How they make alcohol 'harder'
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- Опубліковано 10 кві 2022
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Thanks to Cardinal Spirits and head distiller Justin Hughey in Bloomington, Indiana: www.cardinalspirits.com/ - Навчання та стиль
The fact that the history of alcohol is basically “we did something for a different reason but damn that tastes good let’s do it six more times” is great
That's a staggering proportion of food.
Sushi apparently originated from fermenting rice to preserve fish stored in it... Cheese came from milk that was left out too long...
Let's face it. Food throughout most of human history has been dependent on "Fuck it, let's do that weird thing again".
@@FelisImpurrator In fact many of the "disgusting food" is a combination of above, and the unwilling to let food go to waste - especially in war time. Natto is a perfect example of such.
@@FelisImpurrator like just imagine toast. "yeah we made bread but what if we baked it again??"
that's the story of cooking
One out of the six killed Bob so let's not do that again.
One old way to distill in colder climates was to collect ice-flakes that started forming on the top of whatever pail the alcohol was in. Water freezes before alcohol
That is called "jacking", and is actually where Laird's Applejack gets its name. The problem with that is that it leaves in place all of the conjunours, especially methanol.
This is still done today! Schneider Weisse's famous Aventinus Eisbock is a fantastic modern example
@@connorspiech309 Good thing nowadays you have measuring devices to check your product ^^ so you can experiement a lot and testing if its safe
Only problem is you cant get a high abv, it usually caps out at around 30% abv or 60 proof
Would be a cool part 2 video for alcohol concentration methods
A buddy of mine brews beer and wine, but never discussed liquor. Now I'm suspicious, because he lost sight in one of his eyes.
Nah his eye sight issue is due to watching too much porn after swearing he'd stop it
I dont know to laugh or to be worried lol
😂😂
Don't drink heads
I have always found it amusing the guy who invented petroleum refining was trying to make vodka from crude oil. Would have loved to see his face the first time he tasted it! 😄
Just picture german WW2 rocket scientists tasting rocket fuel. Same thing really.
@@chadmann2724 - The Russians used booze alcohol Ethanol as rocket fuel with a powerful oxidant injected in the rocket directly. It was well documented that rocket fuel was the name given to liquor for this reason. The workers at the soviet space facilities drank the fuel 😎👍
Lol!😁✌️
petroleum is crude oil
@@Lambda_Ovine they said "petroleum refining"
I like that you trend towards the small craft distillers, but there is something quite magical about the old school distilleries. I would encourage you to hit the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky to see some really cool spots. Hell, I'll be your tour guide!
If you want old school distillery, ya gotta go to the Old World. Go to one of them monasteries that've been brewing since 999 AD.
@@gingermcgingin4106 WHERE… I’m not much of a whisky guy but I’m tryna find one that I like.
@@noobsaibot299 the home of irish whiskey, ireland
Take one for the team! :D
Most of the so-called “craft distillers” are buying and reselling MGP and Alberta Spirits products.
It costs as LOT of money to open a distillery and the licensing isn’t actually the real barrier to entry.
If you were to start a distillery today, (especially any American whiskeys) you would have to lay down your casks for a couple years minimum. Very few people have the patience or the means to operate a business and pay employees for 2+ years with zero cash inflow.
It would be totally safe to drink all of what you distilled in that tiny system. Distilling doesn't create new fusel alcohols. If you can drink the wine in the flask in one sitting safely, you can drink the entire distillate made from that flask equally safely.
I think you would still want to make sure you let the methanol distill out first.
@@moendopi5430 in a large volume, yes. But if that flask of wine is safe to drink, the amount of methanol extracted from it is still exactly the same amount that was in the wine to begin with.
@@Joe-hm1zk yeah, I replied a little early. I agree, it would have to be some really questionably fermented wine to really be a problem at that scale.
Came here to pretty much say the same thing. It's not about how much methanol you consume with an alcoholic drink, but the concentration. If you drink just the foreshots, yeah you might get methanol poisoning. If you mix all the distillate together and drink some of that, you'll be fine. It also helps that ethanol is part of the treatment for methanol poisoning since it counters the products of your body metabolizing methanol. However even though you won't get methanol poisoning you should definitely not mix the foreshots into your final distillate because it doesn't taste great.
Good logic
13:10 that would actually be totally fine to drink. Keep in mind that distillation doesn't increase the amount of poisonous chemicals, it just concentrates them. In other words, that beaker contains no more methanol than the wine itself did.
Where you can run into trouble is by distilling large quantities of alcohol and drinking the straight heads. Although, as you noted, these heads typically smell and taste disgusting so it isn't very hard to tell which cuts you should stay away from.
Methanol (the poisonous stuff) is tasting good. I assume it usually is accompanied with bad tasting stuff. So be aware that taste is not a safe way to determine if it's to much methanol in the stuff.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 You're correct that pure methanol is impossible to detect by taste, but in practice any cut with methanol is going to smell and taste horrible because it forms an azeotrope with acetone (and some other pungent chemicals).
So unless you're using a complex distillation process specifically designed to isolate methanol (or distilling a mixture of pure ethanol and methanol as a lab experiment or something), taste really is a pretty reliable way to determine if a cut is safe to drink and is how distillers have operated for centuries.
But, just to clarify, you should use your sense of taste to determine _where the safe cuts begin and end,_ not try tasting every cut individually. _All_ of the heads and _all_ of the tails should be considered potentially poisonous.
