Foul Taste – If your container of moonshine is stored and sealed, it won’t hurt you to take a sip and test the flavor (assuming it was distilled correctly, that is). Moonshine that “goes bad” will have a foul taste, even if it’s not technically harmful.
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Can you get food poisoning from moonshine?
Bacteria Levels – Sanitation practices have a tremendous bearing on the quality of drink that comes out of a moonshine distillery. The vats used during the fermentation process must be sterilized on a regular basis or else harmful bacteria will grow inside the vats.
- These bacteria can become a source of added methanol that makes its way into the finished product.
- Another way harmful bacteria can show up in the fermentation process has to do with unforeseen temperature or environmental changes.
- Changing temperatures can cause foreign bacteria to grow, which becomes another source of methanol.
These dangerous bacteria may also produce the toxin that causes botulism, a type of food poisoning. When the process isn’t monitored correctly, a potentially good batch of moonshine can turn deadly.
Why is my moonshine still puking?
Solution #1 – Still puking – turn down the heat – In our experience, we’ve come to realize that the majority of the time cloudy moonshine is caused from your still ‘puking’ into the collection pot. This means that liquid in the boiler has foamed up into the column and then is dripping down through the condenser and drip arm. 
An example of cloudy vs clear moonshine
Why is there white stuff in my moonshine?
Waxes, esters, oils – So what exactly are the white flakes? They’re basically the core units of flavor extracted from the many botanicals. In lay terms, you can think of them as things like waxes, esters and essential oils, though their actual chemical identities are a bit more complicated than that.
In any event, because you’re seeing the organic compounds themselves, and not, say, a bit of errant orange peel from the botanical bundle, the flakes have this more uniform white look. O’Neil says such compounds might not be visible in the alcohol for months, so gin makers are unlikely to see them and they won’t be apparent until long after they’ve sat in a consumer’s liquor cabinet.
By then, enough time will have passed for the compounds to find each other and tangle up into what O’Neil calls “really big hairballs of molecules.” So, the flakes are just bundles of potential flavor compounds; could that be a good thing? Could that mean a more flavorful product? Not necessarily, says O’Neil.
If the flavors settle into flakes on the bottom of the bottle, you won’t get them in your glass. If you do shake it up, whether you get any extra flavor would be entirely dependent on exactly what compound it was. And, when it comes to the compounds that can be extracted from botanicals, O’Neil offers these numbers for perspective: Each botanical ingredient might have hundreds of different flavor compounds, but only a dozen or so are abundant enough for us to taste.
Now that we’ve settled that, how about a Fallen Angel Cocktail ? Key ingredient: gin. It’s be-gin-ing to look a lot like, excess organic compounds
What are the stages of methanol poisoning?
Neurologic manifestations – Initially, the symptoms of methanol intoxication are similar to those of ethanol intoxication, often with disinhibition and ataxia. Following a latent period, patients may develop headache, nausea, vomiting, or epigastric pain.
In later stages, drowsiness may rapidly progress to obtundation and coma. Seizures may occur, generally as a complication of the metabolic derangement or as a result of damage to the brain parenchyma. Cases of axonal polyneuropathy in association with chronic exposure have been reported. Further, motor neuron disease resembling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has been documented in a case report.
It is likely that neuropathies and spinal cord dysfunction are underestimated.
