make it safer. This isn't some conspiracy or whatever it is you that you think. Remove the first bit of condense from your destillation process until it stops smelling like aceton. That should get rid of most of the methanol.
Been watching your shorts and it seems interesting. I dont like the taste of very strong alcohol so i was curious can someone explain what mead taste like exactly? I see people mention its similar to a wine. Generally i guess mead will come out around 10-15 abv, would that cause a very strong alcohol flavor or is mead something you would be able to drink a mouthful at a time and be pleasant? I ask because i may try to make some in the future but would like to avoid so if it generally has a very strong alcohol taste. Strong to me in my mind is like vodka, whiskey (obviously I'll think it safe to assume it isn't that strong haha) where as something more comfortable is like beer or store bought wine. Thanks in advance for any information
I’ve only had mead once, and I’d best describe it (or at least the one I tried) as cozier, easier to drink wine with a honey flavor. And, I’m assuming based on how it’s made, the one I had was not dry at all. Im not sure the terminology, but it was not dry on the tongue and the alcohol taste was practically nonexistent, or at the very least less than the honey flavor. So the flavor of honey and wine, but the mouth feel of cider, I’d describe it to be! I hope my one experience helps any!
@@Stephfven that does help thanks for the explanation, that sounds pretty good then. Yeah there is a lot of terminology involved haha a lot to learn at first but definitely seems interesting
Methanol poisoning is real but it's not caused by homemade alcohol produced by traditional methods. Attempting to increase yields by using methylated spirits (which have added methanol) at any point in the distillation or bottling process is the usual cause. Methanol can't actually be separated from ethanol, since it's not just about boiling point.
This is wrong. Methanol does not increase during distillation. The water is just just removed from the alcohol solution, the amount stays the same though. If you could drink it undistilled you can drink it distilled. The only 2 exceptions are if you theoretically would drink only the „head alcohol“ and if you stretch it with rubbing alcohol. When people get blind of moonshine its only due to the fact that it was stretched with other chemicals.
I believe you can (don’t quote me) but it’s generally avoided as pressure could build up quick, or even worse, you can introduce contaminants and bacteria to your home brew.
@@levimulder2334 What are you using? Ideally it should be glass, either a bottle or a big jar. There are airlocks for mason jars and many other containers.
This is why "removing the head" process is important in alcohol disillation. It is because the methanol always come out first when the fermented liquid is boiled.
Very educational! Thank you for the run down on that. I only learned abt methanol poisoning from some TH-cam video about chemical rankings lol. Also, I love to see you're using honey from Savannah Bee Company!! I was Just thinking abt using their honey to try this out whenever I have the time 😊
I recall being in Russia in the early 90s and was given some vodka to drink, served from a Stoli bottle that hadn't been cracked until then, that left all six of us with a halo around bright lights and the most toxic headache I have ever had, both symptoms persisted for three or four days. Come the weekend I read that sixty people had died in Moscow as a result of methanol in bootleg Russian vodka in the previous four days. It's horrible and if there had been four of us rather than six we would probably had ended up hospitalised and possibly dead, instead of just wishing we were.
another thing he missed is distillation can be explosive/flamable if any gaseous alcohol or methanol leaks. It's not too hard to isolate methanol though as it has a boiling point roughly 5C lower than alcohol so anyone decent with chemistry can isolate it. If you do isolate it you should keep it and try making aerogel which is a substance that is 3X more thermally insulating than styrofoam.
@@yossarian00 NileRed did it on his own in a couple months the first try, albeit with some crack, but the 2nd batch that follows was almost flawless. So it should be possible for you too to do it, but it take a lot more than just methanol and also need a lot of expensive equipment, but should be possible for anybody with internet access to replicate it.
Um, with a boiling point only 5*C lower, ethanol and methanol create an azeotrope incredibly easily. At no point can you boil off methanol without having at least some ethanol come through.
thank you! I always wanted to start making my own beer but was too afraid of all the rumors I heard about going blind from messing up on home made alcohol. so thanks for clearing up that misunderstanding.
This is true for the most part, regular fermentation can produce methanol at dangerous levels but as he said in perfectly controlled environments it cant....homebrew fermentation would likely produce methanol in cases of contamination by other microbes. So always sterlize everything as mentioned
What I have understood from news around the world is that fatal poisonings mainly occur when people try to separate ethanol from denaturated industrial alcohol by distillation. Some denaturing agents are downright poisonous. Most of them are hard or impossible to remove by simple distillation. But having said that, this video is a good reminder of proper procedures during ordinary alcohol distillation from mash/wash. Throw away the foreshot and maybe part of the heads too. Just a note that fermented fruit and berries can very well be distilled, not just beet/grain/potato alcohol. Think of brandy for instance.
A lot of the information in this video is wrong. When fermentation alcohol two types are produced, methanol and ethanol. As the video stated, consuming methanol can cause serious damage to your body such as blindness and even death if consumed in high enough quantities. This is due to our liver processing methanol into formic acid which, when it enters into the blood stream, can damage the optic nerve and brain. HOWEVER, when we consume methanol and ethanol together, enzymes in the liver prefer to metabolise the ethanol first. This greatly slows down the process of turning the methanol into formic acid, hence reducing the amount of formic acid present in the blood, preventing damage to the body. This is important to remember. Since significantly more ethanol is produced during fermentation compared to methanol, it is essentially impossible for methanol poisoning to occur when consuming homemade alcohol. This means that even if you distill your alcohol it will not increase the likelihood of you suffering methanol poisoning since, despite popular belief, the ration of ethanol to methanol will remain the same. This brings me to another point. Many people believe that ethanol and methanol can be separated since methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol. This often results in home distillers discarding what is called the “foreshot”. This is basically the first 100ml or so of liquid which is collected during the distillation process. While discarding the foreshot does allow you remove any unpleasant tasting fusel oils, it will not allow you to remove the methanol. This is because the ratio of ethanol to methanol present in the home brew results in an azeotrope which makes them inseparable through conventional means. So any methanol that does boil over in the foreshot will also be combined with ethanol. To conclude. Wether you are fermenting or distilling. If basic safety measures are followed, methanol poisoning should not be a concern. And despite what people will tell you, ethanol and methanol cannot be separated without an industrial scale plate still. However, distilling is still a very dangerous process and should only be done with proper licensing and experience. Please follow your government’s laws and advice around distilling.
Living in the South, friends warned people me to know my moonshiner. Bad equipment, they said, was the danger, especially galvanized metals for things like the tub the mash was boiled in. Moonshine is most dangerous when made in large volume for profit because of maximizing amounts just to sell more.
