In Norway alcohol is very expensive, so many people distill at home illegally.
Every travel guide tells you to not accept home-distilled drinks, since they can be poisonous.
Every travel guide tells you to not accept home-distilled drinks, since they can be poisonous.
Edit: only one way round! This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor. I am not your doctor or drinking doula.
> Ethanol is the most commonly used antidote to block the metabolising of methanol. Ethanol works by competing with the metabolic breakdown of methanol, thereby preventing the accumulation of toxic byproducts.
MSF: https://methanolpoisoning.msf.org/en/for-health-professional...
I can see the ambiguity of my comment. I was trying to phrase as a riddle but can be interpreted both ways.
Ethanol can be used as a temporary measure in methanol poisoning as it temporarily outcompetes methanol in the metabolic process. So it's only useful until proper medical help arrives when better alternatives such as fomepizole are administered. Even then there is no guarantee of success.
Methanol is still metabolized to dangerous formaldehyde and formic acid by the liver's alcohol dehydrogenase. The logic of giving ethanol or fomepizole is to slow down the rate of production methanol's dangerous metabolic byproducts so less damage is done, nevertheless those dangerous metabolites are still produced.
Ethanol's first-pass metabolite is acetaldehyde and it is still toxic but not to the same degree as those of methanol.
It is incorrect to say ethanol is an antidote for methanol poisoning. Using ethanol is a last-ditch stand to try and take some minor control of an otherwise out of control situation. There's nothing subtle about it—it's a blunderbuss approach that often doesn't work well because replacing one poison with a less toxic one is a pretty hit-and-miss process.
Antidotes counteract poisons, that's not what happens when you give ethanol in methanol poisonings.
If you want to claim the link and source are in another castle, I'm not playing games.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1306022/
> A 10% ethanol solution administered intravenously is a safe and effective antidote for severe methanol poisoning. Ethanol therapy is recommended when plasma methanol concentrations are higher than 20 mg per dl, when ingested doses are greater than 30 ml and when there is evidence of acidosis or visual abnormalities in cases of suspected methanol poisoning.
> 7.4.2. Ethanol A therapeutic blood ethanol level of about 22 mmol/L (100 mg/dL) is recommended.
...
>If ethanol was coingested with methanol and the blood ethanol level initially was >22 mmol/L (100 mg/dL), the bolus dose of ethanol can be skipped.
It's like you didn't even read your own source.
They are calling it recommended for certain conditions, and saying you can skip parts of treatment for co-ingestion!
Then in the conclusions section
> Despite its extensive use, methanol poisoning remains a critical public health concern globally, often resulting from accidental or intentional ingestion and outbreaks linked to contaminated beverages.
They've called out contaminated beverages, not outputs of distillation.
You've been had by misinformation and now you're peddling lies.
Who cares if dangerous metabolites are "still produced" when the danger has been limited? It's like claiming that blood transfusions don't help with shock because the patient still lost the same amount of blood.
> Using ethanol is a last-ditch stand to try and take some minor control of an otherwise out of control situation.
This is some weird-ass over-elaborate synonym for antidote.
> There's nothing subtle about it—it's a blunderbuss approach that often doesn't work well because replacing one poison with a less toxic one is a pretty hit-and-miss process.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. This all reads like AI slop.
> Antidotes counteract poisons, that's not what happens when you give ethanol in methanol poisonings.
You literally give it to them to counteract the poison. You're using a idiosyncratic version of the word "counteract," which doesn't relate to the health or survival of the person poisoned, but has a lot to do with the absolute levels of "dangerous metabolites produced."
I did not say or infer that ethanol should not be used in the treatment of methanol poisoning.
Giving ethanol to counteract methanol poisoning is not a simple fix like giving naloxone for a herion OD (which works effectively in minutes), it's more complicated and often involves multiple procedures such as hemodialysis and strict monitoring of ethanol levels (assuming one knows what that level should be, ipso facto, how much methanol was consumed and whether it was coconsumed with ethanol—facts often not readily available in an emergency department).
I suggest you read this, especially point 7 'Treatment': https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/12/12/924
The almost flippant assumption that ethanol is a fix all panacea for methanol poisoning by many who've posted here is just irresponsible. Fact is methanol OD is a major medical emergency and in no way should it be played down.
