Summary |
Will home-distilled alcohol make me go blind ? Not if you're carefull. This pervasive question is due to moonshine lore, which abounds with myths of blindness, but few actual documented cases. The concern is due to the presence of methanol (wood alcohol), an optic nerve poison, which can be present in small amounts when fermenting grains or fruits high in pectin. This methanol comes
off first from the still, so it is easily segregated and discarded.
A simple rule of thumb for this is to throw away the first 50 mL (reflux still) you collect (per 20 L mash used), or 100-200 mL from a pot still. There is no safe way of denaturing methylated spirits. The other impurities, which form the tails (known as cogeners or fusel oils) are quite a complex collection, but mostly just smell/taste bad rather than are actually unsafe towards you. |
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