This is what happened to people (alcoholics) in Glasgow Scotland in the 40/50s. Plus a lot of people have lost their lives, alcohol is a dangerous thing.
you do understand that distilation comes after fermentation, and methanol isnt produced in destilation but during fermentation. its missleading at best, but really its disingenuous
Drank Chacha in Georgia Republic. It was a good homemade hooch but after 3 or 4 drinks, all 3 of us started losing our vision. It went away after about 45 minutes or so but I'd advise one to TASTE Chacha, even a couple of little sips, but drinker BEWARE and be glad there are plenty of local friends who will get you a cab back to your hotel. Stick to well distilled, known labels!
just remove first half pint (this varies depending on output and size of heated vessel) and then go on with the heart of the brew, many oils and stuff in that first stuff
The risk is too great for me, i don' t have any idea what I'm doing. So I'm abandoning the project. Thank you for posting this video. Unless someone can give me a method to eliminate the risk.
People go blind from alchohol poisioning when methanol percentage is higher in your liquor than amout of etanol you will get poisioned and may go blind every liquor has methanol in your local shops and percentage is low from 2-17% Also Etanol is cure for methanol poisioning.
Not to mention that car radiators were commonly used as condensers during prohibition. You can flush them, but there will still be enough anti-freeze residue to be toxic.
It wasn't just the residue. Back then, radiators were built using lead solder. So....even if they flushed out the rad properly, you would be getting a high dose of lead with each drink
Something to note is that cases of blindness during prohibition were caused by the U.S. government adding methanol to industrial alcohol to denature it. People were getting around prohibition by consuming pure alcohol meant as fuel, so the government decided to poison the alcohol with methanol to prevent this. Except, it turned out people were too desperate for alcohol to care and consumed it anyway. Distillation itself is very unlikely to produce batches of poisoned alcohol
I’ve never thought of bootleggers, moonshiners and going blind
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well being a moonshiner in france i tell you a good moonshiner know very well abouts heads and methanol which is almost 10° below boiling point of alcohol so as you say you can let them escape and cap here, or throw them, i personnaly keep them in a special bottle as lighting fluid if wood's wet or for bbq's
While it shouldn’t be illegal. In anything, it’s knowledge and the mind that keeps one safe! An understand and great command of reason in what one is doing.
You always have methanol. It is created by fermenting. Regular distillation removes a fair bit of it but since you can't do that with freeze distillation it will be there still
Recreational distilling may be illegal but many still do it and there are minimal issues. New Zealand actually allows home distilling and there haven't been too many problems. It is only illegal here as it is a shadow of prohibition era politics. There are a few states decriminalizing it much so like weed so I hope to see more of that in the future. If anyone would like to learn more watch Still it which is a channel about turning distilling into a hobby.
Just get rid of the first 10 ml per a gallon of liquor. That’s the part that has methanol which is called the fore shots.I recommend start at the min of 5 gals for more accurate measurement. I recommend watching a professional from youtube only if you’re at place that’s legal.
Is it true that Sugar Wash does not produce methanol in fermentation? (I guess it's becoming popular to ferment Vodka out of these days) - asking for a friend who is in a place where recreational distillation is completely legal
I'd love to hear some more informed opinions about this, but my understanding is that the risk of distillation and methanol poisoning is actually really low. You'd have to deliberately collect the heads from a number of distillation runs purposely, combine them, then drink only that. As I understood it, the real risk of blindness comes not from distillation per se, but instead from people cutting corners and distilling things like wood that have a much higher methanol concentration.
Im new to this so im very confused. So i got some apple juice and mixed it with golden caster sugar and fast action bread yeast then ive left it in a plastic bottle at room temerature with the lid loose, there wont be any problems with too much menthanol right?
The distilling bit is quite....uneducated. Just make sure to take your foreshots and there will not be any methonol. (That is to say, just throw out like the first 1/3 of the stuff coming off the still. Methanol is produced when the still is coming up to temperature. It will not be later when the stuff is hotter.) It is a safe rule to go by as you are not going to be drinking the heads anyway and unless you are taking so called "faints" to use in a next bath, you are not trying to get heads anyway. You ideally take the output into small parts and taste it to see what you like, combining the bits at the end into a product you like (some people like some tails in it.) Just throw out the first bit that comes off and you are always safe. Because that is how basic physics works. People, because it is illegal and thus hard to get info on, believe a lot of misconceptions on distilling, but there are a few channels that talk about it heavily on TH-cam, like Still It, and several other hobbyist channels that demystify a lot of common misconceptions about it. Want to know why it is illegal really? Because liquor companies lobby various governments, so they don't have competition. The craft beer market exploded after brewing was made legal. They don't want that, so every year, distillers make trips to Washington to make sure senators never make it legal, paying them huge amounts of money and giving them tons of alcohol to keep it illegal. So they don't have competition. Fun stuff. It is not because it is dangerous. It is no more dangerous than a toaster is if you cram 10 slices of toast in it and crank it to the hottest. Use common sense, read like, any info on the subject, and you will be fine. Which, to be fair, people do. It is just not talked about a lot since, again, people fear getting in trouble with the law and, as a result, misconceptions continue. Fight ignorance with education. Can't do that easily when shit is illegal. And that sucks. It is a very fun hobby that you can get into for very, very cheap ($300 or less for equipment) and it is such a crying shame it is not supported more.
I used to think methanol could be thrown out in foreshots too when I started distilling. That was until I joined a moonshiner subreddit. There’s a pinned community post that cleared up and educated me about the whole methanol concern. it’s a little more complicated and not the basic physics that we are told. That notion that foreshots contains all the methanol is a widely perpetuated myth that comes from the assumption that since water, ethanol and methanol have different boiling points they can be separated at different points of the distillation. Those boiling points are only consistent when they are being boiled separately. Theres a paper written by the European Commission from 1996, the study was done to find a way to reduce methanol in distillation runs from the commercial brandy industry. The study essentially showed if methanol is in the wine/mash it’ll be present throughout the entire run. It additionally found that the behaviors of the boiling points between methanol and ethanol are affected by water. op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/0b908be6-2673-45a5-8c2f-b3b6abc1aa37 Here’s and excerpt from the study : A similar behaviour would be expected for methanol for both alcohols are not very different in molecule structure. There is, however, a significant difference regarding all three curves in figure 2: methanol contents keep a higher value for a longer time than ethanol contents. In figures 3 and 4 this observation is made clear: Methanol, specified in ml/100 ml p.a., increases during the donation, while the ratio ethanol : methanol is lowering down. This effect seems to be rather surprising regarding the different boiling points of the two substances: methanol boils at 64,7°C, while ethanol needs 78,3°C. So methanol would be regarded to be carried over earlier than ethanol. The molecule structures however, show another aspect: ethanol has got one more CH2-group which makes the molecule less polar. So, concerning polarity, methanol can be ranged between water and ethanol and has therefore in the water phase a distillation behavior different from ethanol. This may explain the behaviour which is rather contrary to the boiling points. This is no single appearance, because for example ethylacetate with a boiling point of 77 °C, or, as an extreme case, isoamylacetate with 142 °C are even carried over much earlier than methanol. Therefore methanol can not be separated using pot-stills or normal column-stills. Only special columns can separate methanol from the distillate (4.3). Similar observations concerning the behaviour of methanol during the distillation have already been made by Röhrig (33) and Luck(34). Cantagrel (35) divides volatile components into eight types concerning “ distillation behaviour characterized by typical curves, which were mainly confirmed by our experiments. As for methanol, he claims an own type of behaviour during the distillation corresponding to our results. Here’s a link to the post of subreddit too: reddit.com/r/firewater/s/LkPUcp2us7 Totally agree about what you’ve said about the hobby being illegal for the sake of money. If you’re interested about why the public have been taught to be scared of methanol look up the Prohibition Chemists War. Anyways cheers, happy stillin bro
@@tygonmaster I think that you should drink less moonshine and work more on your reading comprehension, pal. I was very clearly asking you a question and not making a statement.
