First Top Layer – Foreshots = Discard !!!

The Very Top Layer

Hydrogen Sulfide – First Order of Business

Whenever you distill grains or fruits – a small quantity of the chemical hydrogen sulfide is produced. It is a stinky smell like rotten eggs. You can smell it in a chemistry lab. Hydrogen sulfide is almost as toxic as hydrogen cyanide. Very low concentrations can get into your distillate and produce a foul taste. You can smell it as low concentrations but it is a nerve toxin and when it raises high enough it will anesthetize your olfactory nerves and you will then not smell it. That is when it becomes dangerous. Fortunately the quantities produced are very low, and…. you can trap them by using copper.

Copper absorbs the hydrogen sulfide and becomes Copper Sulfate on the surface of the copper and at the same time releases hydrogen gases. So any distilling you do in a stainless steel distiller, be sure to put some copper in it. After distilling be sure and clean the copper parts good to get rid of the Copper Sulfate. See Post Distilling for how to clean copper and stainless steel.

First Stage – Foreshots = Discard

First Stag Objective: The main precautionary objective in distilling alcohol is to discard the bad oils that are not good for you to drink.  These are the oils that have boiling points below the boiling point of alcohol (pure Ethanal 78C [172F] @sea level).  This ridding is done by slowly bringing up the heat to the mash to 56.5C (134F).  This temp is maintained for a 5 minutes then slowly increased, gradually to one degree below the boiling temperature of ethanal, or alcohol.  This slow raising of temperature should take 10 minimum …. preferably 15 minutes, for a low gallons batch to ensure there has been time to totally eliminate the non desirable oils.  These oils once condensed should be about 3/4 of an ounce per gallon.  So it is essential that you throw out the first part that condenses from your slow rising temperature stage.

After you have heated up the mash to about 135 deg, take the lid off the mash pot. You can visually see the Methanol and other oils floating on the top of the heated mash.  They are the lightest oils. The oils will also be slightly slippery to the touch when rubbed together between a finger and a thumb.

Low and Slow: From 145F to 155F the Methanol will slowly evaporate so take 10 to 15 minutes slowly raising the temperature in this temperature window. If you take say only 3 minutes to raise the heat of this window, there will still be Methanol still in the pot!!!

These oils are distilled out by this slow temperature raising. It is time to collect the Methanol out from the condenser. These oils and Methanol that first come out will burn yellow when you light them. When the distillation coming out turns to burning blue… that is alcohol. This is a great test. When liquid starts coming out of the condenser, pour three or four drops out on a metal or glass surface and put a match to it. You will understand first hand which are the bad oils and which is the good alcohol.

Acetone = 134F 56.5C very light and evaporates quickly as the temperature is increased

Methanol = –      148.5F 64C (wood alcohol) In the body, it is metabolized first to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which attacks the optic nerve if in large quantity.

Ethyl acetate =    171F 77.1C

Alcohol Evaporation (ETOH) = 173.5 Evaporation temperature.

Methanol

If you are distilling a pure sugar or molasses mash, little to none off methanol is produced.

However, if your wash contains polysaccharides like pectin in fruits and cellulose in grains then you will have to remove the Methanol. Note: this chemical occurs in the fermentation and not the distillation. Methanol itself is not very toxic, but in the liver it is converted to formic acid and Formaldehyde and they are very toxic. The treatment for Methanol poisoning is to give the person Ethanol (alcohol). This makes the liver treat the competing alcohol primarily and the Methanol is diluted and treated slowly over time.

So since the light Methanol (floating on top of the wash, visible oily look) has a very low evaporation point when heated, the chemical can easily be removed by slowly increasing the temperature around it’s evaporation point of 147F (64C) and discarding the liquid that comes out first. This first bitter tasting small amount is the majority of Methanol produced from the concentrating of liquids of distillation. There still remains a very small trace of Methanol in the wash that is not significant at all.

Methanol and Blindness

Foreshots  = Methyl alcohol  148.5 evaporation point

The (be)foreshots are the first vapors to evaporate during distillation.  BEFORE you drink any SHOTS, toss the (be)foreshots. These contain the most volatile alcohols and should not be ingested, as they contain methanol and other undesirables. Moonshiners always discard the foreshots and never consume them. This portion makes up roughly 3% of all of the mash volume that is at the beginning of a mash distillation alcohol run. In an all sugar washes there is very little methanol.

Also after the methanol is evaporated, the “lighter” compounds such as Acetone, Acetaldehyde also known as ethanal acetaldehyde, and Acetate need to be removed. These fusil oils have evaporation points before the alcohol evaporation point and thus are removed in the foreshots stage. These compounds taste bad and they smell like solvent, not good for you to drink. Additionally they are said to be the primary culprits in causing hangovers.

Other undesirable chemicals:  Other not wanted chemicals come after the alcohol is stripped out.  They have a higher boiling point than alcohol are present in very small amounts in your stripped alcohol and can be removed through filtering after the distillation process is finished.