Also, as an interesting side-note, the antidote to methanol poisoning is actually ethanol! Of course I'm not trying to say you should go out and chug methanol just because you also have ethanol on hand, but it's good to keep in mind when discussing methanol's toxicity in the context of distillation.
He intentionally gave out misinformation there because he doesn't want others to try it and sue him. Soy moment.
Sure but most people don't drink an entire bottle of wine at once
@@JohnVanderbeck But that's not a whole bottle of wine. The flask that held the wine is rated 500ml and not full, so that's probably about 300-350 ml. So it's more like half a bottle, about 2-2.5 servings. Not everyone drink that much, but I'd say it's hardly rare.
Just a little correction for the distillation. If you have a mixture like ethanol/water, the boiling will not start at the boiling point of the ethanol. It will be between the 2 boiling points, depending on concentration. It's not like the ethanol molecules start boiling and the water stays behind. If your starting concentration is low enough, the vapors will still be mostly water (but still a higher concentration). The vapors will be richer in ethanol generally, but what you get is always an ethanol/water mixture.
Just to add on, that's why you get a maximum value of ethanol % from distillation too (somewhere around 98% ethanol if memory serves me correct)
At that point, the vapour being produced is also basically the same ratio (98% ethanol), so you can't concentrate it more.
I wish I remembered the exact math behind it, but it's just been a while
@@nimishmalik884 Yep, it's called an azeotropic mixture.
Also, he's used the wrong condenser for that setup. He should be using a Liebig condenser with it's required water cooled jacket and pump or running that Graham condenser vertically.
I mean, the alcohol you distill from your wine should be "safe" from methanol, since you would already be drinking whatever methanol was in the wine in the first place. The only problem is when you start doing it at scale and combine hundreds of bottles of wines' methanol contents into a single batch of distillate.
even then it probably wouldn't be that strong from store bought, methanol boils at 64.7 and ethanol 78, just throw away anything that comes over at 65 and keep everything after 78c and you should be fine
There's also the fact that methanol poisoning is treated...with ethanol.
@@frostedlambs It's not that easy, unfortunately. I mean, it's not a problem in the first place, but it's not so cut-and-dry.
Methanol doesn't come out in the heads. It actually comes out more in the tails, despite having a lower boiling point. This is an important myth to dispel because it means you shouldn't recycle the tails from brandy the same way you can with rum.
Single batch all mixed in, then bottled, wouldn't be a problem but when you bottle as you go that first bottle out of 20 would be straight methanol.
I'm disappointed that you didn't bring up the humorously ironic emergency treatment for methanol poisoning, which is to get the patient drunk on ethanol.
The problem with methanol isn't really the methanol itself but what it's metabolized into by enzymes in your liver: first formaldehyde (by alcohol dehydrogenase) and from there formic acid (by aldehyde dehydrogenase). Formic acid's conjugate base, the formate anion, is cytotoxic because it gets into your cells and then into their mitochrondria and latches onto the iron at the middle of the cytochrome c oxidase protein that forms the last step in the electron transport chain, and then won't let go - it basically bricks your cells' ability to produce ATP in sufficient quantity. Interestingly, this is basically the same reason why cyanide is toxic.
By flooding the patient's system with ethanol, which is _also_ metabolized by alcohol dehydrogenase, you're forcing it to compete for its turn to be metabolized, not just by the sheer concentration of ethanol but also because ethanol is _better_ at sticking to the enzyme. This doesn't make the methanol go away, but it _hugely_ slows down the rate that methanol gets turned into formaldehyde, which buys you time - time enough hopefully for the kidneys to filter the methanol metabolites out and into your urine, or better yet, to get the patient to the hospital for emergency dialysis.
Which is also why with a LONG history of moonshine throughout all of humanity, methanol poisoning never quite reached epidemic levels except in EXTREMELY specific times and places. All commercially available alcohol has some amount of methanol contamination but when kept at a low enough level, the treatment is packaged with the poison.
Looks like studies say that the highest recommended "safe" dose is around 2g methanol total (You need to do your own math for drinking over time) but that is pushing it because 8g total is enough to surpass the occupational exposure limits. The EU limits right now are 0.4% methanol in ethanol drinks, or 10g per liter of ethanol.
Damn. Thanks for sharing your knowledge
Methanol itself is also excreted by the kidneys, so your body is not just shunting off the metabolites, but the source itself. Though, there’s still always a risk to your kidneys as a result of methanol and metabolites excretion.
Oh yeah! There was an episode of House MD on that, printer ink is full of methanol and one of the patients drank it. Cool to see the whole science behind it.
@@Vordt_ a classic
Finally someone explaining why moonshine can make you blind.
Maybe your school was a shitty one. Or your government that decides the teaching material is a shitty one.
In my school decades ago we learned that in chemistry class.
yeah moonshiners used to put wood alcohol into ethanol
Wondering why the wine itself is safe to drink.
Because 'safe wine' or 'palatable wine' goes through different process than fruit falling off trees and sitting on the ground until squirrels eat them and get smashed.
@@dsxa918 Video shows a box of retail wine, not fallen fruit. If the fusels and congeners are present in the distillate, they are present in the wine.
