Spirit Distillation: Monitoring Methanol Formation with a Hand-Held Device

Methanol occurs naturally in most alcoholic distillates. Yet, suitable detectors to check liquor adherence legal limits and, importantly, monitor situ methanol content during distillation are not available. Usually, distillers rely on error-prone human olfaction while “gold standard” liquid or gas chromatography (GC) rarely used being off-line, time-consuming, and expensive. Here, we explore monitoring the concentration industrial of cherry, apple, plum, herb (196 samples) with a low-cost hand-held detector combining Pd-doped SnO2 sensor packed bed separation column Tenax TA. Therein, individual concentrations (0.1–1.25 vol % 153–3266 g per hectoliter pure ethanol) quantified rapidly (within 2 min), bias-free high precision (i.e., 0.082 %) by headspace analysis, as confirmed GC. Most levels above E.U. U.S. were recognized reliably without interference much higher ethanol contents (5–90 aromas. Also, worked well even viscous inhomogeneous mash samples containing fruit pulp. As result, this device can help consumers, authorities, product safety, guide distillation, fermentation possibly prevent occupational exposure.