Comment by theodric
7 hours ago
The common knowledge about methanol being a huge risk is wildly overstated in reality, and likely continues in part because it benefits the government for people to believe strongly in the danger and continue to purchase taxed liquor. Distillation does not create new chemicals: there is methanol in your bottle of wine, and distilling that wine into brandy does not change the ratio, it only removes (primarily) water. Common distilling practice is to dispose of the highest concentrations of the most volatile components (acetaldehyde, higher alcohols). Low levels of methanol remain present in a gradient throughout the distilled product. Methanol production in fermentation is not a significant risk if you're not fermenting woody materials, and its production can be mitigated through the use of pectic enzyme. Methanol IS a risk if you're starting with cheap, untaxed denatured alcohol (ethanol+methanol+bitterants+other crap) as your input, rather than the unadulterated output of a sugar fermentation, and that is mainly what gave rise to the popular methanol folklore.
That said, don't break the law, folks. It's not worth going to prison for tax evasion over a jug of shine. You can get just as tipsy off a couple glasses of fermented supermarket apple juice, and it's legal and cheaper to boot.
Though it's harder to drink the same amount of methanol if you have to drink lots of water too, i.e. the wine has not been distilled.
I...guess. But if you're drinking enough that you exceed the safe threshold for methanol consumption through its marginal presence in the distillate, while somehow managing to tolerate the ethanol, I think you've got another more pressing issue to address.
In practice the distillate actually has less undesirable crap in it than the source wine, since one typically only keeps a part of the run from the still ("hearts") and disposes of the rest.
Or do break the law as a form of protest
W/e, I'm not your dad.
"The common knowledge about methanol being a huge risk is wildly overstated…"
Little doubt you're correct on both counts: risk of methanol ingestion isn't high and likely government worries about a likely shortfall in its coffers. But as I inferred in my comment that risk is minimal in countries with good food/health regulations. HN is read everywhere so that's not always going to be case.
You're absolutely correct about the distillation process and that small amounts of methanol exist in wine, also one's body produces small amount of both MeOH and EtOH that aren't harmful except in very rare individuals who overproduce amounts.
The problem comes when MeOH is deliberately substituted for EtOH. In such circumstances the consumer can receive hundreds of times as much MeOH as the body is used to dealing with. The liver can normally eliminate the small amounts of naturally-produced formaldehyde and formic acid metabolites produced by alcohol dehydrogenase before any damage is done but not so when large amounts are ingested. In fact, the 100 ml figure I quoted for MeOH is at the extreme end of survivability, much lower amounts often kill.
As I said, I'm not against homebrew spirits but it's easy to envisage a situation that without proper controls and a good understanding of the dangers of MeOH substitution by the lay public (together with easy ways of testing for MeOH) that unscrupulous carpetbaggers will somehow find ways of adding MeOH—unfortunately the profit motive often nukes scruples.