/diy/ - Do It Yourself

wait. are you distilling and then indulging, or just indulging?

>>583483
just indulging, i dont have a still. I just want to get the poison out of this stuff first.

methanol isn't poisonous if you drink enough ethanol with it. this is why beer and vodka isn't poisonous. all the booze you buy contains a certain amount of methanol in it.

you only need to fractionally distill the methanol if you're making spirits.

OK i'm going to bed, but if you're just going to drink the cider as-is, you're fine. try to let the yeast settle to the bottom though, other wise it might upset your stomach (it upset mine)
if you're distilling, the methanol comes out first. with a batch that size, throwing away the first ounce, AKA one shot glass full, should be more than enough.
methanol becomes an issue with very large distillations. Think 1920s hillbilly moonshiner, filling up mason jars as the still runs. Since the batches were larger, so was the methanol content. The first jar cletus filled could potentially have ALL the methanol, and whichever unlucky soul purchased that jar went blind.
in cider/beer/wine form you're pretty much good to go.
>smoke alarms
as long as the steam doesn't make it up to the alarm, it will not go off. if you're very worried, just tape a plastic bag over it

>>583492
dude methanol isn't a big deal. Unless you are drinking INSANE quantities all it will do is slightly increase the odds of your head hurting and your belly rebelling in the morning. Just drink the cider. Also that blindness from shine...INTENTIONALLY POISONED BY THE GOVERNMENT in some cases to discourage drinking, and at other times it was due to using food-unsafe material for stills. Like, think China-grade distillery material. So you're fine.

#jenkup

>>583496
>you only need to fractionally distill the methanol if you're making spirits.

This doesn't make sense. If you don't remove methanol, your spirits will have the same ethanol:methanol ratio as the raw material.

>>583482
>dank smelling
That's a bad sign

>remove the methanol
That's a non-issue

>will the steam trip [smoke alarms] off
No.

>bad shine
The only way to get that to happen is if you distill a very large batch and bottle the heads(first 50ml/gal). There is no other way to get enough methanol to kill you before the ethanol does.

>>583482
You would develop alcohol poisoning before you had consumed anything near a toxic dose of methanol.

Check it out, there's methanol in all yeast fermented beverages. Yes, there's slightly more methanol produced when fermenting something high in pectin, like apples, but it's still insignificant in relation to the ethanol.

PS, your roommate is an idiot. The reason people got sick drinking prohibition moonshine is because gangsters were selling stolen or diverted industrial alcohol (read: poison) as whiskey, gin, etc.

>>583482
>methanol
>home brewing

There's not enough methanol in those to harm you even if you distilled it specifically for the methanol and drank it straight.

The whole methanol scare isn't from how you are processing or making your brew (with the exception of Grappa). It comes from illegally distilled brews who's maker has mixed in denatured alcohol in order to make the alcohol content higher.

Denatured alcohol is industrial alcohol mixed with deadly methanol. They do this to render it poisonous so they can not be taxed for consumable alcohol, among other reasons.

So, unless you put in denatured alcohol or methanol yourself, it will be safe to drink in that regard. No need to distill it.

>dank smelling

Hopefully, it isn't infected with something that will eat up the alcohol and turn it into either vinegar or bitter water.

What you need to do is worry only about the rot gut you get from drinking a brew that tastes bitter or super sour or that hasn't finished and has live yeast still running around in it. So, crash the yeast by putting it in the fridge for a few days. Let it clear as much as possible. Smell it to see if it is turning to vinegar or not. If it is, drink it asap or you'll lose it. If it never clears it most likely has a pectin haze which won't harm you, it just looks bad.

Normally, you age it to let the nastier flavors mellow out and disappear (6 months). However, you probably just want to get drunk so drink up.

>>583496
>methanol isn't poisonous if you drink enough ethanol with it

This is an outright ignorant lie. Do not take this info as being real. It is based on faulty information. While ethanol is the thing you consume if you have methanol poisoning and can help prevent methanol poisoning, it isn't a cure all or a perfect preventative. This is why you have news articles with 100s of people dying and going blind because some fool added denatured alcohol to their brew and passed it out. There isn't enough ethanol in the world to save you from an overdose of methanol.

>this is why beer and vodka isn't poisonous.

FYI, ethanol is a "poison", all alcohols are.

>all the booze you buy contains a certain amount of methanol in it.

Incorrect.

>you only need to fractionally distill the methanol if you're making spirits.

This doesn't even make sense.

I think this poster only knows a tiny fraction of knowledge about brewing and distilling, enough to make him dangerous. He needs to do some serious research before handing out his information in such a caviler fashion.