If you let the yeast breathe, then the ammount of methanol produced should be lower. I tried this, by using a sealed vessel to make beer, and then I made a batch without sealing the vessel, and the unsealed one you can drink all day and the next and the next etc.. and it tastes better. I also distilled some and realized part of the "head" is methanol, and some is likely Diethylamine.... the first part of the head is banana flavored, and makes white sparks when burned, the other, methanol, burns the shit out of your tongue, and burns with a very hot blue flame.
alcohol is worse than sugar. it could cause diabetic and eventually lead to blindness. it doesn't matter its homemade or store bought. drink in moderation.
Being able to distil properly has nothing to do with being a professional, and everything to do with taking the proper care and precautions when doing something potentially dangerous. It's not rocket science, it's building up a body of working knowledge you can draw from to do things properly.
Lol, I have been home fermenting as well as home distilling for years. I have yet to have anyone or even myself to have an adverse effect from my alcohol other than a slight hangover from consuming too much. As long as safety steps are taken home brews and spirits are perfectly safe for consuming. Too many OLD rumors and videos such as this that dont give the whole story or at least an accurate reason for the adverse effects of ANY alcohol, commercial or home made.
You need to drink a good bit of methanol to go blind, a bigger concern in the bootlegging days was distilling liquor through car radiators which were, unsurprisingly, lined with lead and other toxic metals.
But its the same amount of methanol... the amount doesnt increase through distillation so why is fermented wine/beer okay. Say i have a 12oz bottle of beer wirh X amount of methanol. And its distilled down to say 6oz and all the alcohol including the methanol makes it over to the 6oz. So in both each has X amount, why should i think that thebhokebrew is safe
Yeees you're right, but the quantities are different. If you were to distill a single liter of wine, that would be totally fine, but distilling, say, the equivalent 500 liters of wine would mean the first few bottles filled in the distillation process would contain most of the methanol from the 500 liters of fermented product. Methanol boils at 65°C and ethanol boils at 78°C.
Actually recreatuonal distilation is illegal in the US and in some parts of the world, in Europe I know it'sok as long as you make small batches and you don't sell anything
The bootleggers didn't just not worry about removing the heads, they would bottle as liquor came off the still so the first bottles had concentrated the methanol of the whole batch.
Whoa... okay tbis wild. Theres am old term used for moonshine called white lighting becasue if affected the eyes. Makes sense. And even more crazg is that ive hadsome home made moonshine once. And it was strooooong. I remember it stung my eyes and i took my first sip. I didn't go blind bit all this makes sense now
As a man from a place where recreational distilling is perfectly legal, there's really not too much "professional" in it: heads(methanol, acetone and some other stuff) have lower boiling point(around 64-69° Celsius vs 78.4° for ethanol) and have a very distinct strong smell, so what you do even if you don't have thermometer is set the heat in a way that you get 1 distilled drop every 2-3 seconds and wait until it stops smelling aceton-ish. After that you can crank up the heat so you'll get about 1liter/hour(a little stream that separates into droplets) and get going. If you don't trust your nose, you can just calculate the total amount of alcohol you have in your mixture and assume that 15% of it is heads-that should eliminate all the methanol for pretty much any fermented stuff you want to distill
I went to school for craft brewing and distilling and this was a facility built 3 years ago with state of the art equipment and an 'overkill' amount of lab equipment for just about anything you can test in beverages, as well as even plants for hops. And when they taught us how to distinguish the difference between the foreshots and the heads, all they had us do was let it hit your finger. You can smell it, you can feel it, and you can see it interact with your hand differently as well. It's much simpler and less risky than it sounds on paper
@@ExpiredFreedom oh, since you went to school, could you please explain: is there anything that a designated column with plates/rings does better than just a tube packed with copper scrubbers and spiral prismatic packing other than looking cool? I mean, scrubbies and SPP definitely provide more surface area for contact, which means MOAR COPPER FOR DA BRU and, I suppose, more graduate fractions separation and thus overall more clean product on a shorter column, but for some reason a lot of people and, if I recall correctly, big distilleries insist on using the plate columns. Why is that?
@@ДимаВеселов-в8и Ah sorry, while I did learn the basics of distilling in the program, I specialized in beer so didn't learn a ton more on the distilling side. I do work in a big brewery/distillery now (as a brewer) and of course they use plate columns like you pointed out but the facility I work at is on native land, and lemme tell ya $ is no problem for them lmao so wouldn't be surprised if it's just cus it looks nicer. my only thought with the other option you pointed out is the equipment maybe doesn't sound as durable/reliable
@@ExpiredFreedom well, durability and reliability wise I can't tell much because I've been using this stuff only for 3 years, but to think of it, maintenance on big scale could be real pain in the bum because after distilling like 2-3 tanks(in case you use the column for different drinks-after every single distillation) you need to clean the copper from the oxide and for that you'll have to take all the packing out of the tube because you can't really wash it all away while it's inside. For me it's not much of a deal since I use 2 inches wide and 1-2 meters tall columns, but for industrial level monstrosities...
@@ДимаВеселов-в8и yeah that's gotta be mostly why then I bet, the columns at my work are taller than the second story of the building lol
Informative. But where's the recipe book?
Just type this creators name in google with recipe book, a pdf file will show up
Are you trying to get someone blind 😅😂
@@supergodnes7483 ?
@supergodnes7483 you can't? I think you are mixing this up alot. Did you watch the video? This is fermentation nit distilling.
