Chemist makes moonshine from toilet paper

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Originally published at: Chemist makes moonshine from toilet paper | Boing Boing

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This goes on about 10x too long

but one can’t fault his production values.

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Apparently after a particularly bad growing season for both potatoes and grain, some Swedish chemists got so desperate they worked on turning lichen into alcohol, which involved a not dissimilar process to what he initially rejects for this (using lots of strong acid, because fungus is a lot harder to break down - it’s easier to turn toilet paper into alcohol). They figured it out, ramped up production but fairly quickly ran out of lichen (presumably because they’re quite slow-growing) and the potato and grain production had since bounced back, so that was an end to fungus vodka.

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I bet he was one of those people hording toilet paper two years ago when supply caught up with the demand.

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then you have to ferment the glucose, and then distill it, and then voila, you have ethanol

You have to ferment it, but of course you don’t have to distill it, since all the ethanol is present after the fermentation step. The distillation just concentrates it by removing other stuff (water, mostly).

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NOT THE USED TOILET PAPER!

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I mean, you can turn anything into booze if you try hard enough.

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Like they say, chemists have solutions.

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Nonsense! I see these guys at the farmers’ market all the time.
https://www.mushroomspiritsdistillery.com/our-spirts/our-wines/

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Huh, so they’re infusing mushroom flavors into regular grain/potato-based spirits, rather than starting off with mushrooms and trying to make them taste like grain/potato spirits…

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Now they can skip the fruit!

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It’s usually pitched as either fuel or chemical feedstock rather than booze; but apparently people have been poking at cellulosic ethanol for a while; albeit with economic viability poor enough that it mostly rises to prominence during large wars.

As in many things, fungal enzymes are on the cutting edge of cutting cellulose down to size; but for the name alone I’m fond of the “SPORL process”. It’s not every day you just want to pet a piece of process chemistry on its fuzzy little head.

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