How can moonshine cause blindness?
In: 23
As had been said, moonshine was made in backyard stills. Sometimes the joints were soldered with ordinary solder containing lead. During prohibition some drinkers actually preferred some methanol in the mix for a stronger, longer, kick. Journal articles last century included first person reports by test subjects. You can’t do that kind of research anymore.
Fermentation produces a lot of chemicals, not just ethyl alcohol (ethanol). One of the more common products is methanol, which is a different kind of alcohol, one containing one fewer carbon atom and two fewer hydrogen atoms.
This is naturally occurring in all kinds of alcoholic beverages, but when we drink non-distilled spirits, we’ll have to drink **A LOT** of the stuff to experience methanol poisoning, and ordinary unconsciousness is likely to take hold long before you’ve ingested enough methanol to cause damage.
However, distillation is a much trickier process. When you distill a wine, beer, or wash (one of the trade’s term for the pre-distilled liquid), the heat is applied and various compounds start to evaporate off. The more volatile a chemical is, the sooner it starts to boil, and then condense out of the still. Those first parts of the distillate are called ‘foreshots’ or ‘heads’, which are followed by the ‘hearts’ which is the high quality distillate, and then the ‘tails’, which includes less volatile more oily compounds coming out of the wash.
A good, careful distiller will check the specific gravity of the distillate at various stages during the run, and discard the heads and tails to produce a safe, delicious product, which matches the character of the spirit they’re trying to make. When they’re done, they blend all the parts they decided to retain together, and either sell them immediately, or flavor and age them according to the type of product they want to manufacture.
If you want to see this process in action, I *highly* recommend the channel [Still It](https://www.youtube.com/c/StillIt).
If, however, you’re an unethical criminal who merely wants to make cheap booze for people you don’t know, or you’re a rank amateur who doesn’t understand the chemistry of spirit-making, then you may decide to just bottle those heads and sell them. And now we’re off to the races.
The unfortunate fellow who imbibes that bottle will introduce methanol into their bloodstream, which their body will try to metabolize. One of the metabolites produced in breaking down the methanol is formic acid. Your body can withstand acids above a certain pH, but if they get *too low* some of your more sensitive tissues can be damaged, and one of the most sensitive organs to acidity is your optic nerve.
Also, it was not uncommon to ‘de-nature’ alcohol with methanol, so that it could be used for common industrial purposes like cleaning or paint removal or solvent or such. But during Prohibition, there were, again, criminals, who would buy these denatured spirits and either directly re-bottle them, or roughly distill them to remove the methanol, but if they did a crappy job? Bam, blindness.
There are other chemicals which can be introduced into improperly distilled spirits, of course, but methanol is the *classic*.
Yes. Fermentation produces two distinct types of alcohol. The first is ethyl alcohol aka ethanol. This is the kind you want to drink and enjoy. The other kind methyl alcohol aka methanol. When you distill the fermented mash like you do with moonshine you concentrate those alcohols. Luckily methanol is ends up passing through the still before the ethanol. Proffesional distillers call the first products from the still the “heads” even before we knew what methanol was, we knew to throw away the heads. They were dangerous. After that you get “the hearts” this is the good stuff, the ethanol. You want to keep the hearts. Finally you have “the tails” this is the last little bit of the ethanol then a bunch of other gross by-products from the fermentation. It isn’t inherently dangerous to drink the tails but it tastes disgusting.
So you have 3 products from a single run of your still. No one wants to drink the tails so that is just garbage. If you don’t make a distinction between the heads and hearts of the distillate you could accidentally have a dangerous amount of methanol in your moonshine. Only 10ml of methanol will permanently blind someone. That’s 2 of those tiny teaspoons for those more familiar. So an inexperienced moonshiner or one just trying to squeeze as much profit from a single run of moonshine can unintentionally cut off the heads when there still methanol being processed through.
