But there's another way to concentrate alcohol, one which ISN'T illegal, DOESN'T form compounds that cause brain damage and blindness, and WON'T blow up."
This is actually the opposite of what happens in distilling vs. Jacking. The Methanol and Fusel alcohols that cause problems are a result of the fermentation, not the distilling. In distilling you can discard the "heads" and "tails" that contain these compounds in higher quantities, keeping the middle section. In Jacking you only remove water, leaving behind pretty much all the ethanol, methanol, and fusel oils which you then drink. (this is what causes the really bad headaches one reader reports).
At any rate the risk from methanol is highly overstated. The legend of "going blind" came from illegal distillers ADDING methanol to the batch to increase their profit margin, or using lead-soldered car radiators as condensing coils, etc. As long as you're using non-toxic, clean equipment you really can't make anything more dangerous than the original substance per unit of alcohol.
That being said some people try to push the fermentation REALLY hard to get the most alcohol out of their mash, which supposedly increases the amount of methanol generated. But this is a problem with the fermentation, not distilling.
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Jacking has more impurities than distilling
Date: 2008-08-13 09:36 pm (UTC)This is actually the opposite of what happens in distilling vs. Jacking. The Methanol and Fusel alcohols that cause problems are a result of the fermentation, not the distilling. In distilling you can discard the "heads" and "tails" that contain these compounds in higher quantities, keeping the middle section. In Jacking you only remove water, leaving behind pretty much all the ethanol, methanol, and fusel oils which you then drink. (this is what causes the really bad headaches one reader reports).
At any rate the risk from methanol is highly overstated. The legend of "going blind" came from illegal distillers ADDING methanol to the batch to increase their profit margin, or using lead-soldered car radiators as condensing coils, etc. As long as you're using non-toxic, clean equipment you really can't make anything more dangerous than the original substance per unit of alcohol.
That being said some people try to push the fermentation REALLY hard to get the most alcohol out of their mash, which supposedly increases the amount of methanol generated. But this is a problem with the fermentation, not distilling.