. 1 DISTILLATION - HOW IT WORKS There is a growing interest in distillation by amateurs, particularly in New Zealand where happily it has been legal since October 1996 - for home consumption only though - not,. accomplishing this without a lot of work and introduction of strange flavours, and if the resulting carbon had anything to do with the cleaning the stored spirit as well - although not very likely - so much. again. Make it long enough, and leave it alone to do its thing. What do we end up with? The first thing to note is that the main difference between a pot still and this column is that gravity plays