perhaps you took your time fermenting and distilled slowly as well.

Hi CC, Some of the difference in flavors of the brand names comes from how much of the heads and tails they use in their blending. Might try your hand at blending some of your tails and/or heads with your hearts and see how you like it.

Cloudyness usually means there are heads and/or tails smeared across the hearts. Either that or the water used was not pur enough. I use distilled water to cut mine that way you can tell for sure if it's smeared.
I also compress my fractions during a reflux run by holding it in total reflux for an hour or more. When I start to collect I will stabilize the head temp at 172 to 174. The compression allows you to pull the fractions off with a good separation and less smearing.

Hi captinjack, For the last couple of months I've been stabilizing at close to 169 degrees. That way I've run out all of the fores and most of the heads before stabilizing the column. Seems to be working pretty well as I get a very clear neutral when running this way.

Hi tom, and welcome

1 - what kind of wash ?
2 - Have these jars been aired out a few days after the run to stabilize? If so and its still hot (burnin) it's possible you got some smearing going from too high a heat, but.. There's just no way of me knowin with the details provided...

Need what temps you were taking the run at, and some other details, please..

Ceers

Hiya Tom

the turbo48 is really for sugar washes - Using it in a sweet feed may offer off flavors - I use a yeast that's designed for on the grain washes that contain the ingredients we see in sweet feed. It's Whiskey AG by Gert Strand (Avail on BH Site). It is specifically formulated for barley, rys and corn washes and has to AG in it to aid in starch conversion.

with those temps all over and if the heat was constantly being adjusted to compensate, I'd offer that the hotness is because of what is called smearing - essentially not keeping the rise of temp constant and slow as one progresses thru the distilling "zone" (165f to 178) - I also suggest you get something to act as a wind block and set up a square around your area or find a wall were you can be to the lee side and out of the wind. You can usually get pallets from someone for free, and then lash them end to end and make a box, then cover the outside of the pallet square with black plastic - You can use heavy gauge trash bags, but is cheaper to go to home creepo or Lowes and get a roll of Mylar plastic and wrap that around and bungee it with elastic ties so you can knock it all down and reuse it agin later...

After you draw your containers, it is best to let them air two days or so, but you need to put coffee filters, spare McD napkins (Sonic, any restaurant) over the top to keep nasties and dust or debris out. I use coffeemaker filters and rubber bands - fits the tops of the jars well.

Finally, I suggest you read thru some of the posts here in the new to distilling section. I learned a lot of what I know by reading the posts of folks like Bushy, Scotty, Hokey, Diesel Duo, Mr. Barleycorn and a host of others. Artisan (artisian-distiller.net) has a new distiller tutorial section that's good too. Homedistiller.org has prolly one of the most comprehensive tut sections and is ordered for newcomers. You can find that at: http://homedistiller.org/intro/intro

Happy stillin'

once you get your boiler up to temp, get the flow rate where you want it, leave your heat alone and the temp in your column will rise after the different fractions come off. that's how you will know where you are in your run

I was also thinking that if it was ran hot, there was prolly some smearing in there too..

Now that doesn't mean ya toss this, you are prolly gonna end up rerunning it slower(lower temp, slower take off rate, more time), or add it to the next run.

It is really important to control the heat when you start - And that begins with knowing the local temp at which water boils where you live. We all think it's 212, but in reality, that will vary based on where you are and weather conditions too... Where I am, it's 206-207 most days. The temp at which the EtOH will vaporize is also lower in that case and you need to know where that's at (yes, there's a calculation for that).. Assuming 172 or 173 could prove inaccurate and too much heat is used in Pot mode, smears, if in reflux mode and the coolant flow isn't right, pretty the same effect I think..

From my experiences (and I use gas too), I fire it on med-high till I see a column temp of about 135, i cut the heat back and creep into the EtOH boiling temp and just take my sweet time about it. Once I am in the band (from where EtOH starts coming out), I cut the heat back to minimums and just let the distillation take it's course. As stated, you are going to see a natural and gradual rise in temps as you work thru the batch.

There's so much more, I'm just skimming the basics.

Heed the Heeler's advice