BAD BEER KILLS 69 AT MOZAMBIQUE FUNERAL

a reply to: CranialSponge

Yes and I think that this is the big reason why home distillation is illegal while home brewing is not.

a reply to: wtbengineer

Not that I agree with nanny laws (if stupid people want to win Darwin awards they should have the right to do so)... but yes, I guess that would explain why distillation is illegal in most places, whereas fermentation (a common everyday thing) is not.

a reply to: CranialSponge

distilation is no more dangerous than most other processes like preserving, meat curing, cheese making ect.

If done incorrectly they can cause sickness and possibly death. The reason for the illigality is purely a taxation reason, it's a big business.

Here in the UK even brewing alcohol was illigal until 1963 and even now can only be done for personal use with a few exeptions.

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion
After talking to a few people about brewing beer, I can safely say that it is very easy to create poison instead of beer, without wrong ingredients or toxic containers.

I was trying to be nice at first, but this BS has got to stop.

What people? Whoever you are talking to is incredibly uninformed when it comes to beer. I'm not sure if you are just making things up now to make it appear as if you weren't just making things up in your last post, but anyone that knows anything about brewing knows you are full of it.

It is a fact that no pathogens can survive in bear. That means any bacteria, mold, fungus, etc that can harm you, dies in beer.

If you are ruling out using toxic ingredients or unfit containers, that leaves one thing: methanol. Methanol is not produced in significant quantity in beer fermentation. The only way to get dangerous levels of methanol is by distilling.

And guess what you can treat methanol poisoning with? Ethanol.

This is beyond ridiculous. Please provide any evidence that it's possible, let alone easy, to produce deadly quantities of methanol when brewing beer. I'll be waiting!

a reply to: James1982

I did actually say that it could have been methanol poisoning. And I never said that they did not die because of toxic contamination, only said that if you don't know what you are doing, you can create something lethal without toxic contamination.

Case Closed

What utter nonsense, you have continually refused to listen to scientific fact and reasoning because you cling to unsubstansiated hearsay.



a reply to: IndependentOpinion

a reply to: nonspecific

There's nothing like suddenly going blind to spoil a good happy hour. Alcoholic beverages tainted with poisonous methanol are a scourge of the developing world, causing blindness and even death. The dangerous drinks can come from botched batches of home-distilled liquor, but they often have a more sinister origin; criminal gangs will cut standard alcohols with methanol and sell the resulting concoctions to unassuming customers for inflated profits. Because adding methanol doesn't change the drink's flavor, color, or smell, there's no easy way to tell if the brew you're about to imbibe could poison you

news.sciencemag.org...

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

This is whre your confusion is coming from, I understand now.

Your quote clearly states that

"Criminal gangs will cut standard alcohols with methanol and sell the resulting concoctions to unassuming customers for inflated profits."

This has nothing to do with homebrew beer as you seemed to believe or even home distillation of home brewed alcohol.

These criminal gangs are taking home brewed alcohol, distilling it, then watering it down and adding industrial methanol which is a poison.

By adding the industrial methanol they are in fact adding a poison to the alchol.

a reply to: nonspecific

And the part before that?

"The dangerous drinks can come from botched batches of home-distilled liquor, but they often have a more sinister origin;"

That means there are two ways in which methanol can enter a drink.

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

Liquor = spirits.

Beer = beer, safe, nice, lovely beer.

a reply to: and14263

"Alcoholic beverages"

Liquor = Alcohol

Beer = Alcohol

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

OK in desperate attempt to end this amicably I will conceed that yes it is theoretically possible to DISTILL homebrew beer that could give you methanol poisioning.

It would however be very hard to do so. However neither my or others scientific understanding or personal knowledge could ever compare with your quick google searches.

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion
a reply to: and14263

"Alcoholic beverages"

Liquor = Alcohol

Beer = Alcohol

My god your either doing this on purpose or doing it on purpose, no one could be this ignorant unless it was on purpose.

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

I didn't mean to be short, I just thought the confusion was in the fact that homemade liquor can be dangerous when homemade but beer cannot.

There's a forum here discussing the beer side of it.

I've got a Bulgarian supply of homemade Rakia, it's made from plums and possibly mulberries. I am completely truthful when I say if you smell the vapors it makes you dizzy - 100% true. I've been drunk off it before a few times, it's not normal drunk. It comes out at the end of parties when the last few standing are those who drink to much. This really is the next level. The Bulgarians drink it at any time of day too. One morning, 10am, I ended up in a Bulgarian's yard on his farm/land knocking back glasses of this stuff. They keep topping up if you empty the glass - I thought the guy was just up for an early morning session (something I'd rarely turn down).