@supergodnes7483 thats NOT gonna happen
One thing with distillation:
If you distil your batch into one container, and all the methanol that comes over first is collected into the same jug as all of the other ethanol and water, you have the same ratio of alcohol to methanol than if you hadn’t distilled in the first place. But the concentration of both is higher.
So, if you drink the same amount of ethanol from your distillate as you would when drinking homemade wine to get an equal amount of drunk, you will consume the same amount of methanol as well.
So drink for drink, it shouldn’t contain any more methanol.
Volume for volume it will contain more, but you’d be VERY drunk because it contains equally as much ethanol. You may drink 750ml of wine for a night but you’d drink like 1/4 of that in spirits, or less, so methanol consumption remains the same.
The danger is specifically when you take the first fraction of distillate and drink it since methanol is more volatile and comes over first, so you end up with a cup of methanol. With a very basic safety step of discarding a little bit of the first fraction your subsequent bottles of distillate will actually contain less methanol per drink than the undistilled home brew wine and beer.
Honestly unless you REALLY fuck it up and drink straight head fraction you will never go blind, because in most cases that first 750ml bottle of distillate will not even contain enough methanol to poison you if you don’t throw it out, it’s just a worst case scenario if your fermentation was exceedingly poor. I’ve heard of nasty headaches though. Kinda foolproof unless you literally have no idea what you’re doing and you mess up almost every step.
I usually keep the first 100ml or so of distillate for lighting the bbq. I have no idea why anyone would want to drink it. Forshots smell awful.
Ya this is correct. Even if you don’t make any cuts whatsoever you can drink it all and won’t go blind this video is very wrong
You can make a very high methanol brew by mucking up your ingredients. For example adding high pectin fruit (skins are particularly high pectin) or wood pulp will significantly increase methanol content and make the batch a lot less safe. If you have a high methanol brew taking off a bit of head may not be enough.
I have heard it's borderline impossible to actually do, and most of these stories relate to prohibition-era booze being cut with methanol to save money
False. Going from a cold start, distillation removes methanol first. Impatient moonshiners drinking the first still went blind, most people that make moonshine know not to drink the first distillation. It's like drinking soda out of a glass with ice, you won't draw any water up the straw till the ice gets warm enough to melt.
I've definitely fucked up fermentation and had a decent amount of methanol in my wine, a couple sips in and the liquor told me I'd go blind if I kept drinking, it tastes horrible and you have to force yourself to drink literal poison against your body's instincts to go blind. I doubt the methanol was enough to make me blind but once the drink starts talking you should stop drinking.
Distillation is illegal because of taxes, no other reason.
That is correct and cars can run on alcohol. Can't have the plebs make their own. Oil companies run the tax collectors.
Just got legalized this year buddy. Supreme court over rules state laws. Look it up, was passed either July or June, but it just got federally legalized at home. Still can't sell which is not the same
i dont know in my country its legal to make your own booze
but selling is illegal
still some people buy local alcohol
and i wont be surprised if tomorrow news comes that a dozen of people died because of local booze
its not that uncommon
@@giligamesh“The land of the free” 😂😂 what. A joke
Well, central America, the United States is a social experiment since it's creation.... since it wasn't full proof from corruption though it's obviously been going downhill a lot. @@nexstbob6911
What's interesting is ethanol is preferentially metabolized in the body over methanol, so most of the methanol gets peed out before it gets metabolizied if you're drinking lots of water and alcohol. But if this doesn't happen, then your body has time to create formic acid. Because the methanol comes out first when you distill, if you retain that methanol in its concentrated form, you end up with a fluid with a totally different methanol:ethanol ratio with a lot less water encouraging you to pee it out.
Home distillation is 100% legal in New Zealand. Methanol poisoning there is unheard of.
It’s propaganda for people in my country. We know the truth
So the youtuver are liar
Yeah , work mate has a 50 liters still, he throws away the first 200ml of vapor, thats all there is to it.
@@HonISfirE Yeah mooshineer dump the heads because they smell bad and have other things that give off bad flavors.
@@MRMORGAN817 Yh man, It's not dangerous at all, if you know what you're doing, I make homemade gin and when making base spirit I always check the vapour temperature, if I see 78-80°C I know it's only ethanol, I discard the head and I'm still seeing fine, even though in Italy where I'm from it's not so legal lol.
Love the channel and absolutely agree in promoting homebrewing and pointing out that home distilling is illegal, but this information is kind of misleading: distilling normally fermented grain, juice, sugar, etc won't result in dangerous methanol concentrations. You can't really concentrate anything that wasn't there in the first place by distilling, and even the highest concentrations of methanol in mead, cider, beer, or wine aren't dangerous. The distiller's process of taking cuts and remixing/redistilling is more for making a better tasting product (with fewer hangovers) than safety.
The myth of methanol resulting from distilling comes from prohibition when the government, or other unscrupulous actors, would use wood alcohol. Either to discourage people from redistilling industrial solvent ethanol to drink, or to make a cheap liquor without understanding the dangers. As long as no one has put wood alcohol in your homebrew, any distillate won't make you blind.
If anyone is interested, r/firewater has a great pinned explanation on methanol and distilling.
To add on to this, oftentimes supplies used in distilling equipment were made with dangerous chemicals to prevent distillation, which definitely would contribute to distillations bad rep
@@gizmo_gadgets6482 Eh, it's not very easy to add chemicals to a still that last past a few vinegar runs to cause damage past the regular ethanol.
It's all the deliberate denaturation and use of methanol for that purpose, after all, why wasn't blindness a problem during the Founding Father's days? They fermented and distilled even more then!
It was also people using radiators that were used from cars.
It all depends on what you ferment.
If you ferment pure sugar, there is no methanol produced. As easy.
Methanol comes by the fermentation of different substances within the fermantation base...
I think it was the pectine (or however its called in english) which is usually part of peels and that stuff, what ferments into methanol.
There are even fruit wines you cant drink without destillation, because they have a too high concentration of methanol.
Oranges and other citrus fuits have a pretty high content of pectine...so yeah...you probably can get blind when fermenting those...
Funnily enough one of the antidotes for methanol is ethanol
As long as you have a good amount of ethanol in your wine, trace amounts of methanol are nothing to worry about. And it's all trace amounts without distillation.
Never heard about this, do you have a source?
pectin
I believe this is why citrus-flavored liquors have the flavor added after, like steeping peels in already-distilled alcohol.
So.. no head?
Beat me to it😂
There has never once been a proven case of home distillation causing blindness or anything else related to methanol. Research will show you that any instances during or after prohibition have happened due to contaminants inside the distillers, as people used to use things like old car radiators. You already posted this on your instagram months ago and didn't learn anything from all the people in the comments telling you this?
