Making essential oils is so easy. In this episode, I will show you how to do it simply with an at-home distillation kit. Get the distillation kit HERE: amzn.to/38uqe8W Check out our new clothing line! http:www.freshpickedapparel.com
Being a chemist, and a farmer, this is a long awaited video! Fantastic content! Thanks for showing people alternatives then the fancy glass chemistry set up I see all over the internet
The water that comes out with the essential oil is called a hydrosol. It has a lot of wonderful uses too! Hope people don't throw it away ☺️🥰 thanks for such a nice video on making your own essential oils. Very helpful for beginners.
@@subinitamazumder1307 Rose water and orange blossom water are good examples of commonly used hydrosol. I make ice cubes to slowly release the flavor into drinks. You can add a splash of lavender water to a bath
@@MIgardener you can also use those hydrosols in all kinds of things. You can add them into lotions and soaps and that kind of thing to give it a minty smell and feel without being as powerful as the oil.
Yes!! use a pressure cooker with gage removed and vent pipe installed, soft copper tubing ( looks like 3/8 or 5/16). Easy to wind around a piece of PVC to fit the cooling pan.
If you are purchasing essential oils, please do your research. Depending on how the oil is extracted, not all are safe to consume internally. Some can also burn the skin- like cinnamon. Super important to do research!
@@jaimeperkins733 oregano oil is definitely considered a hot oil. That's why people need to research before going in blind! Hopefully you didn't get burned to bad.
1st: ALL HERE FOR THE HOMEMADE PEPPERMINT ICE CREAM EPISODE!!! 2nd: Thank you for making this video about essential oils. As someone who's very new to this world it was a great introduction to the various uses as well as how to create it. 3rd: Your parents have a beautiful kitchen. Thank you again for always giving us insightful and exciting ways to expand how we use our gardens.
One of the most expensive oils to buy is lemon balm (melissa), because it yields such a small amount of oil. I have lots of it growing in my garden, though, so I might give it a try. Thanks, Luke.
Just a couple pieces of advice when using this set up. Try having the condenser rest on the edge of the pot. you are putting a lot of stress on the thin copper tube with the water weight. It will bend over time. The other thing this helps with is you want to keep the condenser level for proper flow down the coil. This will help keep it from spitting out in bursts
I've seen people putting the glass with hydrosol and oil in fridge and let the oil solidify and then extract it, it is easier and quicker and you get 100% oil
I use a similar pot to distill oils from both plants and fruit, and for the cooling of the coils, i use a large bowl filled with both ice and water, and have a small circulating pump attached to the inlet and outlet, so cool water is always flowing around coils, the outlet drains into the sink or other container, and i add more water as needed. I also use water bottles that I fill and freeze, and put them in the condensing pot, inside the coils to make the water really cold. I find using this method, I get more oils extracted.
I’d use the distiller to make rose water. I was actually already planning on making my own, but was just going to jerry-rig a distiller pot with an upside down pot lid. This kit would work much better. Thanks for sharing! Now I know what to request for Christmas! Lol Edit to add: I’d also use it for making my own distilled water, since it seems ridiculous to me that we have to buy it in plastic jugs at the store.
Oooh, you could even distill free rainwater! But may want to have a mineral mixture set up ready to add, as drinking nothing but distilled water isn't so great. It mainly used for sanitation and in mechanical purposes to prevent microbe growth, but people need water with minerals. Good luck!
@@LaineyBug2020 Oh I definitely would not be drinking the distilled water. It’d be for anything else that calls for it, like my diffuser or my husband’s C-PAP machine.
If you put all the distilled liquid in the refrigerator the oil should solidify as the water remains liquid. A little easier to separate. Never tried it with this, but it works for clarifying melted butter at home.
It is a good idea to use cork for the small bottle cap because it will last longer than plastic or metal. The vapors of peppermint oil are quite chemically active. I learned this from a mint farmer who lived next door to me.
Here's a trick a refrigeration mechanic showed me years ago on how to cool hot cans of beer quickly and it might be make your condenser work better. If you put the beer in a cooler and pour ice over it, it will take ages to cool it. However, if you pour room temperature water over the ice, the cans or bottles of beer will get colder faster. Essentially, what we made was a heat exchanger. The water drew out a lot of the heat in the cans while, at the same time, it absorbed a lot of the cold from the ice. Also, you might collect more of the oil if you put the container of oil and water in the freezer for a while. Once the water has frozen, you should be able to pour or scrape the oil off the top.
@TombStoneHeart, are you saying add ice to around those coils, with room temperature water over the ice? If so, how long would that work for during the distilling process? The other idea you gave was 💡 genius, to put water and oil in freezer; and good chances oil wouldn't freeze, (although olive oil will freeze).. Thank You Very Much!!
