Cambodian tainted rice wine kills 19, leaves 172 ill

Wow, the article makes it sound like the methanol resulted from the natural brewing process; and the brewing had to be done very carefully.

But I suspect someone intentionally added methanol to the wine to reduce costs, and he/she was not careful enough and got carried away.

First two links are from 2011 but have a lot of info on the sources of the methanol (first article re natural methanol occurring during production, second re sale of industrial methanol as consumable ethanol).

http://tinyurl.com/juf2nue

Promotion of safe winemaking practices using quantity comparison and methanol-reduction process for rice wine and whisky

https://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/rice-wine-poisoning-leaves-a-village-reeling-2885/

October 18, 2011 - ... Between Oct 4 and 7, nearly the entire village was either killed or sickened by a bad batch of “rice wine”, which actually turned out to be water mixed with pure methanol, a deadly poison typically used as an industrial solvent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents

Never drink liquor in provincial areas of SE Asia. I ordered "Scotch whiskey" in a Vietnamese town, and it was definitely industrial alcohol. They refill bottles of Johnny Walker, etc. with this toxic stuff.

@ JeffLee - wise and correct advice (I don't know why someone would have thumbed you down). Same advice applies to Indonesia - particularly Bali - where deaths due to methanol poisoning are also sadly common. Stick to capped bottles of beer and steer clear of any local liquor.