He won't ever respond lol
During prohibition the fbi decided to curb the demand for moonshine by poisoning alcohol and then selling it to the public. What a fine and ethical approach
Home distillation causes blindness. In our country, excise tax is very high on alcohol so during certain festivals homemade alcohol flows rampant. I have known more than 3 dead and several others gone blind for methanol contamination in our district alone in the last 12-15 years
@@tamimtahsin8082 Methanol poisoning is real but it's probably not from homemade alcohol produced by traditional methods. Attempting to increase yields by using methylated spirits (which have added methanol) at any point in the distillation process is the usual cause. Methanol can't actually be separated from ethanol, since it's not just about boiling point.
@@tamimtahsin8082 methanol poisoning usually becomes a risk at large batch sizes. Small-batch home distillation will usually not have enough even if you drink the head (still not a good idea though). The issue comes from large batches. I would guess that the 3+ dead and blind bought from large-scale homebrewers looking to make untaxed profit.
Boglim needs this video for his homemade hooch
I would like to point out that the only reason that at home distillation is illegal is because the government can’t tax they pretend like they care about peoples vision and stuff but it would be a huge market value loss for them to not be able to tax every drop of liquor
Let a hobo drink it first, noted.
If that methanol is mixed with ethanol (as is the case with a batch distillation process) it becomes far less dangerous because the enzyme that causes all of the issues with methanol (alcohol dehydrogenase) has a 20x binding affinity for ethanol compared to methanol. Thus even up to 2% methanol concentration in a batch of ethanol will have effectively no ill effect. So all of these stories about methanol poisoning were not due to the distillation process, they were due to accidental or even deliberate contamination.
People actually cut high alcohol whi high methanol alcohol, that's were these storiea come from, making non poisonous spirits is quite easy
Also, the reason distillation at home is illegal is explosions. And taxes.
PSA: issue is methanol evaporates at 64C vs ethanol at 78C and then water at 100C. If you distill a VERY large quantity of a fermented base like a dummy directly into individual bottles as the distillation proceeds, then the first bottle(s) will be pure methanol. That is the real danger, but we are talking industrial scale here. If instead, you discard the first part of distillation, then you eliminate the methanol. Or if you distill everything in one go before bottling, you retain the methanol but it will be distributed throughout all your bottles and will have negligible effect. TLDR: it’s not possible to get methanol poisoning if you distill a small amount of alcohol at home. All non-distilled fermented drinks (wine, beer, etc) have methanol but in tiny quantities that pose no harm.
Would you recommend clearing the mead with things other than age for a first time meader?
Ps how long does it usually take to just age remove haze
@randod1683 hey I watched other shorts from this channel and one of the things they showed previously was a clay binder that helps it clear by removing all the stuff and then you can siphon to another container. Their raspberry mead took around 3 mo the to clear normally
Theoretically speaking you can build a centrifuge similar to what is used by biologists but at larger scale
@@florius0 I was wondering if you could use one of those static machines, if it's the case that the particles have +/- ions.
@@randod1683 that doesnt work but you can build a centrifuge with a bike, tape aand a couple of water bottles.
It’s illegal cause they can’t TAX it. Government don’t care about your health 😂
It’s true. There’s a way to make it safer but the government won’t tell you.
Then making wine would be illegal too
If you die or get severely disabled the government can't tax you at all in any of your economic activities, thats the primary reason. Public health exists for a reason and the government isn't nearly as shortsighted as you might believe.
@@angrypastabrewing The video you just watched explained how to make it safer. This isn't some conspiracy or whatever it is you that you think. Remove the first bit of condense from your destillation process until it stops smelling like aceton. That should get rid of most of the methanol.
You can clearly tell when commentors don't use their brain...
Been watching your shorts and it seems interesting. I dont like the taste of very strong alcohol so i was curious can someone explain what mead taste like exactly? I see people mention its similar to a wine. Generally i guess mead will come out around 10-15 abv, would that cause a very strong alcohol flavor or is mead something you would be able to drink a mouthful at a time and be pleasant? I ask because i may try to make some in the future but would like to avoid so if it generally has a very strong alcohol taste. Strong to me in my mind is like vodka, whiskey (obviously I'll think it safe to assume it isn't that strong haha) where as something more comfortable is like beer or store bought wine. Thanks in advance for any information
I’ve only had mead once, and I’d best describe it (or at least the one I tried) as cozier, easier to drink wine with a honey flavor. And, I’m assuming based on how it’s made, the one I had was not dry at all. Im not sure the terminology, but it was not dry on the tongue and the alcohol taste was practically nonexistent, or at the very least less than the honey flavor. So the flavor of honey and wine, but the mouth feel of cider, I’d describe it to be! I hope my one experience helps any!
@@Stephfven that does help thanks for the explanation, that sounds pretty good then. Yeah there is a lot of terminology involved haha a lot to learn at first but definitely seems interesting
@@DiabloSinzKX
My brother in christ..
You cannot taste the alcohol if it's 10% - 12% , Vodka is 40% - 50% .
@@jad2290 God bless
@@jad2290 the alcohol still affects the taste though. a non-alcoholic beer tastes noticeably different from a normal beer
1:57 Or if you are Romanian😂
Methanol poisoning is real but it's not caused by homemade alcohol produced by traditional methods. Attempting to increase yields by using methylated spirits (which have added methanol) at any point in the distillation or bottling process is the usual cause. Methanol can't actually be separated from ethanol, since it's not just about boiling point.
THIS IS THE ONLY TRUE COMMENT I'VE SEEN HERE. The video and other comments are dangerously misleading!
We do methanol by seprating it from ethanol. Its 2 degrees differ
Society: minors shouldn't drink alcohol!
15 year old me: binging videos on how to make my own homemade wine
The thing is, its real, a lot of people have ended blind by drinking whatever came out first while distilling, at least here in southamerica.
This is wrong. Methanol does not increase during distillation. The water is just just removed from the alcohol solution, the amount stays the same though. If you could drink it undistilled you can drink it distilled. The only 2 exceptions are if you theoretically would drink only the „head alcohol“ and if you stretch it with rubbing alcohol. When people get blind of moonshine its only due to the fact that it was stretched with other chemicals.
It's still not a bad idea to dump that little bit that comes out first.
@@KarolOfGutovo yeah because the taste is horrible and there are other chemicals in it that will give you a hangover the next day.
That's right I have drink quite a bit of moonshine after 82 years I still see good
Sir, is it also possible to just open the jar and stir every day instead of airlock?
I believe you can (don’t quote me) but it’s generally avoided as pressure could build up quick, or even worse, you can introduce contaminants and bacteria to your home brew.
The more you open the thing, the more likely you are to contaminate shit. An airlock is usually dirty cheap, just get one.
@@lucastonoli3256 ye but than i need to buy a jar that can hold the airlock, or can i just cut hole in a jar?
