How can moonshine cause blindness?
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There are two relevant products of fermentation you get out of making moonshine (or any alcohol, for that matter), ethanol and methanol. Ethanol is what gets you drunk, methanol is what gets you blind.
They don’t have quite the same properties as each other so methanol tends to be distilled off first. As a result, when you’re distilling alcohol it’s a good idea to discard the first bit of alcohol since that’ll be higher in methanol content. But the more you discard the less booze you end up with.
So when people are making moonshine, either as a self-made liquor or as a bootleg product sold illegally, they don’t tend to be as … robust about discarding the methanol-rich part of the distillation.
Hence, moonshine causes blindness.
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