Does Embracing New Approaches in Homemade Fruit Spirit Production Lessen Consumer Health Risks?

Fruit spirits have roots in traditions across Eastern and Central Europe. Homemade/unrecorded spirits are typically produced under inconsistent conditions, leading to inconsistent product quality. From the safety aspect, great concentration variability of exclusively harmful substances (methanol and acetaldehyde) and compounds with either favorable or hazardous properties (ethyl acetate and higher alcohols), depending on their amount, must be considered. An option to ensure their safety could be a dephlegmator, a central component in column distillation systems. To determine whether such an approach in small-scale spirit production lessens the health risks from harmful volatile compounds, 35 fruit spirits were investigated using HSS-GC-FID. Dephlegmator usage was associated with lower median methanol concentrations (1878 vs. 3723 mg/L p.a.) and a narrower concentration span. The remaining analytes showed no significant reduction in median level; however, the ranges have narrowed. A risk assessment (margin of exposure approach) revealed that dephlegmator usage increased the proportion of methanol-safe samples. The risk of acetaldehyde was equivalent or somewhat greater in the dephlegmator spirit group, suggesting challenges for optimizing the head cut during distillation. Ethyl acetate and higher alcohols did not pose a risk regardless of dephlegmator use. These findings support dephlegmator usage as a useful but insufficient intervention in home/small-scale spirit production to obtain safer products of consistent quality.