@@levimulder2334
You can use a balloon
@@levimulder2334 What are you using? Ideally it should be glass, either a bottle or a big jar. There are airlocks for mason jars and many other containers.
This is why "removing the head" process is important in alcohol disillation. It is because the methanol always come out first when the fermented liquid is boiled.
Very educational! Thank you for the run down on that. I only learned abt methanol poisoning from some TH-cam video about chemical rankings lol. Also, I love to see you're using honey from Savannah Bee Company!! I was Just thinking abt using their honey to try this out whenever I have the time 😊
Fermentation methods are pretty cool though, its vastly simple in some cases when soda or juice is converted into alcohol.
I was explaining my friend why moonshine was hazardous... Did a bad explanation. I will send her this video
I recall being in Russia in the early 90s and was given some vodka to drink, served from a Stoli bottle that hadn't been cracked until then, that left all six of us with a halo around bright lights and the most toxic headache I have ever had, both symptoms persisted for three or four days. Come the weekend I read that sixty people had died in Moscow as a result of methanol in bootleg Russian vodka in the previous four days. It's horrible and if there had been four of us rather than six we would probably had ended up hospitalised and possibly dead, instead of just wishing we were.
This is absolutely true. A guy I dated his buddy got blind from homemade alcohol
another thing he missed is distillation can be explosive/flamable if any gaseous alcohol or methanol leaks. It's not too hard to isolate methanol though as it has a boiling point roughly 5C lower than alcohol so anyone decent with chemistry can isolate it. If you do isolate it you should keep it and try making aerogel which is a substance that is 3X more thermally insulating than styrofoam.
Yeah just casually make aerogel right, LMFAO, do you have any idea how hard it actually is to do that on your own
@@yossarian00 NileRed did it on his own in a couple months the first try, albeit with some crack, but the 2nd batch that follows was almost flawless.
So it should be possible for you too to do it, but it take a lot more than just methanol and also need a lot of expensive equipment, but should be possible for anybody with internet access to replicate it.
Um, with a boiling point only 5*C lower, ethanol and methanol create an azeotrope incredibly easily. At no point can you boil off methanol without having at least some ethanol come through.
@@XiaZhe is literally in a professional lab with equipment the average person doesn't have
@@JohnSmith-j2j pro or not, all his gear can easily be bought online.
thank you! I always wanted to start making my own beer but was too afraid of all the rumors I heard about going blind from messing up on home made alcohol. so thanks for clearing up that misunderstanding.
Bootleggers distilled WOOD FUMES and sold that, it's why methanol is also known as wood alcohol, it has nothing to do with regular brewing.
This is true for the most part, regular fermentation can produce methanol at dangerous levels but as he said in perfectly controlled environments it cant....homebrew fermentation would likely produce methanol in cases of contamination by other microbes. So always sterlize everything as mentioned
Along with that if the fermentation seems off, it's best to not consume it for this very reason.
Menthol, methanol same difference. Pa said I have at least a 50 percent chance to get minty moonshine
@@JoeFromThatPlaceIDK if you are joking or not but menthol and methanol are two completely different chemicals
What I have understood from news around the world is that fatal poisonings mainly occur when people try to separate ethanol from denaturated industrial alcohol by distillation. Some denaturing agents are downright poisonous. Most of them are hard or impossible to remove by simple distillation. But having said that, this video is a good reminder of proper procedures during ordinary alcohol distillation from mash/wash. Throw away the foreshot and maybe part of the heads too. Just a note that fermented fruit and berries can very well be distilled, not just beet/grain/potato alcohol. Think of brandy for instance.
A lot of the information in this video is wrong. When fermentation alcohol two types are produced, methanol and ethanol. As the video stated, consuming methanol can cause serious damage to your body such as blindness and even death if consumed in high enough quantities. This is due to our liver processing methanol into formic acid which, when it enters into the blood stream, can damage the optic nerve and brain.
HOWEVER, when we consume methanol and ethanol together, enzymes in the liver prefer to metabolise the ethanol first. This greatly slows down the process of turning the methanol into formic acid, hence reducing the amount of formic acid present in the blood, preventing damage to the body. This is important to remember.
Since significantly more ethanol is produced during fermentation compared to methanol, it is essentially impossible for methanol poisoning to occur when consuming homemade alcohol. This means that even if you distill your alcohol it will not increase the likelihood of you suffering methanol poisoning since, despite popular belief, the ration of ethanol to methanol will remain the same.
This brings me to another point. Many people believe that ethanol and methanol can be separated since methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol. This often results in home distillers discarding what is called the “foreshot”. This is basically the first 100ml or so of liquid which is collected during the distillation process. While discarding the foreshot does allow you remove any unpleasant tasting fusel oils, it will not allow you to remove the methanol. This is because the ratio of ethanol to methanol present in the home brew results in an azeotrope which makes them inseparable through conventional means. So any methanol that does boil over in the foreshot will also be combined with ethanol.
To conclude. Wether you are fermenting or distilling. If basic safety measures are followed, methanol poisoning should not be a concern. And despite what people will tell you, ethanol and methanol cannot be separated without an industrial scale plate still. However, distilling is still a very dangerous process and should only be done with proper licensing and experience. Please follow your government’s laws and advice around distilling.
Living in the South, friends warned people me to know my moonshiner. Bad equipment, they said, was the danger, especially galvanized metals for things like the tub the mash was boiled in. Moonshine is most dangerous when made in large volume for profit because of maximizing amounts just to sell more.
This is what happened to people (alcoholics) in Glasgow Scotland in the 40/50s. Plus a lot of people have lost their lives, alcohol is a dangerous thing.
you do understand that distilation comes after fermentation, and methanol isnt produced in destilation but during fermentation.
its missleading at best, but really its disingenuous
Drank Chacha in Georgia Republic. It was a good homemade hooch but after 3 or 4 drinks, all 3 of us started losing our vision. It went away after about 45 minutes or so but I'd advise one to TASTE Chacha, even a couple of little sips, but drinker BEWARE and be glad there are plenty of local friends who will get you a cab back to your hotel. Stick to well distilled, known labels!
so the damage to the optic nerve is not permanent?
just remove first half pint (this varies depending on output and size of heated vessel) and then go on with the heart of the brew, many oils and stuff in that first stuff
I really never liked any alcohol I ever drank outside of Mead and Ciders anyways so cheers to that brother.
There's still methanol in that
The risk is too great for me, i don' t have any idea what I'm doing.
So I'm abandoning the project.
Thank you for posting this video.
Unless someone can give me a method to eliminate the risk.
