I guess what I'm thinking is this: the temp begins to rise when the vapor contains larger percentages of water. I'm suggesting that this happens when you boil the wash 'hard'...with far too much energy input. There is, in effect, little reflux taking place--the vapor, in its entirety, is just being blown up thru the column.

If the condenser is effective enough, this high water content vapor is condensed anyway--giving you the unsatisfying and emasculating 70% ABV.

I use the 7.5gal 'pony' keg for my kettle. I crank that cooker up until I hear some action in the kettle, then I back it ALL the way down to a very, very small maintenance flame. I mean, the total height of the visible blue flame, measured off the burner, is about 3cm ,1 1/2 inches or so,. It's a fairly soft, silent flame--NOT your basic J79 in afterburn.

This arrangement results in a rock-steady low-60s reading for the first hour or so, followed ,without my intervention, by a steady climb-out to upper 60s or low 70s ,I'll have to look at my log,, where it stays for maybe about 8-10 hours. I'm describing my fantasy, smoothed data--actual results were not quite this perfect on my 2nd run.

Again..is this a 2' copper column 'In the Tradition'?

Thanks for the response. My column is the one from the book 'Building a Home Distillation Apparatus, A Step by Step Guide'. 2' column with large condensor parallel to the column. Water input and output to the condensor directly thru the column. I use a combination of rashig rings and broken safety glass for packing. Bought the rashing rings only to find out one bag wouldn't fill my column, so I added some glass.
One other difference from my original setup that I didn't mention; I changed the packing retainer in the bottom of the column from stainless mesh to a copper plate with drilled holes because of the different connection required to the beer keg.

To Anon... the original post , It is sounding to me like the glass could be acting as the restriction factor here , due to the fact that I have never tried it I cant be sure , I use a copper plate that is drilled with 1/4 inch holes for the base so I'm guessing that that's not the problem , a 1 liter bag of rings filled my colum to a couple of inches from the top ,2 to 3 in, which gives me a fairly good reflux rate . Not that I bothered to do the maths on it or anythig , but my run starts at about 93% abv and tapers down to around 75% at 2 1/2 to 3 liters of spirit , altho I run a valved reflux and could maintain a higher consistancy , at the end of the day a finished product of around 6 lit
40% suits me fine , but back to you.... you could try removing the glass and doing a run and see if this gives a more consistant flo. remember that if the ABV isn't as high as you'd like you can always distil it again.. or thro it in with your next batch , and don't 4get to dump your first 50-100 ml of spirit.....stils are like people , no two are exactly the same , and some are a pain in the rrrrrr s....... Good luck

Thanks again for the response. The glass worked fine with my other setup, but I'm thinking of ordering more rashig rings just in case. My first thoughts when this problem occured was that the condensor was leaking internally. I dropped the column on my garage floor and this created an external leak at the top of the condensor which I fixed. Even though I can hook up the water and plug the end of the output hose and nothing seems to leak, I'm going to take it apart and make sure.

anyone have a recipe for moonshine? tom

MAKE SURE IT IS HUMAN GRADE NOT ANIMAL FEED BECAUSE IT WILL SERIOUSLY AFFECT THE END PRODUCT