Tradition in Competition to Food Safety, or “Archaic Science” against Brand Name Products

Traditionally, the homemade beverages or concentrated alcoholic drinks are produced by distilling different types of organic raw materials, most of them from biological sources as cereals grains, fruits and juices (these being the starch sources) [1] but even from wood sources. All these sources produce both ethanol and methanol in different proportions, by fermentation process. The serious health risk of methanol poisoning becomes higher when using wood sources [2].
The European and national regulations for Food Safety do specify strict requirements for producing alcohol drinks, and here are the brand name products, but homemade beverages with over 30% ethanol obtained by repeated distillation in manufactured copper vessels will contain small amounts of methanol. In case that fruit juice is used this amount reaches about 0.2-0.3%, however from fruit pulp the amount may rise to 0.6-0.9% [3].
As the metabolism of methanol is much slower than the one of ethanol, the most common effects caused by exposure to methanol by drinking alcohol beverages become apparent only after several hours. [More]