Wine De-Headachechulation.
I brew wine. I enjoy making it, but drink little - friends and family take care of the overflow.
In simple terms, brewing is a matter of using a liquid suspension of S.L. yeast cells to convert sugars to alcohols. Ideally, 100% of the sucrose, fructose and glucose is converted into ethanol : humanity's favorite poison.
Life being inherently messy, not all of the conversions are correct. Various other alcohols and aldehydes and produced as well, including methanol.
Methanol is poisonous - it is a ( the ? ) major contributor to the hangover headache (And don't whine at me about dehydration, as thats controllable with an intelligent drinking regime ).
Certain batches of my wine, while palatable, tend to give a nasty kick in the temples the morning after, and I'm prepared to blame the methanol for most of this.
Lacking magical ability's to dispel the methanol on command ( "I need a young priest and an old priest...") and also not being able to de-methylate by mental powers, it occurred to me that the wine might be treatable to remove the methanol by boiling.
As a rough rule of thumb, the various home distillation experts recommend throwing out the first 200ml of distillate when distilling spirits.*
This foreshot (assuming a 23L batch) contains the majority of the methanol. Now i don't need a still to try this. I just need to boil the wine until the volume drops by 0.009%...only a few minutes work.
A possible drawback is that the boiling temperature might alter the flavor.
Also easily dealt with - arrange a vacuum distillation rig with a pressure cooker and a scrap A/C compressor and boil the methanol off at room temperature.
I am aware that the other 'fusel oils' in the batch won't separate off this way,but as those compounds contribute heavily to the flavor, I'm willing to allow their presence.
I can't find any mention of this procedure on the Net - so the 14,530** headache question is: Does It Work?
*Obsession with distil-- prefix intentional.
**40 years of daily bingeing before hepatic failure, minus 80 days to observe sobereity on Pi Day and National Petunia Appreciation Day ***
***Walt Kelly would have really liked Talk Like A Pirate Day.
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