> Hey, if we want alcohol to be made responsibly, everyone should have their own still, made from freely redistributed blueprints.
Anyone who wants to can, in fact, find blueprints for making their own still. For example, https://moonshinestillplans.com/ contains plans for a variety of different types of stills and guidance on which type to build based on how you want to use it.
And in fact I think it's good that this site exists, because it's very easy to build a still that appears to work but actually leaves you with a high-methanol end product.
it's very easy to build a still that appears to work but actually leaves you with a high-methanol end product.
Is it? I've always seen concern about methanol in moonshine but I presume it came from intentional contamination from evil bootleggers. It's difficult to get a wash containing enough methanol to meaningfully concentrate in the first place if you're making whiskey or rum. Maybe with fruit wine and hard cider there's a bit more.
The physics of distillation kind of have your back here too. The lower temperature fractions with acetone and methanol always come out first during distillation (the "heads") and every resource and distiller will tell you to learn the taste and smell, then throw them out. The taste and smell of heads are really distinctive. A slow distillation to more effectively concentrate methanol also makes it easier to separate out. But even if you don't separate the heads from the hearts, the methanol in any traditional wash is dilute enough that it'll only give you a headache.
I think it's extremely hard to build a still that appears to work but creates a high methanol end product.
there’s no reason bootleggers would attempt to deliberately kill customers, at most you can argue about potential carelessness but in contrast there was indeed one party deliberately introducing methanol into the booze supply.
Anyone who wants to can, in fact, find blueprints for making their own still. For example, https://moonshinestillplans.com/ contains plans for a variety of different types of stills and guidance on which type to build based on how you want to use it.
And in fact I think it's good that this site exists, because it's very easy to build a still that appears to work but actually leaves you with a high-methanol end product.