What Dovelady?! Are you saying you don't dye your hair, and it still stays dark with cedar oil in olive oil?! Will it also reverse grey?! Thank You for any reply!!🪔
@Tiny Garden In South Carolina I remember when this joke was used at the start of the Coronavirus for Hand Sanitizer (making the alcohol for hand sanitizer). Lol!
@@ronniemcmaster8657 did you know that you get more methanol in wine than sprits. And you don’t add it to the alcohol it is naturally made by fermentation.
@@mikecoonhunter101 I do know this. When distilling, the methanol comes out of the line a few degrees cooler than ethanol. To test, methanol has red in the flame when burning. Ethanol is blue. I tried distilling once and found it to take more effort than it is worth. I can brew a delicious country wine without much effort. The hardest part is letting it age.
I use a LOT of essential oils in the handcrafted soaps, bath and body products I make. They "ain't" cheap. I'm going to look into this more and see if I can use it to make my own EO's. Thanks for a great video...
Thank you! Yes I enjoyed it. It’s amazing how much oil comes out from the plants. I love my essential oil’s and I’m learning how to make my own! Again thank you! Especially the part about in your kitchen and how you made adjustments to fit your needs.
You can also use them for baking (been watching too much great British bake off). This is giving me flashbacks to my organic chemistry lab in undergrad distilling limonene and pinenes from mandarin peels. Mine are DEFINITELY not safe for use outside the lab tho since we used other solvents that's not okay. To reduce how much water vapor you get, you can also just keep the water from actually boiling. To get REALLY scientific, you can look up the boiling point of the oil that makes up the essential oil you want and keep the temperature of the pot just around/slightly higher than that temp. Also, as weird as it sounds, for the liquid-liquid extraction at the end, you can pull more water out of your oil if the water is slightly salted to increase the difference in hydrophobicity vs hydrophobicity of the two liquids. That might be getting into overly crazy mad chemist territory. 😅
Thanks for the extra input! When I take on a project, ideally I would like to do it as efficiently as I can while maximizing my results👍 The research might take a little longer but it will be worth it. 100%
@@erisheiressdupre4796 if I remember my organic chem lab properly, the higher the salinity, the more efficiently you pull water out of the oil layer. Probably closer to like maybe 10%? Whatever a 1Molar solution would be, but doesn't have to be exact. Salt it like pasta water. Lolol
@@ellenkuang8853 Interesting. I would have thought that the salt would interact with the chemical compounds of the oils. Then again I know nothing about chemistry 😅 Thanks for your help!
Luke this is amazing and so much easier than I ever thought! I would love to try many things but I use lavender and thieves the most. Such great knowledge, thank you!
@@boomchicaboomboom anyone who is making essential oils with just the simple of research on making essential oils would know it’s hydrosol not just water. And like essential oils a person could have a negative effect to them from the hydrosol
@@Artiefrog thank you so much for this information. I have long had an interest in making essential oils. I have watched a few videos on the process and none of them gave any names to any of the parts (?) of the outcomes of the process. None of them mentioned that anything other than the end product can be used. So, thank you for the information.
@@diannevaldez8670 welcome it takes a huge amount of what your wanting to make a essential oil from to get a tiny amount. But they hydrosol there is a lot that can be used many ways.
I cannot thank you enough for this video. It is simplistically detailed for a small, at home production. Simply explained with a very affordable distiller shown in use .Everything else I see on the internet massively complicates the learning experience. I have peppermint, spearmint, and lemon balm but O the plants I want to plant now and start my experimenting with making my own little batch of oils and perfume water.
You can also stick your glass in the freezer and remove the oil once the water freezes. Not sure if freezing a spoon would collect essential oils like it would catching oil from gravy, lol but if it does thats another simple trick...
Lavender!!! Also, I have a friend that makes and sells actual essential oils distillers where you don’t have to separate the essential oil from the water. But for your basic home gardener, your system works.
I Love love love essential oils and have wanted to distill my own for yrs i just never actually bought the many distillers I have viewed over the yrs. No more waiting ty for the push. :) Sending love to you and your family :)
Best thing I ever bought was a massage chair.... Had to wait years before I could get it... but it fixed me. Before I was in constant pain... now it never gets that far. Love your videos also a Michigander.
This is so awesome! Best video on yt right now! I also love peppermint oil. I would love to do peppermint as well as lavender. I use those two the most. Thank you Luke!!