>>583638
WOOP WOOP SHIT TIER CHEMFAG DETECT

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1306022/
"A 10% ethanol solution administered intravenously is a safe and effective antidote for severe methanol poisoning."

ethanol prevents your liver from metabolizing methanol due to a greater enzymatic affinity for ethanol. this gives your kidneys time to remove it from your system.

its very expensive so not viable to remove all the methanol from ethanol in alcohol for human consumption. ethanol and methanol in the presence of water become an azeotrope. the combination of chemicals changes the liquid phase change point preventing a 1:1 distilate.

>>583643
>intravenously

That means they inject it right into your blood stream. That pretty much invalidates your entire post. We are talking about drinking the alcohol where a wide number of other things come into play.

Simply going around saying something to the effect of, 'you can drink methanol-laced alcohols if they have enough ethanol in them,' is horrifically irresponsible in the highest order and may have malicious intent.

Can you more carefully describe the 'dank'?

I haven't personally made hard cider, but I have a number of friends who have and fermenting cider can definitely give off a strong sulfur odor even when done correctly.

If you are using 'commercial', pasteurized cider or worse yet, lying to us and fermenting apple juice, you might be dealing with a product that's had sodium metabisulfite added to it specifically to retard the growth of yeasts (look for labeling on the packaging that says "contains sulfites"). If your yeast isn't comfortable, it's going to take it out on your final product in the form of off-flavors/aromas.

The other important factor is fermentation temperature. The higher the fermentation temperature, the more higher-order alcohols your yeasts will produce. I don't know all the scientific details about this part but most people tend to associate higher-order alcohols with hangovers. A generally acceptable temperature range for the sorts of yeasts I know my friends use for ciders is in the 58-68°F range.

ITT /DIY/ argues about how much methanol is present in an undistilled liquid.

awesome guys, way to go.

dear OP:
get a glass bottle and two balloons.
put non-citrus fruit juice in the bottle (apple is simplest) put a spoonful of yeast into bottle (buy a jar from the grocery store "active dry") and if you really want to, add some sugar.
put one balloon over the bottle stretched tight and poke a hole in it. put the other balloon over that loose and poke a hole in it. wait until liquid is clear (do not fuck with it) and drink it, do not mix up the sediment, do not consume the sediment.

>>583762
Welcome to a Homebrewmen thread, newcomer!

Methanol is a troll word in Homebrewmen threads.

>>583734
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11926610
http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/tox201030.pdf
it's a natural every day metabolite. of course your body can handle methanol. there's even a legal non-zero limit on the amount of methanol that alcoholic beverages can contain.

>>583769
And particularly in distillation threads. Except that apparently many people think it really is a major problem.

>>584044
Pre-WWII, German fruit schnapps were made without throwing away any of the 'heads' or 'foreshots', which contain most of the methanol from the wine.

It gave people a nasty hangover, but to approach a lethal dose of methanol from old timey schnapps, you'd have to drink so much ethanol as to suffer alcohol poisoning before the methanol could become a real threat.

I like to propose this thought experiment to people too slow to run away from people proposing thought experiments: Suppose you took a 750ml bottle of wine and distilled it to a very high proof, but didn't discard any of the methanol laden 'heads'.

Now suppose you drank all of the brandy made from that one bottle of wine over the course of an evening, you've consumed just as much alcohol and just as much methanol as was present in the bottle of wine to begin with, just in a concentrated form. Will it kill you? no. Will it blind you? no. Will you feel like you got fucked by a train? yes.

>>584055
If methanol was the cause of hangovers, you'd get a hangover from drinking too much regular grape juice or eating sweet fruits. Grape skins have a lot of methanol in them naturally for instance. Alcohols have a great deal of congeners and anyone of them by itself isn't responsible for hangovers. It is more about plasma serotonin and plasma histamine produced by the body in response to other congeners, like those found in red wine, but not in distilled spirits. Lastly, the largest factor is the person and their health and eating habits that play the largest role in hangovers.

>Now suppose you drank all of the brandy made from that one bottle of wine over the course of an evening, you've consumed just as much alcohol and just as much methanol as was present in the bottle of wine to begin with, just in a concentrated form.

It takes 11 liters of wine to make 1 liter of fine brandy. 1 bottle (750mL/25.3oz I assume) would make only 2.29 ounces of fine brandy, including the head-and-tail. In the USA and UK that's about 2 shots of brandy. No, this wouldn't do very much to you at all as far as a hangover is concerned. However, had you drank the entire 750mL bottle of wine, all those other congeners could very well give you a nice hangover.

Thus, methanol, in standard distilled or standard fermented beverages when not specifically added via denatured alcohol, won't be present in large enough quantities to give you a headache/hangover let alone blind or kill you.