Hi there, I don't normally comment online. But I am about to finish a Master's and move onto a PhD specifically researching aspects of distilled spirits and just wanted to say that I think you did a great job here. Well researched, ignoring the nitpicky nonsense, and easy to understand explanations for a broad overview. Hallmarks of a good educator, keep it up.
~Cheers mate!
Glad to see a grad student on here so I can ask this question. Given that he is distilling a wine he already had that was drinkable, what he really need to worry about the distillate containing dangerous amounts of methanol?
@@bEnderOfWorlds I think the distillate is more dangerous to drink than the wine, because the concentration of methanol in it is higher than in the wine, but i don't think you'd need to worry about it.
A trivial bit of information is that a serpentine condenser is typically mounted completely vertically. This way the distillate will flow down due to gravity. By placing the glassware on an angle, the distillate needs to overcome gravity and fill up each twist of the tube before it can flow out the end.
It's also called a Graham Condenser.
Some just call it a "worm"
I always wondered why they have to be spirals? Why can’t it just be a regular tube?
@@DeathnoteBB The goal and the purpose of the condenser is to use the liquid in the outer tube to cool off the gas in the inner tube so it condenses into a liquid too. To do this as efficiently as possible, you want to maximize the amount of contact area between the liquid of the outer tube and the glass surface of the inner tube. If the inner tube was a straight line, like the outer tube is, that wouldn't be a lot of space. If you make the inner tube a spiral, however, that gives it *far* more area to touch the outer liquid. Imagine stretching out the inner spiral until it *is* a straight tube. It would be huge. So if the outer tube is like a foot long, and the inner tube is straight, you'd have like a foot of contact between the two. But if you make the inner tube a spiral, you can get two or even three feet of contact area.
None of these numbers are real, they're just for example (I ain't looking up the formula for surface area of a cylindrical spiral), but you get the idea.
@@DeathnoteBB Pretty sure it's just more space-efficient, without being too difficult to manufacture.
As a survival nerd that rag trick was really interesting, not something I'd expect to learn here but still very cool.
This is what I love about Adam's videos. They are packed with knowledge, even if it only relates tangentially. That's why I have been watching every single one of his videos that pops up in my recommended. I'm kinda mad that I didn't find this channel sooner.
One small gripe: the reason they use pot stills for grain/molasses based spirits is not that it's easier to clean, it's because a rectification/column still would remove a lot of the flavour which, while good for things like vodka, is bad for things like whiskey and rum
A couple of points, pot stills are not preferred in some cases because they're easier to clean, a lot of them aren't. They are used because they're less efficient at rectifying the spirit. They're just bad at fully separating everything, but that also means that more of the flavor of the original liquid comes through. If you're making vodka you don't want that so you use a column still (and not all column stills are continuous column stills) but if you're making whisky you want more of those flavors coming through to the final product.
It might've been more appropriate to include this in your beer series, but "freeze distillation" is another way to concentrate the ethanol content of alcoholic beverages. Although it's not a true distillation, it is how brewers have overcome yeast's natural ABV limit and given how easily it happens naturally without additional equipment (many homebrewers STILL accidentally freeze their beers while lagering), it probably pre-dates actual distillation.
I believe that this is how Applejack was traditionally made.
Edit: that's where the "jack" comes to the name - "jacking" was the term for freeze distillation
He actually already covered the topic in the video about cider a few months ago!
Freeze concentration is legal to do at home in Canada last I checked, but I bellieve it is not legal in the US (may be different by state) without a license.
@@gloriamontorsi2031 That's the fact, Jack.
@@gloriamontorsi2031 I'd forgotten about that... heck, that might well be where I learned about it first myself.
Your journalist background really shines in these kinds of videos: straightforward, informative, and sprinkled with just a bit of entertainment. Love it.
I had no idea he was a journalist! That explains a lot about his style.
11:40 And that's where the phrase "blind drunk" comes from.
I used to think Adam sometimes sounded pretentious. But after being subbed for around 2 years now I slowly realized Adam is super passionate and loves educating people. I for sure notice the research he does into these topics and it makes me even more interested to hear him talk because I never know what I will learn. Thank you Adam for all your wonderful videos
He certainly is a great teacher. But I’m pretty sure he’s also pretentious. That’s okay, sometimes some people are
He also likes drinking
@@keith1291hes not we are just dumb.
Same. What I really like is how he answers not just the question in the title of the video but also a lot of questions that I wouldn't have even thought to ask until he says them. Man just wants people to learn and he puts a lot of work into doing it.
As someone who grew up in Saudi Arabia, absolutely no knowledge of alcohol and has never drunk it before, this was a wonderfully fascinating video to watch. Thanks for the informative video Adam!
Please don’t drink it
@@grindeyyyyy Alcohol/ethanol has other uses than drinking it.
Firewater!
@@PutsOnSneakers arson!
maybe u shouldn't post about it though, if you live there can't you get in big trouble as alcohol is haram?
Hey Adam, just a correction on the smokey flavours - Counter to intuition, the char on the barrels has NOTHING to do with the smokey flavour you might taste in a whisky, for example. That smoke comes from the method of drying the grains before fermenting them. Typically an Islay whisky will be dried by smoking it with burned peat, giving it the characteristic peaty flavour. Charring the barrels actually does something of the opposite - Creating all that charcoal results in a sort of semi-activated charcoal with a very high reactive surface area. This allows the barrel surface area to reach a lot more of the liquor, and the charcoal pores pull out a lot of the molecules which cause the acrid tastes in a new liquor, causing the flavour to smooth over time. Of course the wood itself also lends a lot of its flavours back to the liquor, and those molecules that have not been destroyed or that were maybe altered by the burning will also translate to the liquor.
