Where's the authority on that?

Ethanol can be used as a temporary measure in methanol poisoning as it temporarily outcompetes methanol in the metabolic process. So it's only useful until proper medical help arrives when better alternatives such as fomepizole are administered. Even then there is no guarantee of success.

Methanol is still metabolized to dangerous formaldehyde and formic acid by the liver's alcohol dehydrogenase. The logic of giving ethanol or fomepizole is to slow down the rate of production methanol's dangerous metabolic byproducts so less damage is done, nevertheless those dangerous metabolites are still produced.

Ethanol's first-pass metabolite is acetaldehyde and it is still toxic but not to the same degree as those of methanol.

It is incorrect to say ethanol is an antidote for methanol poisoning. Using ethanol is a last-ditch stand to try and take some minor control of an otherwise out of control situation. There's nothing subtle about it—it's a blunderbuss approach that often doesn't work well because replacing one poison with a less toxic one is a pretty hit-and-miss process.

Antidotes counteract poisons, that's not what happens when you give ethanol in methanol poisonings.

Same with antifreeze poisoning. If a kid drinks antifreeze, get him wasted to keep the liver busy.

ah got it. thanks for clarifying!

Yup, distillation never produces a pure product. Cask-strength whiskeys contain quite a lot of water, even though nobody is stupid enough to distill at 100C. Even an industrial column still can't go over 96% ABV.

There is always some amount of vapor pressure, even below the boiling point of a substance. Otherwise, neither water nor alcohol would evaporate by themselves at room temperature! The temperature we call the "boiling point" is just the temperature at which the vapor pressure equals the ambient pressure.

You can't distill out pure methanol, as at the boiling point of methanol ethanol also has some vapor pressure, so you distill a mix. However above that boiling point you distilled out all methanol (with a mix of ethanol), and the remaining ethanol should be free from methanol.

This also matches what happens when distilling ethanol from water. You can't distill pure ethanol, but you csn distill ethanol-free water afterwards.

Yeah column stills exist for home use but they’re not very popular. They’re big and expensive and strip flavor. It’s probably because Home distilling, like home brewing, is largely focused on the craft side rather than trying to get drunk cheaply.

If you’re trying to get drunk cheaply, and without tasting liquor, you cannot beat the product and efficiency of a column still.

But I want my whiskey or apple brandy to have the characteristics of the mash I distill it from. A column still would reduce that.

So most home distilling is a pot still for sure.

We could be breaking new grounds with spinning band distilled moonshine.

You throw away the foreshots because they also contain things like acetone that taste bad and may be harmful. They’re highly unpalatable so people can be relied on to do a sufficient job.

this is dangerously wrong in several dimensions

methanol and ethanol do not form an azeotrope with each other, they only (both, each) bind to water. that's why separation of methanol and ethanol by holding key temperatures works at all.

furthermore, the azeotrope effect only becomes relevant at concentrations beyond 90% alcohol. so when you're producing pure methanol and ethanol, then distillation won't cut it beyond 90+% as water+(m)ethanol then *at these high concentrations* boil and evaporate together. that's the grain of truth in your statement.

last not least going blind from methanol is _very_ real.

> From what I understood ethanol and methanol form an azeotrope

I don't think so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotrope_tables

Good question, I think it's to get people drunk and buying more drinks.

As opposed to the crowd sobering up and leaving.

But also I believe the bar (staff) often genuinely don't know what their serving is harmful.

I should have added the limit to safety at low levels of methanol is actually that your body processes ethanol much faster than methanol. So it's more that the crowd goes home and then hours later (once ethanol has been cleared) the methanol finally is picked up by the enzymes that makes it toxic. If they stay drunk (on ethanol) for days the methanol might have been excreted before being toxified.

Probably because a- people can tell, and b- you sell more to already drunk people, so getting them drunk sooner is better.

So maybe the answer is water down the shots of your obviously drunk customers.

If places are really sketchy, they might be mixing in partially treated industrial or "denatured" alcohol, which has poisonous quantities of methanol and bitterants but are also like 90% ethanol

If you’re in Romandie in Switzerland I would recommend local wines, that’s one thing the whole French speaking region is well known for (source: I’m from there)

Is that in Oslo or elsewhere? Have prices gone down for some reason?

EDIT: Ahh! I was basing my statement on data from quite a number of years back, and just assuming prices tend to go in one direction in inflationary economies. The nuance here is that the NOK has weakened somewhat dramatically against the dollar, so relative prices aren't quite as insane now as they were in the past.