First, I let it boil over. The lid wasn't clamped down very well, so instead of puking through the lyne arm, the lid just got forced off. I lost about a pint I think. Then I let resealed the lid, and let it cool down to around 75C and slowly heated it back up, expecting to start collecting at around 77C. It got up to 80C and only a teaspoon or so had come out by then. I kept waiting, and after about an hour I was really confused as to why nothing was coming out.
I thought maybe too much was condensing in the two feet of lyne arm I have going up at 45 degrees out the top of the still, so I tried bending it closer to the still, which was hard work while it was running. I ended up getting a leak in my worm from doing this.
After about three hours of fucking around trying to get it to work (by now the thermometer was reading 85C) I decided to turn up the temperature. It was only when the thermometer reached ~95C that it started really working. I have a feeling that I was getting a false reading due to contact between part of the probe and the lid of the still. The vapour itself may, no MUST, have been cooler. So I ran it at a steady drip, reminiscent of what I have seen in youtube videos, for a while. I collected in separate jars.
I had planned on doing a stripping run first, and collecting about a third of the 20L I started with, but I had not planned on it taking so long up to that point, so I decided I would stop after I had collected the good stuff. The first jar I had already planned to throw out. A bit over half a cup was in it. It smelled really estery, sort of sweet. My girlfriend liked the smell, but knowing what whisky is meant to smell like, it kind of put me off. Every successive jar smelled less and less strong. I was tasting it as I went. It started off like rocket fuel, and was eventually like wine. I decided to stop there.
I mixed all of it together except the first jar, and took an alcometer reading. It says that it's 40%. I was hoping for a bit stronger. I think I collected about 1.5 Litres from 20 litres of 6.3%ABV. This is less than I expected. I think maybe I had the heat up too high and ended up collecting stuff that was lower alcohol than I could have towards the end. Next time I will aim for a slower drip.
The stuff still smells really estery. Not sure if this is normal for unmatured, or if I left too much of the heads in there. At the moment it is sitting in a flagon with a nothing more than a napkin covering the mouth.
Also, as I was collecting it, the first couple of jars were quite cloudy, and the last few had a 'slick' on top. A lot of jars had red flakey floaties in them. I got out as much of the major stuff as I could at the time. Now there is a layer of reddish looking stuff in the bottom of the flagon. I feel I have two courses of action. First, I can filter it through a coffee filter (I don't want to use carbon or anything because I want a full flavoured whisky). Or, I can throw it back in with the next run (I have another twenty litres of wash ready to go).
Main thing is, I don't want to poison myself as I don't actually know if the alcohol has somehow stripped something off the copper that water didn't get out. Although, my guess is that some foam went through the lyne arm but didn't make it all the way. Then in the following three hours it dried up and then started flaking off and dissolving as the alcohol came through, leaving a dirty product. Can't be sure of this though.
Also, if I collected too much of the heads, I may have to redistill it just so it tastes like real whisky. The thing is, the heads were the most alcoholic bit, if I threw out another jars worth, I would have even lower % than the 40% I got.
Anyway, hopefully some of you guys with experience can give me a few pointers or suggestions.
Thanks
if not it sounds like your picking up all the crap from a virgin still 
), use it as a solvent or as junkahol for testing. do the vinegar run.