this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Edit: my view has been substantially altered. Due to my existing bias towards all grain mash, I hadn't considered the possibility of woody material fermentation on methanol creation. I still believe negligent adulteration is more of a risk than negligent distillation, but negligent distillation is not a totally irrelevant risk.
My investigations into home distilling convinced me that distillation doesn't convert ethanol into methanol. Moonshine poisoning is the result of adulteration of the product, (mixing it with other intoxicants) not bad distillation.
Basically sometimes people put other stuff in moonshine to reduce their costs, or give a special buzz. There's no guarantee that the adulterant to be concerned about is methanol.
Yeah, ethanol doesn't get turned into methanol by distillation. But fermentation produces both and one purpose of distillation is separating them. Thats why you have to remove the foreshot. An incompetent distiller can still cost you your eyesight or even life.
The purpose of distillation in this context is ethanol concentration. Methanol separation is possible but not really the goal.
I don't think the foreshots have a particularly higher concentration of methanol, other nasty stuff sure, but I think methanol is in pretty similar concentration to the ethanol.
My understanding is that it's people cutting the ethanol with industrial intoxicants that gets people injured/ killed. Ie people recklessly adulturing the alcohol.
The only problem I've heard of that's from distilling itself and not intentional contamination is people doing freeze distillation of ciders (skin on).
That said, most of my reading has been with respect to pot stills and grain beers, maybe fermenting fruits create more methanol than grains, I still think intentional contamination with who knows what is higher on the risk list than accidentally high methanol concentrations. But if you know of specific cases I'd be happy to read them.
If you're producing spirits it should be your goal. Especially if there is wood in the mash.
Thats wrong, methanol has a lower evaporation temperature than ethanol, thats why it's in the foreshot.
And yes, most of the time it's greedy business men mixing industrial methanol in their drinks, but there have been some cases of poisoning with self destilled alcohol in the Balkans, i.e
https://deutsch.radio.cz/methanolvergiftungen-der-slowakei-ursache-ist-tschechischer-schnaps-8337380
Sorry link is in german.
Ah my bias: I was only interested in grain mashes. My immediate reaction was, "why on earth would there be wood in your mash?" The answer is fruit stems. Methanol will be differentially in the foreshot but if you're not expecting much because you're not fermenting any wood, it's going to be low in the foreshots and very low in the hearts, but not much anywhere. BUT if you're fermenting something with woody stems, I can see that methanol removal is going to be worthy of consideration.
Not only stems, but if you just rake up your fruits and put them in a mash you get all kinds of sticks and leaves also in there. If you ever make a schnaps take care with the foreshot :)