If I have to be the bringer of unwelcome truths then so be it. Shooting the messenger generally makes things worse.
It's almost impossible to avoid ingesting some alcohol during the course of a natural diet, and that includes if you avoid fermented food such as bread, let alone beverages deliberately brewed to be alcoholic.
Gemini says this:
"Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, spirits) meant for consumption. While ethanol is safe for moderate consumption, methanol is extremely toxic and can cause poisoning, blindness, or death, even in small amounts."
I've been doing it for about 20 years, no poisoning cases yet. Home distillation has been legal in NZ since 1996.
Methanol is really only present in significant amounts in fruit mashes because it comes from fermentation of pectin. Grain or sugar-derived alcohol barely has any at all.
The foreshots you throw out do have things that taste bad and which you would not want to drink much of, but even if you mixed it all back in and got drunk, it would be the same amount of all of those chemicals you’d get if you just drank the mash, which is itself basically just beer or wine.
We distillers are a lot more likely to burn our house down than any other form of injury.
Please do find those papers! They may be describing a radical new chemistry that I'm not familiar with.
To be clear - methanol boils at 64C and ethanol boils at 78C. Are you suggesting that in standard distillation, there is still some non-trace methanol coming over at 78C? If I personally observed that in a laboratory setting, I'd quickly assume measurement error or external contamination.
I don't think so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotrope_tables
methanol and ethanol do not form an azeotrope with each other, they only (both, each) bind to water. that's why separation of methanol and ethanol by holding key temperatures works at all.
furthermore, the azeotrope effect only becomes relevant at concentrations beyond 90% alcohol. so when you're producing pure methanol and ethanol, then distillation won't cut it beyond 90+% as water+(m)ethanol then *at these high concentrations* boil and evaporate together. that's the grain of truth in your statement.
last not least going blind from methanol is _very_ real.
It's not clear to me that simple distillation of a methanol/ethanol mixture can produce either pure ethanol or pure methanol at any point, just as it's impossible to distill ethanol and water to pure ethanol (absolute alcohol) if the water is above a small percentage of the mixture.
There is always some amount of vapor pressure, even below the boiling point of a substance. Otherwise, neither water nor alcohol would evaporate by themselves at room temperature! The temperature we call the "boiling point" is just the temperature at which the vapor pressure equals the ambient pressure.
This also matches what happens when distilling ethanol from water. You can't distill pure ethanol, but you csn distill ethanol-free water afterwards.
Right, normal commercial ethanol production is 95% EtOH, 5% H2O (the constant boiling mixture/azeotrope). That's good enough for most uses but not all. The only problem the average person would ever likely encounter from the residual H2O would be in the application of alcohol-based coatings such as shellac where it can cause whitish discoloration. Painters will occasionally use 99% EtOH which is substantially more expensive (removing that residual H2O requires an altogether different proxess).
That's not what studies have shown. Methanol boils off in all phases of distillation, and remains in high concentration at least halfway through.
It’s been a long time, but I thought there was a whole Raoult’s Law thing, about partial pressures in the vapor coming off the solution combining in proportion to each component’s molar fraction * its equilibrium vapor pressure (at that temperature, presumably). Or something.
Point being, if you’re starting with a bunch of volatiles in solution, there’d be quite a bit of smearing between fractions boiling off at any given temperature/pressure. And you’d be very unlikely to get clean fractions from a single distillation anywhere in that couple-dozen-degree range.
Probably mangled the description, but isn’t that why people do reflux columns?
If you are making brandy from clarified wine, it probably separates better than rotten grape mash.
It is still a continuum with some methanol molecules likely remaining even in the tails.
For all intents and purposes, the distiller's rule of thumb of throwing away the angels' share is still going to work because low methanol concentrations are never an issue —for the antidote for methanol is ethanol.
But anyway, I don't think there's hazardous levels left after normal distillation+cutting, the reason for not buying booze from some guy behind a barn usually has more to do with lead contamination risks.
It's probably pot still vs. reflux still. Chemists use fractionating columns to get better separation. Home distillers won't necessarily do so, so official advice has to assume they will not.
If you’re trying to get drunk cheaply, and without tasting liquor, you cannot beat the product and efficiency of a column still.
