Safe distilling of mead?

Does distilling mead produce methanol/how much comes off in the first run? So much conflicting info!

18l (ish) of mead started through a pot still thumper keg until 1.8l (ish) distillate collected, then stopped the still.

Distillate collected in 5 batches: 250ml then 400ml X 4

Plans for making a blend with some of the remains in the still, and some of the collected batches.

Batches all look/smell/taste similar, safe to assume discarding the 250ml leaves the remaining 1.6l distillate usable?

Topic distillation safety mead homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

Most (all?) fermentations have trace amounts of methanol, with the tendency of fruit-based fermentations to have more.

However the amount is so low, it is insignificant - unless your concentrate it. One method of concentration is via heat distillation.

Note: It's not that you're making more methanol by distillation, the process just concentrates the existing alcohols by removing water from the final product. Imagine boiling the water off salt water. A teaspoon of salt in a bucket of water is still potable. But concentrate that salt by boiling away the water, and eventually it becomes nasty.

This PDF manual for a commercially available "Pot" still, on page 8 suggests that the first 200ml for "foreshots" should be discarded. Based on the boiler equipment pictured in the manual, this amount seems to be based on a 25 litre batch size of a ~20% AbV wash. However, I was unable to find a listed official batch size.

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