How do you make methyl alcohol from methane gas?

I know that rotting vegetation under water produces methane gas. But, how do you then get methyl alcohol from this?

What I am trying to do is figure out a way to make methanol from grass clippings. It has been done with other vegetation.

Answer:
Methane comes from rotting vegetation as a result of bacterial action. To put it simply, the bacteria eats the plants, then farts.

There's an industrial process for converting methane to methanol, by reacting it with steam to get carbon monozide, then with hydrogen to get methanol, but the methane used here is from petroleum sources ("natural gas"). They use tons of it, and it needs high pressures/temperatures that you wouldn't want to reproduce at home. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/methanol...

An older way to produce methanol is the destructive distillation of wood: you heat the wood in the absence of air, and a cruddy oil comes off. Redistillation of this separates the methanol (and that's why it was known as "wood alcohol"). Grass might work. A grand-uncle of mine used to do this, with some make-shift still (what he was after, actually, was the charcoal left behind, but he collected the distillate as well to use as a crude lamp-fuel). Unfortunately, he's dead, so I can't ask him for details.
just drink a cup of lemon juice and then light your fart on fire.

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