I've been thinking about buying a small distiller
for making alcoholic extractions of herbs, and
if anybody on RFC already does this I would
appreciate some advice. Among other uses, it
should be apparatus suitable for making absinthe
and extracting mint oil from mint leaves, if
it's possible to have one machine which can do
both things well. (I realize that might be
asking too much.)

On eBay I've seen glass distillers, Italian
copper distillers (advertised as fully functional
but for decorative use only, whatever the heck
that means), and numerous types of water
distillers. Some require adding a heat source,
such as a hot plate, while others have their own
heat source which might be dangerous or
uneconomical (such as a candle or alcohol lamp).

Some have rather complex mechanisms for recycling
watery fractions carried over into the distillate.
Based on my meager knowledge, these might actually
be the proper kind to get (as opposed to the
simpler kind which just condenses the vapors in
a copper coil and dumps the resulting liquids into
a container).

Before I blow $$$ buying a totally unsuitable
distiller, I'd like any worthwhile free advice
on the subject.