What about the rich Smokey Jameson Black Barrel?
@@ryanjohnson4565 if you go into the jameson site and look at the flavour notes description, there is absolutely no mention of smoke flavour, despite the emphasis on the charred barrels they used to age it.
Its all butterscotch and spice.
🤯
This makes a lot of sense to me, since the smoke flavor (say, guaiacol) is volatile and comes out in, well, the smoke! Not left behind in the burned wood.
This is really cool stuff. Do you have a reference for more info?
That makes a lot of sense, charcoal if imparting flavour would make it bitter if anything but it's naturally a great filter.
I am a senior chemistry teacher myself, but I must admit I am thoroughly impressed by your presentation, Mr. Ragusea. You make the matter very understandable and lucid at the basic, layman's level, without compromising scientific accuracy. Bravo - keep up the good work!
i went to school in bloomington indiana. i frequented cardinal spirits with my classmate frequently. they just opened at the time. great to see them still thriving. this was nostalgic
Methanol boils at a lower temp than ethanol, but it has a higher affinity to water than ethanol so it actually distributes throughout the distillation. It's actually most present in the tails. But making good cuts is important to avoid hangovers (not to mention making it taste good). Great video, thanks for posting.
I'd also like to add that frying a turkey is way more dangerous than distilling and it's only illegal because of taxes. I think it should be legal. It's so much fun... so I've heard.
One more thing. You have great taste in scotch.
Just wondering is it illegal just in America or in the UK and Weston country's since I'm not from America
Methanol really isn't an issue. There isn't enough in it. You have to purposely want to make Methanol. But as you said you still want to do cuts for the taste. Also I think he has covered apple jack that is freeze distilled and that removes nothing. People drink that but will give you a hangover from hell.
@@boltontillidie3347 You should check on your country's official gov website but my bet would be that it's pretty regulated as most things that can make the government money are.
@@boltontillidie3347 according to a brief Google, you also need a license to distill in the UK.
I don't know what you find fun about distilling alcohol. It can be a tedious process. At least in my experience.
13:10 This is actually a common misconception. Despite not making any cuts, that distillate is totally safe to drink. Your starting volume of wine wasn't much more than a glass or two, which itself didn't have enough methanol in it to do any harm. You didn't create any new methanol during the distillation process.
Thats what i was thinking, its not like you are creating any more methanol.
Exactly. The distillate is the same amount of chemicals as the original wine. minus mostly water. Just as unhealthy as the wine.
A rather anoying myth I would say. I gave the video a downvote due to this. Makes it clear that he don't understand what he is talking about.
Methanol poisoning is NOT something that happens by accident. Whenever it happens from 'fake alcohol', it is murder. Not accident. Criminals bying cheap industrial methanol, botteling it, and selling it.
how is he going to get methanol from STORE BOUGHT alcohol, if the wine makers left it in wouldn't they end up blinding people or causing damage? im sure they can chemically test the percentage and probably limited on the amounts of methanol they can legally have in a bottle
@@lassemjsvrholm2900 I have distilled shop bought wine and drank it, and i even pulled off the colder temperature just to be safe but it didn't seem like it would be higher levels of meth than home brewed, its probably much less
I had stories before about how during the prohibition era that people could go blind from "bathtub gin" and I guess I finally understand why -- unregulated distillation meant that untrained people would not know about the congeners and methanol or not care.
Wow, the Rag Distillation seems like an amazing bit of back-pocket survival trivia. I hadn't thought of or heard of that before.
Fun story the biggest reason for the highly controlled distilling permits here in America are not particularly because of wanting to control hard liquors but because during prohibition a lot of people were blowing themselves up from concentrated alcohol vapors catching fire. Because the goal of stepping away from prohibition was never adequately defined that it should include distillation they instead decided to keep it regulated because of the aforementioned explosions, hence the licensing.
Interesting! I have a great-grandfather who ran liquor during prohibition. He was a dairy farmer and had a pot still in the corner of one of his barns. It took awhile before the "revenooers" figured out that not all of the canisters in his horse drawn dairy cart had milk in them. My grandmother was quite young, but she vividly remembered the stink when they finally caught him and busted up his still.
People (that don't know what they are doing) can harm themselves by blowing themselves up or harm others by not doing the cuts properly. However, the "safety concern" is mostly just a cover up used to pass a law that taxes people.
Governments have been taxing the production & sale of alcoholic beverages for all of recorded history.
@@barklordofthesith2997 Governments have been taxing in general for all of recorded history, and the regulations on distilling aren't necessary for taxing alcohol. The safety concern is there because people actually did blow themselves up - and with the current regulations, less jury-rigged amateur stills have resulted in tragedy.
@@henriquepacheco7473 "the regulations on distilling aren't necessary for taxing alcohol."
Show me ONE example of one that isn't taxed......
