Methanol or "wood alcohol" was made in the 18th and 19th Century by "destructive pyrolysis", which is burning wood chips inside a closed chemical retort container in the absence of Oxygen. This process used 15 times more energy than contained in the end product of methanol, but they were interested in the methanol for other purposes, such as for paint thinners and other chemical needs. Actually almost any still will have small traces of methanol along with the high proof ethnanol. The triple distilling action of the Charles 803 still that I use, will remove most of the methanol, but that doesn't mean it is safe for drinking. If you want to build a still for drinking alcohol, there are a lot of smaller and cheaper stills you can build. The Charles 803 still is for making moderate quantities or ethanol for use as a fuel. You can make 5 to 8 gallons an hour of 180 proof. If you want to sell your fuel, this is probably too small a still for you, but it is nevertheless a good tool for learning about fuel productions and for experimenting with different feedstocks for fermentation. The thing is, you don't need super pure alcohol if you aren't drinking it. But for the sake of your engine, it is quite good to have high proof, triple-distilled alcohol as made in the still I designed. You may not have removed the all the methanol, but this is a good fuel, and burns clean. The fusil oils and various other impurities have mostly been removed, but any minor impurities will also burn, much cleaner than gasoline, with no carbon build-up. In fact, ethanol will dissolve build up carbon as it burns, so the end result is a clean engine. Now, as for the question, which is a better fuel, ethanol or methanol, ethanol is clearly the better fuel: it has 38% more available energy (86,000 BTU's per gallon for ethanol, while methanol only has 62,000 BTU's/gallon). Methanol is commonly used for racing as it is a cheap and easily available byproduct of the Natural Gas industry, and is cheaper than ethanol because they don't have to pay the distillation taxes. Ethanol is also used in racing, and the Indie 500 has used this fuel for over 80 years, now. Ethanol is less corrosive than methanol, and burns very clean, with only CO2 and water as the main byproducts of combustion (there is a slight amount of aldyhides in the exhaust, but it is 300% cleaner than burning gasoline.

No, I was thinking of the distillation process. Methanol is one of the "waste" products created when alcohol is distilled. Since it is illegal to distill alcohol (unless you have the required permits), production of methanol in this way is illegal. I wasn't really aware of any other way to produce it.