It's essential to learn how to make essential oils, and if you use excess herbs that need to come out of the garden, your ingredients are essentially free! ;-)
Helpful video. I never knew peppermint oil helps against squash vine borer I wish I had known this before summer. I will use that tip when I plant summer squash next year! 😊thanks Luke
Thanks Luke, I actually never even thought about this. I had an abundance of various mints and it would’ve been a fantastic project. There is very little min left now, but this sounds like a fun project for next year. Thank you again
You can make extracts. Just cover with 80 % alcohol and soak a few weeks, then drain off extract and bottle it up. Excellent flavors: peppermint, spearmint, basil's, almonds, lemon, on and on. Blessings
Greetings from a fellow Michigander north of the bridge- great video! You have inspired me to design a large still that fits over our fire pit😍 Imagine all the possibilities!🤯🥰
Thank you for this video! I have been searching and searching for a small distillation kit to use instead of my chemistry set. It’s so fragile! Also, does anyone recommend a distillation book?
Loved the video man, very nice and helpful, i could really learn from it! plus, it makes all the difference knowing that THAT distilling pan exists, really thankful :) !
Hi! Was wondering if the temperature you showed was the exact temperature needed for the distillation process. Or if it can be hotter than that. Thanks in advance!
First, very educational video. You explained the science behind the process and I found that helpful. Secondly, would you do a follow-up video showing how you extracted and stored your essential oils?
I often ask myself "Luke, is there a simpler way to make oil from my overgrowth of basil without buying a fragile limbic pyrex still?" Thanks Luke (you Luke, not me Luke) for the vid!
Very informative video! I definitely plan on trying this myself. I was however wondering if there might be any other good resources on how to effectively separate the resulting oil from the water with the pipette. I felt like it was a little glossed over here/ I'm still trying to fully understand how you did that. Thanks!
A pipette will be good for separating due to its narrow body, the oil will consolidate. You will then carefully drain the water and remain with the oil.
Peppermint oil is also good to keep spiders away. And I also put a drop on my Christmas cards. I’d love to do some oregano and eucalyptus. Thanks for sharing!
I found that putting peppermint oil on a cotton ball and putting it in the wall by taking a cover off an outlet or light switch and tossing the cotton ball in the wall, works great to keep away mice in the walls.
I was looking for an essential oil distiller online and after a lot of research and understanding the exact process to get the hyrdosol and oils, i thought😮 i have 3 pressure cookers (i do a lot of cooking and canning) imagined what you have going on here... thought i deserved a Nobel prize... then came to RU-vid and realized a thousand people have already done this. 😂😂😂 great video! Thank you! You look so much like my niece's husband, it's insane. Lol. 🎉
There are also other methods besides steam distillation to extract certain aromatics that don’t yield much oil after being hydrodistilled. You can use tinctures of 190-200 proof perfumers alcohol. Very useful for natural perfumery or room sprays. You can also make an enfleurage with scentless avocado butter. The enfleurage is useful for making perfumery extraits in alcohol and also as solid perfumery. It can also be diffused in a ceramic oil warmer. Some examples of expensive enfleurages ($150 plus per 5mL) are gardenia, plumeria, carnation, lilac, honeysuckle, narcissus, Jasmine, hyacinth, peony, etc. the advantages of having your own garden grown plants is that you end up saving a ton. I plan on growing lilies, freesia, and magnolia to make tinctures, enfleurages, or extraits. Some examples of expensive essential oils that you can make on your own are neroli (orange/bitter orange flowers), petitgrain (orange twigs and leaves), Melissa, Rose otto, German or Roman chamomile, tuberose, or you can also buy certain woods for cheaper (agarwood, sandalwood) and distill those.
I have tons of peppermint, some lemon balm and a smattering of lavendar, yarrow, etc. I am looking forward to doing this soon. You made it look so simple. Thanks, Luke!
I'm looking at that same model of still. I grow and forage herbs for teas, I want to start making oils for more effective remedies Thanks for the demonstration!
The way you have it setup will work for a lot of oils, but if you have problems with yield you might really want to consider hooking flowing water to the condenser somehow, maybe a pump and a bucket of water. Flowing water is actually way better at transfering heat than still water.
Great little video. You took the mystery out of the process. Luke--have you made any other oils since recording this video? Citrus is something I am interested in. Just curious how other items did.
I love this! I just bought the pot but I had a question. I have flowers in my lemon balm. I heard there is a difference between flowering and bolting. How do I tell? And if it is bolted, can I still use it for essential oils? Thanks!!!!
@Jess Cottrell, No one answered your question yet?! It is a Very Good question!! I hope someone will answer you soon, cause I would like to know the answer too!! Thank You for asking it!! Even if to no avail yet!!🤔💟✝️