@@barklordofthesith2997 I agree with you but in this case an actual for consumption liquor license costs about 10k dollars a year IIRC. That's literally meant to be a barrier to doing this on a hobbyist level. Also anytime the ATF, the alphabet agency handling illegal stills, talks about this subject this is the primary concern on their mind. Granted you can get the fuel distillates license for like 100 bucks, and some municipalities turn the other way, but if you can't prove that you're denaturing the alcohol and that you're not making more than you're burning then they will come with pointed questions and it won't be like the revenooers of old. Just taxing alcohol wouldn't stop a lot of small business and small operations but if you want to become a distillery then you need to be able to generate a profit that is greater than operations costs and a 10k dollar yearly licensing charge on top of that.
For the curious, the methanol that's in the wine doesn't make you go blind because ethanol is a decent antidote to methanol poisoning. But the methanol that is there does contribute a lot to the intensity of your hangover.
Yeah this is something that I discussed with my chemistry teacher... I was always of the impression that making your own moonshine is dangerous exactly because of the methanol that gets dragged into the product alongside the ethanol during destination. Thanks to ethanol being metabolised prior to methanol, it shouldn't really be a problem. Also apparently it's presence totally normal - EU legislation allows up to 12 grams of methanol per liter of pure ethanol. Because in such ration the methanol is basically harmless.
@@o.s.2056 It all depends on the way of collecting the spirits - those methanol poisoning stories probably come from distillers that went straight from the still to the (small) bottle - so the first few bottles might have a high concentration of methanol. You could also collect it in a bigger vessel and stir everything together, which would make the methanol content spread out into a negligible concentration.
It's not a "decent" antidote, it's *the* antidote.
For a more specific, nerdy explanation, the reason why ethanol is a decent antidote to methanol poisoning is because methanol is broken down into some really nasty stuff (formaldehyde and formic acid, specifically) by the same liver enzymes that break down ethanol. HOWEVER, those enzymes prefer to bond to ethanol when it's present, and will bond to it preferentially, meaning that if you have trace amounts of methanol in your liquor, the larger amounts of ethanol will essentially "take up" most of the liver enzymes and prevent most of the aforementioned nasty stuff, which causes neurological damage (including blindness), from being metabolized. Yes I'm both providing a way more nerdy explanation while also oversimplifying.
@@panameadeplm That's what I thought as well but apparently the preferred antidote is fomepizole
From a non-chemical engineer, it was really amazing to see you explain the differences between batch and continuous processes in liquor production in a very accurate yet understandable manner. The research was top notch. I was also glad to hear the explanation for the column distillation. As a chemical engineering professor, if you sent this as an assignment in my Conceptual Process Industries course, you would get an A+. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ But for those interested, basically distillation involves two main processes: stripping and rectifying. Stripping is the removal of water from the feed (pre-distillation wine, etc) until it becomes the bottom product (concentrated heavier product which is water) at the end, while rectification is about increasing the quality or percentage of or concentrate alcohol in the distillate (the stuff you save at the end, made mostly of alcohol). Truly great work. 👍👍
You only gave him 4 stars 😉
I've been distilling for a little over a year now and trying to learn as much as I can. Your video has put the most useful general information in a relatively condensed format of any I've seen.
For anyone who might try this, and to be safe: the rectification process described (running the product through several batch distillations) misses an important safety step… the wash (even if the wash is distillate) going into the still needs to be ~40% or less ABV-distillers dilute the product to this level with water. There is a fire risk if you put highly flammable product into the still-especially outside of a professional setup like at a distillery.
Thanks for uh "research purposes"
If the cooling pipe isn't condensing it all, it can turn into a really cool flamethrower
I think this is actually why distillery requires a permit in the US... it's very dangerous.
@@DinosaurMermaidArt and taxes
"The water in the wine is just sitting there." This is actually a common misconception, and is a super oversimplified breakdown of distillation. The contents of the vapor follow something called Raoult's law. Basically, the makeup of the vapor portion of a mixture depends on the mole fractions of the stuff that makes up the mixture, and how volatile the liquids are. This is why we have distillation columns, which slowly concentrates the ethanol, rather than just boiling all the ethanol out of the water that is "just sitting there."
shhh, dont tell them
Wait until they accidentally make their first azeotrope and no longer understand the world
Thank you! This always drives me crazy.
I was very disappointed with the description of distillation. A more accurate description would have made things a lot clearer, and could have been a nice tie in with his old video about why there is still alcohol left in wine sauces etc. after you boil them.
@@Anfros. There were a number of errors and over-simplifications. I hope hope he re-does the video or revisits the topic to clarify a few points.
I'm glad someone else was thinking this too!
From your first cooking videos to this more recent video, you always inspire me with your strait forward, no bullshit vibe. Thanks, Adam.
This turned out to be a lot more fascinating than I anticipated
Very well done!
Some 60 years ago while in High school I fermented some peaches and the used my mother’s pressure cooker and a condenser made out of copper pipe coiled in a coffee can as a water jacket. I then charred some oak wood bit a put in a jar with the distillate. It tasted ok. I didn’t know about getting methanol in the mix so I guess I’m lucky I didn’t drink it.
Well considering that ethanol is a cure for methanol poisoning you’d be fine. Everything Adam said in the video is only applicable if you were ingesting pure methanol. Granted you don’t want to drink a lot of methanol because it is poison, but all alcoholic beverages that weren’t distilled (beer wine etc) has a small amount of methanol in them
@@nolanholmberg311 Should be careful nonetheless. a few students died in turkey on vacation a few years ago drinking homemade booze. Methanolpoisend. I think it happens all the time, thats just what is left in my memory. Big thing here in germany on the news
@@ajuntasemah6053 Ethanol poisonings occur disturbingly frequently, both in Muslim countries (where alcohol might be illegal, although I think it’s still legal in Turkey) and in third world countries such as Russia or African ones (which isn’t to say that Muslim countries can’t also be third world countries, or can aspire to sink to that level).