Never ever drink and drive in Bulgaria! This is always dangerous, and your first offence will result in a long prison sentence. The once-common practice of bribing a police officer to get out of a speeding or parking ticket is becoming the exception.

Source

It is at this point I will stop the telling of my little drunken tale.

If it is a fruit derived spirit then the methanol content will be slightly higher due to the greater levels of pectin(escpecially in plums)

a reply to: and14263

originally posted by: nonspecific
If it is a fruit derived spirit then the methanol content will be slightly higher due to the greater levels of pectin(escpecially in plums)

a reply to: and14263

That explains why it is literally lethal stuff. In fact, I make fish tanks every now and then and it's a brilliant glass cleaner. I know someone in Bulgaria who claims to have used it for unblocking a sink too.

a reply to: and14263

Lol it will not be high enough to be of danger and all alchol is good for cleaning but who is going to waste alcohol on such a mundane task.

I would rather drink the alcohol and watch the grime blur into insignificance.

Methanol is the simplest form of alcohol. It is closely related to ethanol, the type of alcohol normally found in beer, wine and spirits – but much more toxic. The potential for its presence in drinks made from home-distilled spirits is a serious health risk.

Methanol is formed in very small amounts during fermentation, the process by which alcohol is made from plant products like grape juice or cereal grains. There are small amounts in wine and beer, but not enough to cause problems when these products are made at home, says Leigh Schmidtke, a senior lecturer in wine microbiology and production at Charles Sturt University.

"There are no really safe ways of differentiating methanol from ethanol at home," says Schmidtke.

"Of course, it's a lot easier to go and buy [spirits]. But it's kind of like a hobby. It's all there on the internet how to do it safely [and avoid methanol contamination], it's just that some people don't do it safely and get themselves into trouble. It's very easy to be poisoned. If they know it right away, it's treatable. But if you don't know it, well, within a few hours, it's kind of goodbye."

www.abc.net.au...

Just another article that shows that beer can contain high levels of Methanol, if you do not know how to do it.

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

From the same article.

"Professor Gordian Fulde, director of the Emergency Department at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, says he has seen only a few patients with methanol poisoning in recent years. And only a couple of the 30,000 calls taken by Queensland's Poisons Information Centre last year related to possible methanol in alcohol made at home."

As I said earlier it is possible but actually quite hard to do.

I would explain how and why it is hard to posion a large number of people with homebrewed methanol using some simple scientific facts and basic mathmatical equations but I feel that nothing is going to let go of this bone so I'll leave you to it.

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion

Methanol is the simplest form of alcohol. It is closely related to ethanol, the type of alcohol normally found in beer, wine and spirits – but much more toxic. The potential for its presence in drinks made from home-distilled spirits is a serious health risk.

Methanol is formed in very small amounts during fermentation, the process by which alcohol is made from plant products like grape juice or cereal grains. There are small amounts in wine and beer, but not enough to cause problems when these products are made at home, says Leigh Schmidtke, a senior lecturer in wine microbiology and production at Charles Sturt University.

"There are no really safe ways of differentiating methanol from ethanol at home," says Schmidtke.

"Of course, it's a lot easier to go and buy [spirits]. But it's kind of like a hobby. It's all there on the internet how to do it safely [and avoid methanol contamination], it's just that some people don't do it safely and get themselves into trouble. It's very easy to be poisoned. If they know it right away, it's treatable. But if you don't know it, well, within a few hours, it's kind of goodbye."

www.abc.net.au...

Just another article that shows that beer can contain high levels of Methanol, if you do not know how to do it.

Now you are just straight up lying about what an article says, where as before you were "only" misrepresenting what was said.

Here is a quote from your source:

Methanol is formed in very small amounts during fermentation, the process by which alcohol is made from plant products like grape juice or cereal grains. There are small amounts in wine and beer, but not enough to cause problems when these products are made at home, says Leigh Schmidtke, a senior lecturer in wine microbiology and production at Charles Sturt University. But home distillation to make spirits like gin or rum concentrates the levels of both ethanol and methanol.

Pay close attention to the "very small amounts" part, as well as the "not enough to cause problems when these products are made at home"