Home Distiller

I'm running a pot still packed with a small amount of copper mesh in the base of the column. I've charged my still with ujssm and after discarding the first 500ml of foreshots. I don't have a parrot so I just collected 1 cup and and only turned up 146 proof. Is that not extremely low for an initial collection? My second 1cup collection was down to 140!

I came across someones take on a rough cuts guide and here's what he had to say...

83% foreshots
83.5% heads start
82-83% hearts start
69-70% tails start
58-60% tails turn to shit
30-40% may be one or two golden tails jars
20% time to st

...is that accurate -- and if so, is my 73% collection already in the tails zone

I can't say for sure what the abv% was in my wash becuase I slacked on taking gravity readings. It was the standard recipe for ujssm, so even if the gravity was on the low side... I'd still expect that I should get a good bit more high proof running in the beginning that what i've got now.

My still is running anywhere from a few drips/sec. to a very slight stream. I know it's kinda tough to trouble shoot without knowing the gravities of my wash, but assuming that it wasn't stupidly low, Is there something I'm missing here? Anything I might consider on future runs to get more efficiency?

Sounds like your doing ok, I assume this is a 5 gallon wash. Double run it, do 3 runs and collect heads hearts and tails then mix them together cut with water to 40% and run them again.

What did you get for drinking a quart of 70% ? that's not to bad. Oh and 500 mill is kinda overkill for a forshot on 5 gallons.