@@peterknutsen3070 Aspire to sink to that level?
@@nolanholmberg311 Tech Ingredients on UA-cam has done a series of videos on spirits. He goes into a lot of the science of the process.
Your fears about your own destillate are completely unfounded. you destilled from boxed wine. if you would drink the amount you put in the still, you can drink what comes out of it. I had the same problem once and this realization hit me years later :D
yeah like is he brain dead? he didn't create more methanol....like he researched the subject made a whole video visiting a distillery and it seems like he just mislead people rather than didnt know what hes doing, maybe he is worried about legality or safety but....thats not the truthity
@@frostedlambs to be fair it is much easier to consume too much methanol from the distilled liquid than from the wine.
@@frostedlambs It's not that deep
I LOVE Cardinal Spirits!
I live nearby Bloomington, and have taken a distillery tour there with my wife, we both love way they take a higher scientific approach with IU toward some parts of alcohol production than what I've seen from other distilleries. Every part of the production was considered.
Such elegant transition to the Square Space ad :) Bravo!
Adam thank you for all the Bloomington shoutouts :) I thought I was hallucinating when I saw Cardinal Spirits
I like your profile picture. It's not often that you see someone who knows Orchid. My personal favorite song is I Am Nietzsche.
Booo to Bloomington from West Lafayette! As a purdue student it's tough finding this great youtuber shout out our rivals so often but it's all fun so no worries.
18:54 the way he backtracked on accidentally calling some of his product garbage lmao
AD.
Loved that you used the measure "dram"!
Your outros get wilder and wilder, I love it.
As a chemistry teacher with some experience teaching the subject in German, please allow me to point out to you that “Fuselöle” refers to higher boiling point alcohols that come out of solution as an oily layer when you add salt (“aussalzen” = salting out; “-öl” = oil). Methanol is unique among alcohols in that it has physical properties closer to water than any other alcohol. The Irish Vodka showcase experiment is a point in case. So nothing like a “Fuselöl”.
If you have more info on the Irish Vodka showcase experiment, I'd like to read up on it.
@@Muffinut It’s simply dissolving boric acid in methanol and ethanol and igniting it. The methanol will burn with a green flame, whereas the ethanol will burn more or less normal.
its not fyucell its foozell. the pronounciation for bad alcohol in German.
It's not actually illegal to run a still in most states without a permit. It becomes a issue if you start selling the liquor or in some cases produce a certain amount per year.
It's federally illegal but some states allow it. Kinda like marijuana.
What about in Weston country's like the UK
@@boltontillidie3347 the UK government wants taxes on every single drop. Limited personal non-commercial use is not protected here.
(Doesn’t stop electric “water distillers” that mysteriously exactly fit a demijohn being sold though… but then it’s illegal activity you’d better hope not to get caught doing, just like any other production of a controlled drug.)
Of course homebrewing on the other hand is completely legal and non-restricted. They just want the tax on spirits. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of dedicated home wine or beer makers have done a cheeky distillation here or there on the downlow, with total plausible deniability so long as they’re not caught in the act.
@@boltontillidie3347 it seems that home brewing is ok but distilling without a permit is not allowed by UK law.
@@martindixson157 thanks guys
one of the best and highly educational videos that I have see about alcohol in general. Thank you!
My current fav channel on UA-cam forsure ❤️
I'm convinced Adam is scraping our data like John Oliver just showed us. I literally just started making apple cider and apple brandy 2 weeks ago lol
Lol. A fellow Oliver follower. I was opening UA-cam to watch him first and then I saw this was posted already. Anyway onto Oliver.
🙄🤦♂
I opened UA-cam and I was recommended both videos just now.....
I just watched that video earlier. what kind of data do you have on me?
@@pqrstsma2011 pray tell what was so distasteful about my joke?
The reason the distillate is not coming out that well is that a Graham condenser (which is what you have) is designed to be used in a vertical configuration only. For simple distillation a Liebig condenser (straight horizontal jacketed tube) is more useful. But of course, you didn't want to give good instructions on how to do it :)
haha i was wondering why he had a graham condenser for alcohol, even a reflux condenser would probably get a better temperature gradient and let the water fall back down easier
I appreciate you posting this in depth moonshine making tutorial
Really interesting video! I already learned things like distillation and the way methanol and ethanol looks at school. But it is fun to see how these things really work in real life!
Another way of making alcohol harder is freezing - in both meanings. At a low enough temperature even alcohol freezes but at somewhat more common temperatures the water and pretty much only the water freezes first, leaving a more concentrated alcohol-water mix (up or down to the eutectic at -120°C).
This is how people turned apple cider into applejack liquor. Put it out in the cold and pour off the alcohol after everything else froze. High proof without distillation
It's also a cool dichotomy chemistry wise to distillation, purifying based on freezing point of the substance instead of boiling point. When I was in Afghanistan some people turned large quantities of the allowed "non alcoholic" beer into the good stuff this way.
That’s how eisbocks and apple jack are made!
