Ethanol Versus Methanol

I think you will find that the wineries are distilling pure alcohol from the wine that they don't want to sell. They are not adding it to the wine. I had friends who had a winery in Griffith many years ago and they made most of their income from distilling what they called "double brandy" - nearly pure alcohol, which they sold to spirit manufacturers.

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Originally Posted by soundman

In Australia it's very unlikely you have purchased " methanol" unless you have specifically saught it out as either racing fuel or a laboratory product.

We have not for a very long time, If ever added methanol to ethanol to make metholated spirit.
It is denatured by adding a bittereing agent.

Methanol is pretty toxic and has very few ligitimately necessary uses.

cheers

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Always an education reading these forums. Thanks for the info.

John

Hi Gareth,
If it is methylated spirits then it is ethanol. It is unlikely to be methanol as this is very toxic.
Cheers Paul

Hi Len,

Ethanol distilled from a water containing precursor material such as wine will in fact be ~95% ethanol as ethanol forms a low boiling azeotrope with water.

Ethanol can however be dehydrated with anhydrous magnesium sulfate, simply made by heating Epsom salts, the heptahydrate, for a time in your oven at ~250 ^oC or so. Once dehydrated place the magnesium suflate into the 95% ethanol and shake well, let stand overnight tightly capped and pour out the ethanol as needed through a filter to capture the magnesium suflate crystals. Excess anhydrous magnesium sulfate can be stored in a mason jar with a good seal.

Works nicely for dehydrating both ethanol and methanol for dissolving shellac.

Cheers,
Rob