The only beverage where this isn't true is, "grappa". It is made and distilled from all the byproducts of wine making. Thus it has skins and stems in the mix and a far higher methanol content than anything else. That is why, by law, it must be regulated properly. Homemade grappa, made incorrectly, can indeed be blinding and deadly.

So, if you are not being a retard and you don't add denatured alcohol to your brew and you are not making grappa you'll be fine.

>>583482
As someone who just started brewing (also in college) I'd advise you to invest in some real equipment.
When you make booze like that, there's a higher chance of the bacteria or any other growth/presence interacting with the yeast and producing a shitty flavor, or possibly something that can make you very sick.
methanol won't be a problem unless you're distilling.

http://monsterbrew.com/Prod_GoldHomebrewKitwithOktoberfestKit.cfm?gclid=CLyX8_zrhbwCFUjNOgodaUQAWw
don't tell me you haven't already spent $100 on booze this year. With a full kit like this, you can make a few really good beers for not a lot of money, but in the end if you're looking to save money 30 rack is the way to go.

The actual homebrew General thread is dead. Imagine my displeasure when I saw this one, jumped in, and realized it's all fuckers arguing about Methanol, WHEN THEY'RE NOT EVEN DISTILLING. FUCKING HELL GUYS

If the cider smells bad, don't drink it.

I made hard cider once.

It made my room smell like rotten apples lol

>>583762
>carefully "forgets" to mention cleaning fucking everything with horror-chemical-soap-death

Enjoy both your administrative reprimand for having booze in the dorm, plus the likely loss of your security deposit for fucking this up.

I made some getto ass hard cider from bread yeast.

Made my stomach hurt like shit and I think it gave me kidney stones.

>>584413
I made tepache a few times. My first time I didn't let it clear and drank it anyway. It tasted awesome, but ohhhhh all those shits later..... lol I cleared the batches I made later, by cold crashing it, and never had another problem again.

>>584413

Nvm, I just read that kidney stones go through the urinary tract. What I had came out my ass, but it still hurt like hell.

>>583512
methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol so the first few ounces out of a still are pretty much all methanol, I don't know why you would then mix it back in with the ethanol.

>>583758
>lying to us and fermenting apple juice
Are you autistic?

Now that he's fermented it it's cider. Why would he put cider through the fermentation process? That's like putting toast in a toaster.

>>583496
>>583512
>>584421

The heads also contain fusel oils and generally shit tasting stuff that you dont want in your batch. Also most hick moonshiners dont blend the entire run of their still into one big vat before bottling. Throwing away the heads prevents the first bottle from having a higher than usual methanol content.


>>583550
>>>583636
>>>583758
>dank

This is college kid speak for "being very rich and good smelling." Like "this is some dank ass weed." Or "those cookies smell dank as fuck."

He's happy with his product and cant express himself like normal people.

>>584423

Some people think cider=apple juice that hasn't been filtered at all.

But the guy doesn't seem to know what he is talking about...so yeah.

What why are you distilling hard cider? People actually do this? Are you justa fucking stupid faggot OP?

>>584453
I'm not OP

lots of people still their own liquors. It's not too difficult afaik and there's not much risk if you follow some basic safety rules

>>584454
all he's done is make hard cider why the fuck is boiling this shit to remove methanol. I've literally never heard of anyone do this with plain old hard cider unless he intends to distill it.

>>583636
You can seperate some of denatured alcohol from consumable alcohol by pouring small amounts through freezing cold metal pipe.

>>584453
>>584454
if you want to strengthen cider, just freeze distill it into applejack. If it's to "remove impurities" you're being OCD or something.
>inb4 freeze distillation is not really distillation lets not get all dustin hoffman

Strain the fucking yeast, drink the remaining liquid if it smells aiight, don't drink it if it smells like ass.


Apple cider is the easiest shit to brew because it is so simple. Find a better recipe online and try again. Easy + rewarding.
Also, buy it in a glass 1 gal container next time.

Sidecaring into this thread ... if I wanted to remove ethanol from something without it making a lot of smells, do I just sort of leave it half-covered and let it evaporate?

>>584555
I hate to bump this stupid fucking thread, but if you wanted to remove the alcohol from a fermented beverage, the easiest way to do that would be to simmer it, but you could never remove 100% of the alcohol, just so much as to make it impossible to become intoxicated.

>>584569
That's what I figured (or reducing the surrounding pressure to let vapor pressure do the work).

But how dangerous (explosive) and noticeable are the fumes from evaporated alcohol in a closed room?

>>584633
>But how dangerous (explosive) and noticeable are the fumes from evaporated alcohol in a closed room?

Extremely dangerous if you have any open flame.