How would you accurately separate the two during freezing? Isn't it easier to do the opposite e.g. freeze the whole thing and then melt it, where the freshly melted liquid will be richer in the more-volatile ethanol?
@@Natuanand the freezing point of ethanol is well below -100F. Water freezes solid long before that so you can literally just upend the bottles and pour off the unfrozen alcohol into a new container.
Another great one Adam. Honestly your show feels like such a professionally-made entertainment piece. You are truly raising the bar for UA-cam videos! :)
This video was a lot more in depth than i thought it would be, good job on the video! :)
Man, really. You have the most interesting food channel there is. And I watch A LOT of food channels! :)
Most of them are also very interesting but I ALWAYS learn something new with your videos.
Thank you!!
Adam: "There's no way for me to tell the difference between the head cuts and the heart cuts and the tail cuts. It's all just in there and I could never separate them out from each other."
Nile Red: "Did you say 'never separate them out'?"
toilet paper
After watching your beer video I really wanted this. Been researching distilling and am really looking forward to watching this.
Dont advertise you wanna distill unless you want the ATF busting your door down and shooting your dog, even if its for personal use.
In o-chem, we would distill until them temp rose, so I'd imagine another downside of the tail cuts might be additional water content (further diluted). Great video, man. This was super interesting. Easy on that wood alcohol!!
You have an excellent presentation style, and your content is well written.
waaait why did that fermenter say „YEEZUS“ at 3:07 lol
The reason your distillation was having trouble coming over was because you used a graham condenser, the liquid gets trapped in the troughs of the spiral. Liebig is the classic for distillation.
Adam fell victim to one of the classic blunders
A liebig condenser is just a straight pipe. For his setup it would make more sense, but if you could vertically mount the graham condenser, it would work even better.
This was such an informative video, a great introduction to the field.
I love your educational videos because they’re always about exactly the sort of thing I would become briefly obsessed with and stay up late and go down a Wikipedia rabbithole about. (Maybe brassicas sometime? Just a thought)
Again, content like this is why I keep coming back to your channel. I love learning the how and why of food more than what to do with it. I have been brewing mead (personal consumption, not professional) for about 36 years. The oldest bottle I had was 15 years old. It was still amazing.
Thanks for the good memories Adam. I remember doing this in high school and got me very interested about chemical reactions. Another great video as usual
If I'd known how to do this back in HS, I probably would have never graduated.
What an excellent video all around, love your content!
Wonderful video! I'd like to just add that a distiller may wish to retain some heads and tails depending on a) what kind of spirit they're distilling, b) how long they're aging it for, c) what kind of wood they plan to use (including finishes), and d) what type of yeast they're using. Typically, the foreshots are always cut and discarded because they taste awful and don't mix well. The heads and tails that were cut in the first distillation are often dumped back in for the second distillation. Distilling really is an art.
Thank you Adam, you're a great teacher.
The amount of methanol produced in small batches is not dangerous to leave in. When you're taking multiple samples over time in a traditional context, the first few jars are going to be concentrated methanol which is very dangerous.
Think about it this way, the methanol was already in the alcohol before you distilled it, and you're fine drinking that same amount of wine. Part of that is because there's very little methanol, and part of it is that ethanol is an antidote to methanol poisoning.
Came here to post exactly this.
I am in several mead brewing groups. Every few months, there is always a heated debate about distilling mead, particularly apple cyser (apple mead), into applejack. Folks often don't realize that the first portion of distillate contains a high methanol concentration. It must be discarded because even a small dose can permanently blind a person, and a slightly larger dose can kill someone. Adam has this very right in the video. Many in the pro-home distillation camp argue that it isn't such a big deal. And maybe they have distilled their stuff and were ok, but it only takes one bad glass to have permanent repercussions.
But in a traditional context the methanol will still be the one that was in the alcohol right? Or is something added?
There are people out there who don't combine the heads, hearts and tails though, they just bottle it as it comes out the still and sell it all. So some people get normal booze and some get basically pure methanol. That's often how these "moonshine blinds 30 people" accidents happen. You have to be pretty greedy or dumb to do that though and also pretty oblivious to not notice how bad that stuff tastes
@@KatrinaGressett
But are you aware what the treatment for methanol poisoning is? The consumption of ethanol. When you drink both, the enzymatic cascade that the body takes to metabolize the methanol goes the same path as if it were ethanol. Acetaldehide then acetyl-CoA and acetic acid... otherwise the body would turn the methanol into formaldehide then formic acid and be absolutely awful.
Much love Adam, another banger
this was a great explanation of how distillation works. I'm saying this as someone that has done some research on this process at university.
I love how much stuff you have been doing in Bloomington and Kentucky lately. Really makes me want to visit IU again and check out some of these places.
I really love the "drunk ape" hypothesis for the evolution of hominids. It really highlights the anthropology of humans and fermentation, and it's possible integral origins for our evolution.
Fruits fallen from treetops naturally ferment on the forest floor, which increases the available caloric density, but also makes them toxic to most major herbivores. Being able to metabolize ethanol (and therefore access these refined fruits) would not just provide early hominids with an unchallenged niche, but a more sterile food-source. The consumption of small beers throughout history was in big part due to the sterilizing nature of ethanol.
Birds and small non-hominid mammals eat fermented fruit all the time
@@thisaccountisdead168 but not at all regularly and not to the extent that hominids are capable of consuming.
