  Recently, the extremely sensitive torsion-rotation transitions in methanol
have been used to set a tight constraint on a possible variation of the
proton-to-electron mass ratio over cosmological time scales. In order to
improve this constraint, laboratory data of increased accuracy will be
required. Here, we explore the possibility for performing high-resolution
spectroscopy on methanol in a Stark-deflected molecular beam. We have
calculated the Stark shift of the lower rotational levels in the ground
torsion-vibrational state of CH3OH and CD3OH molecules, and have used this to
simulate trajectories through a typical molecular beam resonance setup.
Furthermore, we have determined the efficiency of non-resonant multi-photon
ionization of methanol molecules using a femtosecond laser pulse. The described
setup is in principle suited to measure microwave transitions in CH3OH at an
accuracy below 10^{-8}.
