[nicoburns]

> Do you realize this ideia of poison alcohol was propaganda from the government, right?

Eh, I'm not sure about that. There are stories in the newspaper every few years about a corner stop selling cheap bootleg alcohol that has caused someone to go blind (or die) because it contained too much methanol. I for one am quite glad that alcohol production is well regulated.

[seanwilson]

> There are stories in the newspaper every few years about a corner stop selling cheap bootleg alcohol that has caused someone to go blind (or die) because it contained too much methanol. I for one am quite glad that alcohol production is well regulated.

Can you find a case of methanol poisoning for beer or wine brewing where the maker hasn't deliberately added in something extra that contains methanol (e.g. from fluids sold for industrial use)?

I find when the news reports stories like this, they bury in the story where the methanol poisoning came from so the general public are led to believe that all alcohol brewing is incredibly dangerous, including making non-distilled drinks yourself.

For example, the first link from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_inc... is https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-06/grappa-poison-william...:

"Man pleads not guilty to manslaughter and grievous bodily harm following home brew tragedy...Mr Meredith said Lynam bought methanol to use as industrial weed killer and confused it with ethanol when the home brew was made."

[nicoburns]

I haven't researched this, but all the cases I remember were vodka or a similar spirit. It may well have been because someone was adding something containing methanol.

[lowkey]

> Do you realize this idea of poison alcohol was propaganda from the government, right?

Do you realize that:

> During prohibition, the US Govt added poison to industrial alcohol to discourage consumption. People continued to drink it, so the government added more and they killed 10,000 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...

[GordonS]

Purely anecdotal, but my brother has a small (illicit) still and has walked me through the process - it's fairly simple, and neither of us can figure out how these methanol poisoning cases could happen by accident.

Simply, the "heads" (which are high in methanol) come out of the still first, so it's easy to remove them.

In addition, methanol test strips are cheap and easy to use.

[nicoburns]

I think it's probably as simple as people not caring and being careless.

[a2tech]

Discarding the heads is obviously best practices, but from discussions with serious scientifically minded distillers (ie chemists that enjoy brewing gin and artisanal vodka at home) the amount of methanol contained in the heads of your home distillation is hardly enough to harm you. In the worst cases if you consumed a significant volume it might give you a harsh headache (and this would be a truly large amount). If you were to collect the heads from several batches and drank that all in one go, you could probably make yourself sick.

Now say you're a shady corner store owner and you take some denatured alcohol or other spirits and dump it into some cheap vodka and sell it under the table as 'moonshine' or something else to make a quick buck...yeah you're going to hurt people. And not just a little. You could easily kill someone that way, or permanently damage them. But at home with your own still? You're way more likely to start a fire than you are to kill someone with your distillate. Unless you start cutting your output with other not-for-consumption spirits.

[GordonS]

Aside from removing the heads to avoid death and blindness, it's also done for flavour and aroma - they have a nasty, "chemical/solvent" smell (and I'd assume taste).

[Swannie]

Right, it's not only the methanol that you want to discard, there's acetone, and other nasties too.

[thathndude]

But you could also simply not partake right?

If I’m very sensitive to food borne illness concerns, maybe I make the choice to go to a grocery store with vacuum sealed product, versus buying at a farmers market?

Similarly, folks who want “safe” booze can buy the bottled stuff from the big boys, not the corner store swill.

Of course, the weakness in this position is that the corner store swill is often substantially cheaper, and thus disproportionately affects low income communities.

No good answers. I’m not a smoker. So I have no dog in this fight. But I can’t help but read this article with a degree of schaddenfreude and frustration. The gov’t is so poor at executing sometimes, it’s astounding.