Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi there, I have been making really good scotch with the TPW and oak chips. Well at least to me that is. My drink tastes good, is good on the nose and has a great colour to it but the problem is that my mates and girlfriend are scared to drink it because they saw some TV docco about people going blined from drinking moonshine in America.

I have reflux still and when I used to do the turbo runs I used to get rid of the foreshots. Now that I am doing TPW I make harsh cuts so I am pretty sure I or anybody who drinks my hooch is gonna go blind. The problem is that I am not able to explain why my hooch is different that the ones that makes you go blind. I know some people say that they add methanol to make cheap spirits but was that also the case in the old days ?

Could methanol end up coming out of still at 65 degress and make me go blind if I use the TPW, Turbo, Wheat Bix wash?

Sorry if this is a really noob question I just don't know who to ask. The guy at the home brew shop mention that the stuff that makes you blind is from bad sugars like bananas..

Cheers

Hey mate 5 things
1. From what I've read and heard sugar washes like a tpw don't produce much methanol like a fermented fruit wash would
2. Methanol is a lighter molecule than ethanol so will boil off first always , so with harsh cuts you can cut the problem out there and then
3. The body can handle SMALL amounts of methanol
4. If everyone else doesn't want to drink it then just sit back sipping your delightfully cheap and tasty drink while they pay a fortune for their store bought crap
5. My mum said something else would send me blind and it hasn't yet! :laughing-rolling:

They'll figure it out after you've been consuming for ages with no (long lasting) ill effects.
If they don't, well, sucks to be them.

Could you please repost this in braille :teasing-tease: I can't read it 8-}

If they're asking what's different about your hooch from the stuff that makes you go blind, ask them what's the difference between your stuff and store bought alcohol... essentially nothing. Same process. Same ingredients (maybe simplified in the case of sugar washes a bit). Same result.

Another case of the poorly informed (no offence to your friends & girlfriend). Yes, poorly made alcohol can contain toxins, but then there is thread after thread on sites like this about removing heads, not using raw brass, bad ingredients, etc etc.

If you're running your still nice and easy, and making good cuts, which im sure you are it will have far less toxins (methanol, acetone, other nasties etc) than pretty much all store bought alcohol. There was a detailed study done on this recently. Hell, with a tpw you can probably do no cuts and still not get methanol poisoning from drinking it, dont try it though lol. Though it would be harsh as fuck and taste like shit. Some of my mates/ family are the same. More for me :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Have a read of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol

Know your enemy as they say,
By taking out the first 150mL you would be getting rid of 99.8% of the methanol in your wash if not more.
and then by discarding heads you will be taking out at least another 0.18%

Remind your doubters that they would normally drink beer and wine without question (which is essentially the same as one of your washes) which still has all the methanol still in it.
Why would yours make you blind?

Fruits with high levels of Pectin will produce higher levels of methanol when used in a mash, pears are high in pectin for example, you can use pectinase to convert the pectin into a more usable sugar which will then reduce the amount of methanol produced.

There were a few stories most recently from bali about methanol poisoning in the news, and it was determined to be from the intentional addition of methanol rather than from the wash.

xcvator wrote:Could you please repost this in braille :teasing-tease: I can't read it 8-}

hahaha gold!

i think the blindness and alcohol/moonshine consumption comes from prohibition era.
There are 3 theories behind this:
1) distillers in the day didn't know how to remove methanol from the product (which i think is rubbish)
2) it was legal to produce wood/industrial alcohol. the bootleggers stole this alcohol and sold it for people to drink- which i think is very likely.
3) the government contaminated alcohol they found from bootleggers OR they release their own contaminated alcohol- which i think is plausible (the only read I say this is because i have heard about Operation Northwoods etc and like a plausible conspiracy haha)

Cure for methanol poisoning is ethanol. So unless your drinking straight foreshots then any small residue of methanol would be overcome by the ethanol (the alcohol you want)

northernbrewer wrote:Cure for methanol poisoning is ethanol. So unless your drinking straight foreshots then any small residue of methanol would be overcome by the ethanol (the alcohol you want)

There is truth to the use of ethanol as a treatment for methanol poisoning.... ethanol is not a prophylactic... it will not prevent methanol poisoning... no amount of methanol is to be ingested if you care for your health.... hard cutting is the only answer. I have built a business based on very hard cut spirits, the reputation earned is more than compensation for the cost of hard cutting.... Many of the poisons are cumulative in their effect when taken in small regular doses... how well you cut will determine whether you see the inside of a renal ward in 20 years ...or not.... Please cut hard until you know your still and congeners backwards.
Cheers
Doc

Thanks all - I really appreciate the response on this one. I think it is just a stigma about home distilling. Some people just watched those prohibition era doccos and got the wrong idea.

There's also this one on Uganda's moonshine epidemic

Media has a huge influence. people believe what they see on the news and they shouldnt

I dont know why you are complaining. Means you get to drink more of your glorious TPW and Oak Chip hooch (I use some chips in a white paper'like container named Jack Daniels)

I would highly recommend making good cuts for hearts, even (some would say especially) with TPW. You WILL notice the difference.

perroloko wrote:
There's also this one on Uganda's moonshine epidemic

great video....am I the only one who now wants to have a go at making some Waragi...?

perroloko wrote:Thanks all - I really appreciate the response on this one. I think it is just a stigma about home distilling. Some people just watched those prohibition era doccos and got the wrong idea.

There's also this one on Uganda's moonshine epidemic

:think: see, to me that just looks like a great tourism ad :laughing-rolling: :obscene-drinkingdrunk:
But fermented bananas, no cuts.... :puke-huge:
Think they need some edjamcation on foreshots.

read somewhere that bananas are one fruit you need to be careful with...lots of methanol apparently :handgestures-thumbdown: