Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

I believe smearing is the issue nudder and I agree with Howard. One of the hardest things I had to get my head around when first starting is the need for a controlled boil to-get best results. If you grab a power control from 5 star , give them a call as the shop is down, Andrew will explain it far better than I will. The theory is that we just get it boiling enough the vaporise the methanol so it comes off the wash first ( it has a lower boiling point than ethanol ) that gives us the opportunity to discard that when making the cuts and getting rid of the heads. You will need to tinker a little with it as the run progresses as the mentanol disappears and the ethanol gets less more water goes into the vapour ( this needs more power to boil because of its higher boiling point) and this is why the abv drops eventually because of the increased water content.
Now if you run the heater flat out from the first bit of vapour then it all gets jumbled up and mixed together, smearing.
I hope that helps as I have not given the best of descriptions sorry. A voltage controller should see the end of your frustrations and I think they are only about $50:00. Controlling the rate of boil is essential in trying to seperate the different portions of the run to make effective cuts

Hi nudder, i've got the same swear word still as you, albeit the copper jobby and with a power controller for the element. A mate came over to show me how to drive it! He told me to put the controller away and ran it at full tilt, that run was shite. I have since used the contoller at around 70-80% after reaching boil on every run and it is a completely different product. $45 well spent IMHO.

Mind you, my mate mixes heads, hearts and tails for his final product! :angry-banghead: Muppet!