Yes. Fermentation produces two distinct types of alcohol. The first is ethyl alcohol aka ethanol. This is the kind you want to drink and enjoy. The other kind methyl alcohol aka methanol. When you distill the fermented mash like you do with moonshine you concentrate those alcohols. Luckily methanol is ends up passing through the still before the ethanol. Proffesional distillers call the first products from the still the “heads” even before we knew what methanol was, we knew to throw away the heads. They were dangerous. After that you get “the hearts” this is the good stuff, the ethanol. You want to keep the hearts. Finally you have “the tails” this is the last little bit of the ethanol then a bunch of other gross by-products from the fermentation. It isn’t inherently dangerous to drink the tails but it tastes disgusting.
So you have 3 products from a single run of your still. No one wants to drink the tails so that is just garbage. If you don’t make a distinction between the heads and hearts of the distillate you could accidentally have a dangerous amount of methanol in your moonshine. Only 10ml of methanol will permanently blind someone. That’s 2 of those tiny teaspoons for those more familiar. So an inexperienced moonshiner or one just trying to squeeze as much profit from a single run of moonshine can unintentionally cut off the heads when there still methanol being processed through.
Almost always it can’t. It is very difficult to cause blindness with moonshine. I have made lots of booze, never any methanol, the first bit gets thrown out( used for cleaning stuff) anyway.
People substituting in methanol for some reason could do it. Most the stories come from when the various governments put poison into un taxed alcohol. Which they still do!
Fermentation produces a lot of chemicals, not just ethyl alcohol (ethanol). One of the more common products is methanol, which is a different kind of alcohol, one containing one fewer carbon atom and two fewer hydrogen atoms.
This is naturally occurring in all kinds of alcoholic beverages, but when we drink non-distilled spirits, we’ll have to drink **A LOT** of the stuff to experience methanol poisoning, and ordinary unconsciousness is likely to take hold long before you’ve ingested enough methanol to cause damage.
However, distillation is a much trickier process. When you distill a wine, beer, or wash (one of the trade’s term for the pre-distilled liquid), the heat is applied and various compounds start to evaporate off. The more volatile a chemical is, the sooner it starts to boil, and then condense out of the still. Those first parts of the distillate are called ‘foreshots’ or ‘heads’, which are followed by the ‘hearts’ which is the high quality distillate, and then the ‘tails’, which includes less volatile more oily compounds coming out of the wash.
A good, careful distiller will check the specific gravity of the distillate at various stages during the run, and discard the heads and tails to produce a safe, delicious product, which matches the character of the spirit they’re trying to make. When they’re done, they blend all the parts they decided to retain together, and either sell them immediately, or flavor and age them according to the type of product they want to manufacture.
If you want to see this process in action, I *highly* recommend the channel [Still It](https://www.youtube.com/c/StillIt).
If, however, you’re an unethical criminal who merely wants to make cheap booze for people you don’t know, or you’re a rank amateur who doesn’t understand the chemistry of spirit-making, then you may decide to just bottle those heads and sell them. And now we’re off to the races.
The unfortunate fellow who imbibes that bottle will introduce methanol into their bloodstream, which their body will try to metabolize. One of the metabolites produced in breaking down the methanol is formic acid. Your body can withstand acids above a certain pH, but if they get *too low* some of your more sensitive tissues can be damaged, and one of the most sensitive organs to acidity is your optic nerve.
Also, it was not uncommon to ‘de-nature’ alcohol with methanol, so that it could be used for common industrial purposes like cleaning or paint removal or solvent or such. But during Prohibition, there were, again, criminals, who would buy these denatured spirits and either directly re-bottle them, or roughly distill them to remove the methanol, but if they did a crappy job? Bam, blindness.
There are other chemicals which can be introduced into improperly distilled spirits, of course, but methanol is the *classic*.
