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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

Cider makers could maybe provide me with a clue...

I understand apple pectin (or fruit pectins in general) have methoxy groups, and these can lead to production of methanol. Is this a concern in cider making, and are there steps cider makers take to minimize this production?

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I have not made enough cider and mead to be called a 'cider maker' in any sense but the most literal, and neither am I a chemist, so what I know about this is mostly from reading books and following others' advice. The way I understand it, all fermented drinks have methanol, including all your store-bought wines. They just have very little and it's distributed uniformly so the point at which it becomes it a health risk is way beyond the point where other things would be problems before the methanol (that's a roundabout way of saying - if you drink something like 20 liters of wine, the methanol in those 20 liters will probably not be your most pressing concern). Methanol only becomes a problem when it's concentrated, i.e. in distilled drinks. When you distill, you separate the methanol by throwing away the first part of your distilled result (probably has a proper name, I've never distilled anything myself), because the methanol evaporates before the other alcohols, the ones you actually want to capture.

Correct, pretty much anything fermented will have methanol if it has any pectin. Luckily the cure to methanol toxicity is ethanol so as long as the concentration is organic and not poisoned by industrial methanol, it’s perfectly safe.

The only drink you could theoretically get poisoned from is fermented orange juice but it’s pretty much unheard off outside of prohibition-era denaturing.

> probably has a proper name

"Head" or "head product", vs. "heart" for the desired fraction.

https://www.barisonindustry.com/en/news/methanol-what-it-is-...

Pomace is often treated with a pectic enzyme, not out of concern for methanol levels, but usually to enhance pressing yield of juice. Otherwise, it’s also sometimes used as a fining agent.

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