What did we do wrong?

[WAstill]

Hi all,

I've been constantly reading and working at perfecting the system to try to get a good batch together on my PDA-1 column still. Our first attempt was somewhat successful in that we definitely had some drinkable corn whiskey (70:30 corn:6-row malted barley). However, we wanted to up the volume of mash to make it a little easier for our cuts on the still. So here's what we did:

1) We decided to use 6.5 lbs of flaked corn, 1.5 lbs of rye, and 1.0 lbs of 6-row malted barley this time. Our initial problem was having a boiler big enough to use all the ingredients and cook it. We boiled the 4 gallons of water and then poured it immediately into a separate container with the flaked corn. We let that cool down, though it was obviously very very thick. at around 150F we added the rye and barley as well as 7 tablets of beano. Still the mash was very thick, tough to stir

2) we let that cool over night and it had noticeably loosened up, however still fairly thick. the temp was around 90F, so we pitched 20 g of dry ale yeast and let it do its thing

3) over the course of the next 4 to 5 days the batch was really cooking, we aerated the first couple days and let it go over the course of the final 3 days (bubbling was vigorous then slowed on the 4th and 5th day)

4) We decided to try to let it settle to distil when we had the time, however we were still worried about the thickness of our mash. After 24 hours of what we thought was sufficient time to settle it was still thick, we added some water (~1 gal), and let it settle some more. Finally we strained out what we could though there was still some sediment of corn/barley/rye.

5) We put it in our boiler and kept the temperature fairly low (270F) but now we sit here on hour 8 or 9 and the temp has not risen past 93-95F in our still. The mash is pretty hot but theres no action or increase in temperature anywhere in the system.

If there is anyone that can find something that we may look at to figure out our problem that would be greatly appreciated! I've been searching these boards for the answers, books of all kinds, websites....no answer!

Thanks!