I learned a few interesting facts on my quest to learn about the magic that occurs inside a still. During prohibition, everyone and their brother ran their own still...usually safely. But some people were only interested in profits. Some ran their stills using very questionable, and sometimes deadly parts and additives. Some used car radiators as the cooling condenser. These radiators contained lead, which bleed into the finished product. To help age the moonshine faster, they added chemicals like embalming chemicals. Some kept the methanol, or the foreshots, which are poisonous, and could cause blindness if taken in a high enough dosage. And actually, it was the Feds, that started the rumors saying moonshine can lead to blindness, hoping to scare some people off of the licker, even though there never were any proven cases of regular moonshine causing any blindness. And Absinthe, a very popular distilled avlohol back in the day, was promoted as a dangerous hallucinaginic which caused people to do dangerous and murderous acts. This came about after a man killed his wife after drinking Absinthe. They neglected to tell the people he had been drinking moonshine nonstop for 48 hrs pryer to killing her, which I would guess had something to do with it.