anyone willing to help a little? I am very anxious to get my first run done and i just need a little help from people who have done it before. thank you

Ryan, the basic thing is; whatever can ferment will and; ethanol is ethanol, everthing else is flavoring.

Having good equipment won't make for a good mash but it can help. It is easier to get consistency when you can measure instead of guess.

As long as the maize or corn is edible it can make good whisky. Don't use treated seed corn. Of course the fungicide that is on seed typically kills yeast so you can't get a good ferment anyway. Animal feed is ok!

If you want good mash you should find a homebrew supply store. They will have the ingredients. Otherwise you can use malt syrup, cornflakes etc. from the local grocery. Wheaties and bread yeast have been known to make grain whisky.

I would suggest that you first try using a turbo yeast with a sugar wash. This makes for an easy ferment and it gets you to the distillation stage faster. You can buy turbo yeast from Brewhaus or there are other places that sell turbos. They are easy to ship if need be. You can buy the sugar locally. Have fun!

Turbo yeast packets have directions and the amount of ingredients on the package. They are easy to use. The packet contains the yeast, acid and nutrients to have a good ferment.

When making corn beer you may need to adjust the pH of your water. Some people have good water to begin with and they don't need to do anything. Yeast like an acid environment to grow in. The acid also keeps other organisms like lacto bacillus from taking over the ferment. ,this is one reason for the sour mash process,

If you want a consistent product then you want to do things the same way. If you can adjust the pH of your water so it is the same every time then you will have that much more control of your process.

Marbles bouncing in your column? I'm not sure but it sounds like you may need to reduce the heat as the alcohol % drops at the end of your run. The marbles bounce from a vigorous boil in a flooded column. Have you checked out Tony Ackland's www.homedistiller.org

Maybe someone else has more experience with your type of set up.

The best thing would be for you to go to www.homedistiller.org and study how distillation works. If you like you can download the files so that you can look at them off line. You can put the files on a CD.

The vapor from the boiler is pushed up the column as more is boiled off. This vapor in the column cools and condenses and then revaporises ,or boils, with a higher alcohol %. This continues as long as you have column length.

If your column is too small in diameter for the amount of vapor going up the column then when condensation occurs the column will be filled with liquid and 'flooding' will occur. This may be partial or complete depending on your set up. The boiling condensate may then cause the marbles used as packing to rattle. Reducing the heat causes less vapor to go into the column reducing the flood condition.