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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • The danger comes from the distilling, which concentrates the miniscule methanol to dangerous levels. When I learned distilling, I was taught to throw away the first half cup or so to reduce methanol. In reality, methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol, so you get mostly methanol in that first few shots due to the still warming up, but overall it’s negligible. In a well controlled environment, it’s technically possible to separate the two via this fractional distillation, but it’s not something those early moonshiners really knew about.

    In summary, I see home distillation in the same light as picking wild mushrooms: you really have to know what you’re doing. As always, regulation and education is the answer here.