An Australian teenager has died after drinking tainted alcohol in Laos in what Australia’s prime minister on Thursday called every parent’s nightmare. An American and two Danish tourists also died, officials said, following reports that several people had been sickened in a Laotian town popular with backpackers.
I’ve watched a good chunk of videos on moonshine at home, and for anyone interested in this further, most of them are pretty clear and you can see the difference between the methanol and ethanol when collecting.
The methanol is cloudy, so the first jar+ is collected and separated. After that the remaining is collected for drinking. I believe that some people will then dump the methanol in their next mash to distill it again and get some of the ethanol that was also collected with the methanol. It’s a pretty neat, and simple process with huge implications.