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I never seem to get anything come off lower than 80ish degrees no matter how slowly I bring the heat up so assume that I am not producing any Methanol at all.

Tails are certainly there as I can smell and taste them.

I've only used dedicated brewing yeast so far but will be using bakers yeast at some point in time. Is this the reason?

Obviously if I am right this is an excellent thing but I am curious.

At which degree comes out the first distilled vapor depends on your still and the alcohol content of your wash.

If you sip a bit of your foreshots (don't do that) you will know next day that you HAVE methanol and acetone in your distilled product.

Joe

Also makes a difference on what your fermenting. some fruit like apples have more. another to watch is grappa with all the
seeds,stems. sugar wash I beleve has the least.

The parent site says this about the different chemicals:

"Once together, a mixture of several of them will be slightly different however. You no longer get them coming off seperately, but always as a mixture. Fortunately for us though, each of the species will tend to dominate around its boiling point temperature, thus we know whats "mostly" coming off at that point."

Also if you look at some lab tests done and posted here: http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 0#p6807665

you can see that there is a bit of everything in every fraction but in different concentrations. One thing that stands out to me is that there is acetone in about the same proportion in the wash, foreshots and the diluted and filtered spirits.