Assuming that your Essential Extractor was clean before you began the distillation, the only reason for any odor or flavor in distilled water must have come from the original un-distilled water.We have experienced this ourselves and we finally tracked down the culprit. We were filling the kettle using a regular garden hose and the hose was tainting the water. This off-odor and unpleasant flavor was eliminated when we stopped using the garden hose and switched to a hose made of food-grade plastic.