Literally just do some more research than one TH-cam channel and stop being so paranoid
People go blind from alchohol poisioning
when methanol percentage is higher in your liquor than amout of etanol you will get poisioned and may go blind
every liquor has methanol in your local shops and percentage is low from 2-17%
Also
Etanol is cure for methanol poisioning.
Not to mention that car radiators were commonly used as condensers during prohibition. You can flush them, but there will still be enough anti-freeze residue to be toxic.
It wasn't just the residue.
Back then, radiators were built using lead solder.
So....even if they flushed out the rad properly, you would be getting a high dose of lead with each drink
What about fortifying? Is it safe to add vodka at the beginning, so that the alcohol level is higher?
At the beginning of what? If you add it at the beginning of fermenting it'll most likely kill the yeast but at the end it'll be fine
Something to note is that cases of blindness during prohibition were caused by the U.S. government adding methanol to industrial alcohol to denature it. People were getting around prohibition by consuming pure alcohol meant as fuel, so the government decided to poison the alcohol with methanol to prevent this. Except, it turned out people were too desperate for alcohol to care and consumed it anyway. Distillation itself is very unlikely to produce batches of poisoned alcohol
I really appreciate that your first 2 videos were safety videos 💪👌
I work at a brewry and a distillery. I've been wanting to learn for so long.
So could you distill mead, and make a spirit out of it? Or can you only distill fermented corn and potatoes?
You can distill anything with alcohol
Is freeze distilling it any better? Worse? Different?
Canning food can also kill you, but that's not illegal
I’ve never thought of bootleggers, moonshiners and going blind
well being a moonshiner in france i tell you a good moonshiner know very well abouts heads and methanol which is almost 10° below boiling point of alcohol so as you say you can let them escape and cap here, or throw them, i personnaly keep them in a special bottle as lighting fluid if wood's wet or for bbq's
While it shouldn’t be illegal. In anything, it’s knowledge and the mind that keeps one safe! An understand and great command of reason in what one is doing.
In Russia, home distillation is very popular, even more popular than homebrewing
But you have to home brew before you home distill or else what are you distilling
@@JohnSmith-j2j sugar, flour 🤣
What about freeze distillation? What happens to the methanol with that?
And if you use freeze distillation from palm sugar fermentation, did you still get methanol in? Is it safe?
Tks
You always have methanol. It is created by fermenting. Regular distillation removes a fair bit of it but since you can't do that with freeze distillation it will be there still
So if you put your mead in a mason jar after and boil to seal them does that count as distillation?
No?
Also you don't need to seal it if it's finished fermenting. 😊
Recreational distilling may be illegal but many still do it and there are minimal issues. New Zealand actually allows home distilling and there haven't been too many problems. It is only illegal here as it is a shadow of prohibition era politics. There are a few states decriminalizing it much so like weed so I hope to see more of that in the future. If anyone would like to learn more watch Still it which is a channel about turning distilling into a hobby.
Just get rid of the first 10 ml per a gallon of liquor. That’s the part that has methanol which is called the fore shots.I recommend start at the min of 5 gals for more accurate measurement. I recommend watching a professional from youtube only if you’re at place that’s legal.
Is there any safety of what fermenting containers to choose for no toxins infuse into it like avoiding BHP plastics?
glass
Like the last comment said just stick to glass
Is it true that Sugar Wash does not produce methanol in fermentation? (I guess it's becoming popular to ferment Vodka out of these days)
- asking for a friend who is in a place where recreational distillation is completely legal
I'd love to hear some more informed opinions about this, but my understanding is that the risk of distillation and methanol poisoning is actually really low. You'd have to deliberately collect the heads from a number of distillation runs purposely, combine them, then drink only that.
As I understood it, the real risk of blindness comes not from distillation per se, but instead from people cutting corners and distilling things like wood that have a much higher methanol concentration.
Im new to this so im very confused. So i got some apple juice and mixed it with golden caster sugar and fast action bread yeast then ive left it in a plastic bottle at room temerature with the lid loose, there wont be any problems with too much menthanol right?
I'll stop when I need glasses 😂
How many milliliters of heads to remove from a 5 gallon batch?
I was told that the bootleggers (at least ones that didn't care about their customers) would add things like wood alcohol that was the problem.
Meanwhile in WV: **stumbles over mountain of empty quart jars**
The treatment for methanol poisoning is ethanol
would it be a diferens when you make mead with freash yeast then yeast that come with the packed or is it the same
Any different yeast you use will create different taste and abv
Hey Golden Hive Mead, please do a commentary video on master mead maker KingCobraJFS!
Bro where you getting clear clarets from 😢 I swear nobody in aus supplies them
I once got dangerously close to dying from consuming illegal moonshine that I stole when I was 16
23 now and I've made my own baijiu
Why would you want to make that? It taste like straight vomit
The distilling bit is quite....uneducated. Just make sure to take your foreshots and there will not be any methonol. (That is to say, just throw out like the first 1/3 of the stuff coming off the still. Methanol is produced when the still is coming up to temperature. It will not be later when the stuff is hotter.) It is a safe rule to go by as you are not going to be drinking the heads anyway and unless you are taking so called "faints" to use in a next bath, you are not trying to get heads anyway. You ideally take the output into small parts and taste it to see what you like, combining the bits at the end into a product you like (some people like some tails in it.) Just throw out the first bit that comes off and you are always safe. Because that is how basic physics works.
People, because it is illegal and thus hard to get info on, believe a lot of misconceptions on distilling, but there are a few channels that talk about it heavily on TH-cam, like Still It, and several other hobbyist channels that demystify a lot of common misconceptions about it.
Want to know why it is illegal really? Because liquor companies lobby various governments, so they don't have competition. The craft beer market exploded after brewing was made legal. They don't want that, so every year, distillers make trips to Washington to make sure senators never make it legal, paying them huge amounts of money and giving them tons of alcohol to keep it illegal. So they don't have competition. Fun stuff. It is not because it is dangerous. It is no more dangerous than a toaster is if you cram 10 slices of toast in it and crank it to the hottest. Use common sense, read like, any info on the subject, and you will be fine. Which, to be fair, people do. It is just not talked about a lot since, again, people fear getting in trouble with the law and, as a result, misconceptions continue. Fight ignorance with education. Can't do that easily when shit is illegal. And that sucks. It is a very fun hobby that you can get into for very, very cheap ($300 or less for equipment) and it is such a crying shame it is not supported more.
