Cloudy distillate

[mtoepfer67]

Hey y'all thank you for letting me on your forums I really appreciate it. Anyways the reason I'm posting is I'm having trouble with my distillation I don't get any distillate till after 197degrees f and after the first couple shots that I toss I'm getting cloudy weak distillAte weak enough to freeze.... I don't know what's going on am I misunderstanding the directions like shouldn't I be getting distillate at 180 f I was using bakers yeast and finally bought some distillers yeast would that be my problem am I not fermenting long enough or any other thing else that could be the problem

[Prairiepiss]

Gona need some more info please.
What is the recipe you are using? What ABV is it or SG readings? What kind of still are you using? A pic mite be good? What are you using for a heat source? How are you controlling that heat source? How fast are you taking off product?

[mtoepfer67]

Just the 5lbs of suger to 3 gals of water recipe with some honey the abv volume I haven't figured out but the SG is 1.75 to 1.8 and how do I post pics I was trying earlier but couldn't figure it out

[rad14701]

Without knowing more about your setup I'll have to guess...

It sounds like you are running a pot still... If you are then you can throw your assumptions out the window... With a pot still you will not get any output until the vapor temperature reaches the boiling point of the mixture within the boiler... So for a 14% boiler charge you won't see the temperature begin to stabilize and have steady output until you reach 196F and the spirits will be ~62%... And the temperature will gradually rise until you get to about 208F, at which point your output will be down to ~24%, or 33% at 206F... As you can see the reward for effort invested drops rapidly, which is why many of us don't collect that far down other than perhaps on a stripping run...

[rad14701]

Just the 5lbs of suger to 3 gals of water recipe with some honey the abv volume I haven't figured out but the SG is 1.75 to 1.8 and how do I post pics I was trying earlier but couldn't figure it out

That should be 1.075 - 1.080, right...???

5 pounds of sugar in 3 gallons of water has a SG of 1.077 and a potential ABV of 11.7%... How much honey did you add...???

[Prairiepiss]

What SG did it finish out at? How long did it ferment?

[rad14701]

I meant to post this link in my first reply...

Temperature & ABV Relationship Charts

These charts will help you understand the correlations between temperatures and the spirits produced... There are other graphs which give a better explanation of how to use them but they should be fairly self-explanatory...