But I want my whiskey or apple brandy to have the characteristics of the mash I distill it from. A column still would reduce that.
So most home distilling is a pot still for sure.
Temperature is just an average, the individual molecules can have a higher or lower temperature and can therefore evaporate already below boiling point.
You can’t distill ethanol to higher than 95% because of the 95-5 ethanol-water azeotrope that boils at 78.2C, versus ethanol alone at 78.4C.
Methanol-water and methanol-ethanol don’t form an azeotrope so if properly done you can separate methanol via distillation.
From what I remember, the highest concentration of methanol is in the tails. That should tell you everything.
*EDIT* Found the paper
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/0b9...
Think of it this way: ethanol boils at 78.5. Water at 100. But when I’m distilling, the first stuff out of the still is coming out at like 80/20 ethanol to water, long before I’m near 100C. The later stuff still has some ethanol in it, even as I near 100C. (You can easily measure while distilling.)
So why would it be surprising that methanol behaved that way as well?
do you mean distills? decanting is just pouring carefully
TBH, your assertion reads like chemistry word salad. It doesn’t parse.
As distillation continues the concentration of methanol drops.
The highest concentration is at the start. This is also generally full of undesirable flavours.
People also forget that ethanol competitively inhibits metabolism of methanol in a way that protects healthy adults from toxicity.
A safe alcoholic drink can have methanol in it, iirc it's about 80:1 ethanol:methanol by EU rules. And generally considered tolerable [0].
What is actually toxic is much higher ratios of methanol than that.
Unless you have severely f'd up your fermentables you shouldn't even have that much methanol in the starter!
This is why everyone is disagreeing with the safety in this thread.
It's also why people wonder why so many tourist destinations have been mixing methanol into alcoholic drinks. They probably could serve drunk people high concentrations relying on ethanol already in their blood and follow up drinks to stop noticeable harm.
Probably most adults could drink 5-10% methanol (if ethanol is about 50%) and never notice the toxicity.
As opposed to the crowd sobering up and leaving.
But also I believe the bar (staff) often genuinely don't know what their serving is harmful.
I should have added the limit to safety at low levels of methanol is actually that your body processes ethanol much faster than methanol. So it's more that the crowd goes home and then hours later (once ethanol has been cleared) the methanol finally is picked up by the enzymes that makes it toxic. If they stay drunk (on ethanol) for days the methanol might have been excreted before being toxified.
So maybe the answer is water down the shots of your obviously drunk customers.
TBH, I also had to do my own bit of googling because I barely drink alcohol to begin with, but it does look like "at the start", it's not very distinguishable from ethanol in taste and in effect.
Whatever subtle differences exist between them are probably unnoticeable to people who are already drunk, not to mention drinking cocktails with all sorts of other flavors mixed in.
You shouldn't buy those, terribly expensive. Oh I don't really drin... Used to be a chap in here all the time, made his own, beautiful stuff. Ok well like I say I'm not rea... I can sell you everything you need, you should make your own gin, much cheaper. Oh, so did you drink his stuff too? Nah I'd never touch it. What but you said it was beau... Yeah he drank it and died.
Definitely up on the list of bizarre interactions I've had here.
This is not just question of "more expensive country, more expensive stuff". Switzerland or Luxembourg are quite expensive, but you will buy affordable and good Italian/Spanish/French wine there, because these countries don't impose anywhere near as much taxation on wine.
It's actually relatively cheap right now, I expect a price hike soon given how much grocery prices have increased.
EDIT: Ahh! I was basing my statement on data from quite a number of years back, and just assuming prices tend to go in one direction in inflationary economies. The nuance here is that the NOK has weakened somewhat dramatically against the dollar, so relative prices aren't quite as insane now as they were in the past.
For booze above 22% ABV the tax is currently 9.23 NOK. So a 0.7 liter bottle of 40% ABV Whiskey or similar would get 258 NOK or $27 / €23 in tax.
And on top of that comes the usual 25% VAT, and high wages to our bartenders etc.
And I'll let you know that my shortest days are 4.5 hours long (with weak sunlight!). Oslo has slighly longer days still.
In many European countries you will be offered home-distilled drinks, you would be very unlucky to get anything else than hangover.
The problem is overblown.