I used to think methanol could be thrown out in foreshots too when I started distilling. That was until I joined a moonshiner subreddit. There’s a pinned community post that cleared up and educated me about the whole methanol concern. it’s a little more complicated and not the basic physics that we are told. That notion that foreshots contains all the methanol is a widely perpetuated myth that comes from the assumption that since water, ethanol and methanol have different boiling points they can be separated at different points of the distillation. Those boiling points are only consistent when they are being boiled separately. Theres a paper written by the European Commission from 1996, the study was done to find a way to reduce methanol in distillation runs from the commercial brandy industry. The study essentially showed if methanol is in the wine/mash it’ll be present throughout the entire run. It additionally found that the behaviors of the boiling points between methanol and ethanol are affected by water.
op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/0b908be6-2673-45a5-8c2f-b3b6abc1aa37
Here’s and excerpt from the study
:
A similar behaviour would be expected for methanol for both alcohols are not very different in molecule structure. There is, however, a significant difference regarding all three curves in figure 2: methanol contents keep a
higher value for a longer time than ethanol contents. In figures 3 and 4 this observation is made clear: Methanol, specified in ml/100 ml p.a., increases during the donation, while the ratio ethanol : methanol is lowering down. This effect seems to be rather surprising regarding the different boiling points of the two substances: methanol boils at 64,7°C, while ethanol needs 78,3°C. So methanol would be regarded to be carried over earlier
than ethanol. The molecule structures however, show another aspect: ethanol has got one more CH2-group which makes the molecule less polar. So, concerning polarity, methanol can be ranged between water and ethanol and has therefore in the water phase a distillation behavior different from ethanol. This may explain the behaviour which is rather
contrary to the boiling points. This is no single appearance, because for example ethylacetate with a boiling point of 77 °C, or, as an extreme case, isoamylacetate with 142 °C are even carried over much earlier than methanol. Therefore methanol can not be separated using pot-stills or normal
column-stills. Only special columns can separate methanol from the
distillate (4.3). Similar observations concerning the behaviour of methanol during the distillation have already been made by Röhrig (33) and Luck(34). Cantagrel (35) divides volatile components into eight types concerning “ distillation behaviour characterized by typical curves, which were
mainly confirmed by our experiments. As for methanol, he claims an own type of behaviour during the distillation corresponding to our results.
Here’s a link to the post of subreddit too: reddit.com/r/firewater/s/LkPUcp2us7
Totally agree about what you’ve said about the hobby being illegal for the sake of money. If you’re interested about why the public have been taught to be scared of methanol look up the Prohibition Chemists War.
Anyways cheers, happy stillin bro
What about the potential fire hazard? Is it propaganda too or a result of moonshiners using banged up together stills made out of scrap?
@@mr.strugglesnuggle6668 It is as much of a fire hazard as anything flammable. I think you watched a bit too much TV if you think that.
@@tygonmaster I think that you should drink less moonshine and work more on your reading comprehension, pal. I was very clearly asking you a question and not making a statement.
@@mr.strugglesnuggle6668 You do you, friend.
If you let the yeast breathe, then the ammount of methanol produced should be lower. I tried this, by using a sealed vessel to make beer, and then I made a batch without sealing the vessel, and the unsealed one you can drink all day and the next and the next etc.. and it tastes better.
I also distilled some and realized part of the "head" is methanol, and some is likely Diethylamine.... the first part of the head is banana flavored, and makes white sparks when burned, the other, methanol, burns the shit out of your tongue, and burns with a very hot blue flame.
alcohol is worse than sugar. it could cause diabetic and eventually lead to blindness. it doesn't matter its homemade or store bought. drink in moderation.
pretty sure the main reason to be wary of distilling without skill is more explosions than vision loss
My garndfather destilled for decades (legal here). he just spills the first bit (you cnat sell it tho without checkups).
Don't home distill even if you somehow don't care about going blind. Methanol poisoning can be lethal.
Home distilling is actually incredibly safe if you do more than five minutes of research
Being able to distil properly has nothing to do with being a professional, and everything to do with taking the proper care and precautions when doing something potentially dangerous. It's not rocket science, it's building up a body of working knowledge you can draw from to do things properly.
Lol, I have been home fermenting as well as home distilling for years. I have yet to have anyone or even myself to have an adverse effect from my alcohol other than a slight hangover from consuming too much. As long as safety steps are taken home brews and spirits are perfectly safe for consuming. Too many OLD rumors and videos such as this that dont give the whole story or at least an accurate reason for the adverse effects of ANY alcohol, commercial or home made.
Isnt it illegal to distillate alcohol without a permit???
In most of the us yes
You need to drink a good bit of methanol to go blind, a bigger concern in the bootlegging days was distilling liquor through car radiators which were, unsurprisingly, lined with lead and other toxic metals.
But its the same amount of methanol... the amount doesnt increase through distillation so why is fermented wine/beer okay. Say i have a 12oz bottle of beer wirh X amount of methanol. And its distilled down to say 6oz and all the alcohol including the methanol makes it over to the 6oz. So in both each has X amount, why should i think that thebhokebrew is safe
Yeees you're right, but the quantities are different. If you were to distill a single liter of wine, that would be totally fine, but distilling, say, the equivalent 500 liters of wine would mean the first few bottles filled in the distillation process would contain most of the methanol from the 500 liters of fermented product. Methanol boils at 65°C and ethanol boils at 78°C.
Not only are the quantities of methanol in fermented drink safe, ethanol is an antidote to methanol.
Actually recreatuonal distilation is illegal in the US and in some parts of the world, in Europe I know it'sok as long as you make small batches and you don't sell anything
Maybe in specific countries in europe that is the case but its not the general rule or anything
Can you make mead with coffee?
I feel like this isn't the answer you're looking for, but you could ferment coffee cherries. That would technically make wine though.
Thanks for the knowledge
The bootleggers didn't just not worry about removing the heads, they would bottle as liquor came off the still so the first bottles had concentrated the methanol of the whole batch.
Whoa... okay tbis wild. Theres am old term used for moonshine called white lighting becasue if affected the eyes. Makes sense. And even more crazg is that ive hadsome home made moonshine once. And it was strooooong. I remember it stung my eyes and i took my first sip. I didn't go blind bit all this makes sense now
That is not why it's called white lightning
Me casually asking: "can you make alcoholic beverage at home?"
This video pops up.
Guess it is a no....
Fun fact: ethanol is the cure for methanol poisoning 😂
Making moonshine is simple now, since all the blind people pioneered us forward...
Turned my dad's still, into a planter for aloe Vera. Be surprised how fast it propagated too!
That is honestly a tragedy
Fermented alcohol
Tax money is the only to make home distillation illegal. Everyone knows about throwing away heads and tails.
let´s go wine.
You're just a Trolle! My boys cobra Mead is gonna be lit! TWU!!
so there is no danger if I make wine or bear? Only when I make distilled it's dangerous
Distillation is not dangerous, it's a myth from the probation era that this guy believes in
Something I'd come up with a while ago is ethanol is edible and methanol will meth you up
So no head? 🤳🛹 1:33