>>583482
> there are both optical and traditional smoke alarms all over my room.

Disconnect? Or are you in prison?

just don't drink fucking alcohol, problem solved

>>584218
my thoughts exactly

>>584644
No open flames. Just a minifridge and some electronics.

My guess is that I should do this as slowly as possible, so as to avoid buildup?

lol dude, its fine, ive made tons of mead and it was all safe. pour off top and bottom though they get kinda gross.

This is one of the stupidest threads I've ever seen.

To the OP brew for like 3 days put the jug In the fridge. This is called cold crashing, let it sit for a few hours. Do not let it go past four days if you do not want to age it for awhile. You can drink the yeast at the bottom won't kill you makes you fart like a mother fucker though its easy to separate after the fridge though.

The only real risk you have off this being poisonous is A: if it was not pastureized and it had a bacteria in it from the apple orchard it kills like 12 people a year. B: if you distill it and only drink the heads and tails. If you see mold in it don't drink the mold part but I've fished out mold atop brews and the rest wasn't infected and I lived.

Read a book or go to homebrew talk god damn if you actually aren't knowledgable about this topic don't fucking post in the thread unless its a question

>>584704
unless you're doing multiple gallons you'd be fine, have a desk fan blow at it if you really must

OP, do us a favor and just delete this thread. Please.

>>584423
The difference between apple cider and apple juice is that cider is the pure juice from apples.
Whereas applehuice has water and sugar added. (As well as things added to fuck with yeast)
Some cider has such things, but not all.

>>584704
Yeah, a buildup is bad. If there's too much in the air, a fridge kicking on, a lightswitch getting flipped, or an electric fan could set off a spark to ignite it. It really depends on the concentration and your environment.

A fan blowing it around needs a way to exhaust it by blowing in fresh air and the vapors can exit another route like a window or door, just never through the fan.

>>584746
It also depends on regional dialect. In many European countries "cider" is hard cider while in the US "hard cider" is "just hard cider and "cider" is unfiltered apple juice. It can be confusing online with so many people from different places. It is a common problem in homebrewing threads and I've found that saying "hard cider" all the time helps a bit with that.

>>584775
Ireland here.
Hard cider:over 8%
cider: 1-8%
apple juice: 100% juice, filtered or unfiltered
apple drink: concentrated apple juice with added water/sugar

>>583511
>this

>>584812
I have never heard anyone call it 'apple drink' in my life.

>>583511
>>584813
>5-year running joke
>doesn't really get funnier each time

This is THE shittiest homebrew thread I've ever seen on this board. Oh how our quality has fallen.

>>585496
What do you expect when the same fucking thread is posted every day?

so wait, if I can buy denatured alcohol by the gallon and assuming it is denatured by way of methanol solution, couldn't I just run this through a still and separate the good from the bad? This would avoid having to wait for yeast to do their thing.

(note, where I live denatured alcohol is about 10 times cheaper than the other kind)

>>585616
i believe people filter it with bread. but this is still not entirely safe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice

>>585496
>>585537
Use the catalog, n00bs. Here's the "real" homebrewing thread,

>>582305

The other couple are new people making new threads because they didn't search the catalog first.

>>585616
>>585638
No, you can't. There's more than just methanol in it. They put in several other poisonous chemicals too. You'd need to know every one of them and hope that all of them have a boiling point that isn't close to ethanol. Otherwise, you'll distill the ethanol with something else poisonous.

Not worth the risk when you can just make some sugar brew and distill it safely and super cheaply.

>>584850
legally, if it's not 100% it can't be marketed as juice.
Most of the time whatever brand it is will call it by the brand and people will generally refer to it as juice, but it can't be sold as juice.
Much like how everyone 'hoovers' their carpet, despite using a Dyson or Miele vaccum cleaner

>>585818
There are a few label laws like that in the USA. Most notably for "honey" and "maple syrup". Juices on the other hand are not protected like that. So you end up with "CHERRY 100% Juice made form concentrate with vitamins added" On the side it lists "cherry juice form concentrate, grape juice from concentrate, pear juice from concentrate, water, citric acid (Vitamin C), potassium sorbate (to maintain freshness)" and on and on. Sometimes they will have "juice cocktail" on the label and still use "100% juice".

It is fucking terrible. God forbid you want pure cranberry juice.

>>585652
That thread is dead, retard.

I have a few batches of wine and mead I need to bottle. Aging them is getting to me. One mead was made in 2012 and will be ready to bottle this November. I want to make more, but no room right now.

>>583482
Op if not distilled and you worry about methanol you shouldn't try to homebrew at all.

>>583734
>drinking the alcohol where a wide number of other things come into play.
which of those things keeps the ethanol out of your bloodstream?