have patience grasshopper... raise the temperature slowly. turn it up, then wait for carry-across. wait a decent amount of time, there can be up to a few minutes lag depending on your heat source. Then if nothing comes acros, turn it up a little more. and then wait.
alcohol and water are the two in the mixture that are the most difficult to separate, as they form azeotropes. methanol distills off relatively easily in comparison. slowly slowly raising the temperature allows you to put minimum heat in to get just enough vapour pressure to cross into your condenser.
I haven't done much in the way of alcohol distilling (which is legal here), nor is my heat source that great (damn stupid fixed setting, 0 1 2 3 4) but that's how it worked fractionating naptha, and i didn't have enough heat control to really be confidient i succeeded. However, in some instructions on fractionating i read, might have even been stuff linked from rhodiums site somewhere, said, if you want to fractionate you control the proper fractionation by aiming to only boil the lowest fraction, and only just, to the point of maybe 1.5ml of distillate per minute.
it's damn tedious but if it's ethanol, you'd probably find you distill off the teensy amount of methanol and so forth bla bla... just turn up heat slightly, monitor drip rate, and don't let it get too low. If the temperature is maintained at a certain point everything that can boil off will and no more condensing will occur. the ethanol would come all across at one of those adjustment points and from there on it would be more water and more other junk.
all theory on my part, when i get some good temperature control i will learn how to do it properly and i might be a better person to ask... but this is the theory i've gathered so far, theory plus limited experience. I really like distilling but it's boring, i recommend having something that doesn't generate any risk of sparks nearby to entertain yourself while you absently monitor the drip rate and turn it up as it slows down too much. and check the column temp etc.
oh my condenser is one of those copper liebig jobbies... 500mm long. seems to work quite well, without fractionating, and heating the boiler as high as safe without causing choking, and it dribbles out an almost stream, about 1ml ever 10 seconds or so (makes the process more easy but it can't be as pure done that way) I don't know the advantage of shorter or longer or coiled or whatever at this point. the condenser has been employed vertically and at an angle and is good for more simple distillations vertical (seems to permit slightly faster condensation, or maybe it just reduces holdup).