I used to purify methanol using the Magnesium ribbon method. I used to cut up Mg turnings into tiny pieces, treat them with con. HCl repeatedly and then set them to dry in the oven. Then took a flask to reflux the methanol, added the 'activated' Mg pieces, and a tiny amount of I2 and started the reflux. Worked pretty well with MeOH and EtOH. Will this work just fine with BzOH as well?
Of course this was probably preferred with MeOH and EtOH because of the much lower boiling point as against Benzyl alcohol as discodermolide said.