I have two distillers -- one I use only for water, and the other I am dedicating to plant materials/essential oil. Both are the same MegaHome model, the 320-watts (there is a higher-wattage one).

I have an interest in making hydrosols, but I haven't really gotten too serious about it yet. And, in fact, it may prove in the long run to be smarter and more economical to simply buy the hydrosols available in stores. But, I've said that about distilled water, too, and yet I've managed to make it worth it to periodically distill my own. I recondition it (fix the PH) and drink it, use it in my coffee maker, hot pot, tea kettles...etc.. (I usually buy bottled distilled water for the humidifiers, though, when using those.) Sometimes I mix my distilled water with regular bottled water.

Today, I boiled about 18 ounces of water to get it ready to distill, dumped it into the distiller and added 2 teaspoons of citronella essential oil. Did a little reading during the whole process and learned about the word 'cohobate.' I got about...2 ounces, I'd say, of a water that certainly contained the citronella (mosquito spray!), then I shut off the machine at least for now, though there's still most of the water left in the container. My house was getting a bit overwhelmed by the scent of citronella, and also I wanted to be sure to not let the distiller boil dry (it shuts off automatically when it's empty, anyway, but I was just a little bit nervous).

I don't know how much my resulting solution differs from what is produced by distilling the water with the plant material (to produce a hydrosol).

I would say that what I made is a hydrosol, and it technically involved cohobation since the citronella oil added had already been distilled (not by me) from plant material (Cymbopogon nardus).

Anyway, kind of fun to make my own stuff. The aroma is a bit strong, of course, but not too unpleasant. Two ounces will go a long way in the little bottle I filled, which makes a very fine spray mist, and I would only want to make a small amount at a time.

The carafe in the photo is not the one that goes with the distiller -- it's a different container. I don't want to use the MegaHome pitcher for oils, just for water.