Yes. Fermentation produces two distinct types of alcohol. The first is ethyl alcohol aka ethanol. This is the kind you want to drink and enjoy. The other kind methyl alcohol aka methanol. When you distill the fermented mash like you do with moonshine you concentrate those alcohols. Luckily methanol is ends up passing through the still before the ethanol. Proffesional distillers call the first products from the still the “heads” even before we knew what methanol was, we knew to throw away the heads. They were dangerous. After that you get “the hearts” this is the good stuff, the ethanol. You want to keep the hearts. Finally you have “the tails” this is the last little bit of the ethanol then a bunch of other gross by-products from the fermentation. It isn’t inherently dangerous to drink the tails but it tastes disgusting.
So you have 3 products from a single run of your still. No one wants to drink the tails so that is just garbage. If you don’t make a distinction between the heads and hearts of the distillate you could accidentally have a dangerous amount of methanol in your moonshine. Only 10ml of methanol will permanently blind someone. That’s 2 of those tiny teaspoons for those more familiar. So an inexperienced moonshiner or one just trying to squeeze as much profit from a single run of moonshine can unintentionally cut off the heads when there still methanol being processed through.
Fermentation produces a lot of chemicals, not just ethyl alcohol (ethanol). One of the more common products is methanol, which is a different kind of alcohol, one containing one fewer carbon atom and two fewer hydrogen atoms.
This is naturally occurring in all kinds of alcoholic beverages, but when we drink non-distilled spirits, we’ll have to drink **A LOT** of the stuff to experience methanol poisoning, and ordinary unconsciousness is likely to take hold long before you’ve ingested enough methanol to cause damage.
However, distillation is a much trickier process. When you distill a wine, beer, or wash (one of the trade’s term for the pre-distilled liquid), the heat is applied and various compounds start to evaporate off. The more volatile a chemical is, the sooner it starts to boil, and then condense out of the still. Those first parts of the distillate are called ‘foreshots’ or ‘heads’, which are followed by the ‘hearts’ which is the high quality distillate, and then the ‘tails’, which includes less volatile more oily compounds coming out of the wash.
A good, careful distiller will check the specific gravity of the distillate at various stages during the run, and discard the heads and tails to produce a safe, delicious product, which matches the character of the spirit they’re trying to make. When they’re done, they blend all the parts they decided to retain together, and either sell them immediately, or flavor and age them according to the type of product they want to manufacture.
If you want to see this process in action, I *highly* recommend the channel [Still It](https://www.youtube.com/c/StillIt).
If, however, you’re an unethical criminal who merely wants to make cheap booze for people you don’t know, or you’re a rank amateur who doesn’t understand the chemistry of spirit-making, then you may decide to just bottle those heads and sell them. And now we’re off to the races.
The unfortunate fellow who imbibes that bottle will introduce methanol into their bloodstream, which their body will try to metabolize. One of the metabolites produced in breaking down the methanol is formic acid. Your body can withstand acids above a certain pH, but if they get *too low* some of your more sensitive tissues can be damaged, and one of the most sensitive organs to acidity is your optic nerve.
Also, it was not uncommon to ‘de-nature’ alcohol with methanol, so that it could be used for common industrial purposes like cleaning or paint removal or solvent or such. But during Prohibition, there were, again, criminals, who would buy these denatured spirits and either directly re-bottle them, or roughly distill them to remove the methanol, but if they did a crappy job? Bam, blindness.
There are other chemicals which can be introduced into improperly distilled spirits, of course, but methanol is the *classic*.
Almost always it can’t. It is very difficult to cause blindness with moonshine. I have made lots of booze, never any methanol, the first bit gets thrown out( used for cleaning stuff) anyway.
People substituting in methanol for some reason could do it. Most the stories come from when the various governments put poison into un taxed alcohol. Which they still do!
Almost always it can’t. It is very difficult to cause blindness with moonshine. I have made lots of booze, never any methanol, the first bit gets thrown out( used for cleaning stuff) anyway.
People substituting in methanol for some reason could do it. Most the stories come from when the various governments put poison into un taxed alcohol. Which they still do!
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