Very fun watching someone who kind of gets it do some distilling. Interesting choice of condenser and cooling method!
Thank you. This was a great explanation of basics of all alcohol.
This video takes me back to the time a friend and me went to an absinthe bar and had an employee there tell us all about the history of it and how it is made. Such a fascinating topic alcohol as a whole can be
I've been making mead for a while. Basically honey wine but you can infuse it with flavors or you can just have a show mead. Vikings blood is one of my favorites, cherry mead. One thing that you can do if you don't have a heat distiller, you can do freeze distillation. Basically after the batch of mead is done, you filter it through cheesecloth and rejar it, and it's pretty much ready to go. If you want something stronger, you can freeze it and freeze off the water content and then take the ice out, and you will be left with a much stronger concoction.
Another shout out from a fellow mead maker🙆
Also doing freeze destilation as a non fire hazard way of making some stronger boze. I feel in case of cider it also keeps more of the original sweetness and apple flavor then heat distilling.
I freeze the whole batch and let it defrost (throwing away the last bits of ice) a few times instead of taking the ice out.
Ur videos are awesome bro, these videos are so entertaining and i understood everything thanks 👍
I made an animated GIF around the 9:30 mark. It's posted publicly on FB if you want to see it. All in love, and all in good fun, and you have full attribution. Making GIFs is my hobby, and this is my way of showing love. Cheers and good eats.
Wouldn't there be hardly any methanol in off-the-shelf wine? I don't understand why the wine would be safe to drink "pre-distilled" in this case, but the distilled alcohol would suddenly be poisonous.. Great video though, and very informative and entertaining as always.
Because ethanol is the antidote for methanol poisoning. A beverage with some amount of methanol diluted in a lot of ethanol is safe. It only becomes dangerous when the methanol is concentrated, like in the heads of a distillate.
The methanol question kicks in when you're talking about a large batch. Because it's the first runnings, if somebody's doing a gigantic batch, you could end up with a first vessel that's virtually all methanol. You're right, he'd get no more methanol poisoning from that little glass than if he had drank that wine.
Oh Adam, that poor graham condenser isn’t meant to be used non-vertically. Cool that you tried a little home chemistry tho lol
Thanks for upload!
what a fantastic video adam
best regards from Austria, just discovered your channel.
im always impressed by your ability to consistently put out high quality well researched videos on such a regular basis, nice work adam!
no so well researched apparently, the comments are full of corrections!
I did this in orgo lab in college! I had to distill out a few different substances from water based on their boiling point. It was really cool as my professor discussed all of the different substances you find in liquor
Yep I can still remember how to draw a distillation set up from teaching orgo lab for 4 years. Wishing this video had been around to try and help students get their heads around what we are trying to do in lab.
Holy crap im from Bloomington! Ive been to Cardinal spirits and it's great!
Same here!!
Incredible video Adam, really mesmerizing. Very interesting to know how booze is made, I didn't know about the poison part!
20 minutes of adam ragusea, motivation for my monday
cum op👵🏻
It’s amazing that distillers are able to produce a consistent product.
I'm from Central PA as well and I love Hershey and everything about the town as well
good info and well presented. thanks for your work
13:10 Well it is „safe“ in the sense that you would have drunk it with the wine anyways. Depends on how much wine you destilled
Exactly, I hate when people praise lazy inaccurate videos. It’s really not hard to find the proper information, I’m a first year chemist and distilling is like common sense lol
@@Practicalinvestments - And it was well documented the feds added methanol and other bad things to illegal booze during the prohibition years to scare people and make them sick to further their ends. There were some evil things done. The bootleggers and mob did not want to kill their customers.
@@Practicalinvestments how was that inacurrate? its safe if drunk WITH THE WINE, not the distilled version WITHOUT THE WINE
@@user-fm4mt7rz5u easy, he’s purifying already purified wine, therefore there is no toxic adulterants and secondly he purified like 4 glasses of wine max so the alcohol content in that glass is also quite low and safe I’m too lazy to type everything out that was slightly wrong but like i said the info is out there if you look for it
@@Practicalinvestments wine has methanol in it naturally it's not an adulterant, the methanol is far more dangerous once it's distilled out because it's a way higher concentration especially if you drank just that first bit. When you have ethanol in your system like you would with wine your liver prioritizes it and the methanol doesn't get metabolizes which is why it's fine mixed into wine but not on it's own
6:30
*Actually the reason why it's illegal to do without a permit is because the government isn't getting money from you.
Making beer and hard ciders can be done without a permit and my opinion is more unsafe because of unwanted bacteria you could consume.
I do it as a legitimate hobby.
I just found this channel, and the way this guy speaks and explains things doesn't make me bored like everyone else. i watched one about bread and now one about liqure while I don't even drink alcohol.
Solid video, good explanation, no hyperbole or old myths that are disproven
Maybe not the most scientifically accurate video adam has ever done, but, like soapmaking, distilling alcohol shows young people a very practical answer to the usefulness of basic chemistry. As also does baking in general. Why learn chemistry? Cake and whiskey. 😂
If everyone in the media was this logical, educational, level headed, and unbiased... what a wonderful world it could be.
You're an amazing person, thank you sir:)
That first part of your paragraph makes no sense
The quality of this reporting is amazing. Nice blend of science and bearded overalls. Awesome video.
i just visited this place last week during the eclipse! amazing products