Mint

[Bushman]

First attempt at mint. Picked mint from the garden and ran it through the food processor. After I ran it through the still I put it in tall skinny bottles with a long neck and refrigerated hoping for separation. In a couple weeks I will draw the oil out using a stainless steel food injector I have for my smoking of meat. Below are a few pictures.

[Jimy Dee]

Bushman, what is your end goal here? Mint is pungent and a spearmint is a lovely taste. Never thought of putting it into likker. Potential for an interesting thread. Subscribed. JD

[Bushman]

No real plans just experimenting with different herbs seeing what results I can attain. Last year I left my lavender as a hydrosol putting it in a spray bottle. I have a friend who's wife buys a lot of essential oils using them for health purposes so I might ask her for suggestions.

[JellybeanCorncob]

First attempt at mint. Picked mint from the garden and ran it through the food processor. After I ran it through the still I put it in tall skinny bottles with a long neck and refrigerated hoping for separation. In a couple weeks I will draw the oil out using a stainless steel food injector I have for my smoking of meat. Below are a few pictures.

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About a month ago I picked all the mint in my yard. About a pounds worth. I made the mistake of not breaking the cell walls of the leaves in a food processor and my extraction of essential oil was less than expected. My fault. But I did get good separation of hydrosol and mint oil. The first time I attempted essential oils I ran the boiler too hot. The result was minimal oil and lots of hydrosols. As I'm learning; running the boiler slower (i.e. less heat) seemed to work better for separation of oil. The sepratory funnel is a great tool for separating the oils from the hydrosols. From what you wrote I gather you had no seperation? Like you I'm experimenting. I use things I can source free. Please let us know if there is separation when refrigerated.
JBC

[JellybeanCorncob]

Bushman, what is your end goal here? Mint is pungent and a spearmint is a lovely taste. Never thought of putting it into likker. Potential for an interesting thread. Subscribed. JD

Jimy: I think the concentrated mint oil could be used in mixers for a mint essence. I made a Valencia orange essential oil liqueur. I used 4 drops oil in a 250 mil solution of half simple syrup, half 150 Proof rice vodka. We had our neighbor over for dinner and for desert we had the orange liqueur. Her take on the mix was: "This is Marvelous". We finished the bottle.
Talk soon.
JBC

[The Baker]

Bushman, what is your end goal here? Mint is pungent and a spearmint is a lovely taste. Never thought of putting it into likker. Potential for an interesting thread. Subscribed. JD

Creme de Menthe.

Geoff

[HDNB]

i've been toying with the idea of moscow mule as a ready-to drink, just add soda kind of beverage, basically Jimbo's ginger with a hint of mint.

the only mint i have on the farm grows out of my septic slough so the source is less than tantalizing. if you try it, post up the results!

[Bushman]

I will experiment with the next run by going slower to see if that makes a difference. In my essential oil book it says if you don't have any separation after 2-4 weeks add salt. The suggested amount is 1.5-3.8 oz per quart.

[JellybeanCorncob]

I think volume is the culprit here. The potential %yeald for peppermint is 1.0 - 2.5. I have a 44qt turkey fryer I’m converting to a essential oil boiler. I bet if I pack it with whatever I want to extract it will give me something to show for all the work I’ve put in. Like you Bushman, I’m doing this for fun. My sister and another friend are who I’ll make the oils for mostly. Now I have to wait till the mint has grown back before I can try it again. I’ll have to try salt in the hydrosol. I’m real interested in your results.
Please let us know if it helps in recovery of oils.
JBC

[Bushman]

My run although had a strong smell was not showing the look of tails (foggy looking). So I dumped it back into my 5 gallon still added more water but not as much as before, and added 4 times the processed mint and reran it today. Collected 1/3 of what I did the other day and started the next collection but cut it off when I realized that there wasn't near the oil coming out. Think I'm getting a feel for it. Next week when I get back from boating I plan to do lavender.

[Bushman]

Forgot to separate the oil so it sat for 1.5 months on a shelf in a dark place. I used the syringe that is in my refractometer set. I saved it in a small bottle with a long skinny neck so the oil would be gathered in a confined area. After the oil settled to the top I was very surprised how much stronger the mint smell was compared to when I first bottled it. Did a slight taste from a dab on my finger and it was very strong and bitter. Not sure what I am going to do with it yet

[JellybeanCorncob]

Bushman: I’m interested in what your yield was. My experience so far has been oils always separating as they come out of the still. Do you have any pictures of your take. Or the oil floating on the Hydrosol. My mint is growing back now and i’ll try again when it’s bigger. By the way, my new e-oil still works great I ran some eucalyptus leaves and extracted 30mls. Half went to my sister and the other half to a friend. They were ecstatic.
Thanks for sharing your experience with essential oils.
JBC

[contrahead]

In the yard I've got this very large wild rose bush that blooms heavily each year. This year I caught it in bloom and attempted to distill some rosewater from its flowers. People already consume rosewater or its products so naturally I'm interested in experimentation and flavoring some hooch with it.

A couple months ago on day one, I processed about a paper grocery sack full of roses in a simple, quasi functional wok still. The next day I did a second batch in a reflux still. The end products were about 2 cups of hydrosol and about a quart of darkly pigmented flower water. I've made no attempt to extract the oils. Although the hydrosol smells like roses it also smells of vegetables. That's because I mistakenly cooked the whole flower as snipped from the plant with a pair of pruning shears. There is a lot of mass in the green base of a rose. I should have taken the time to strip the pedals from the base of the flowers, and worked upon those only.

The leftover flower water is an intense red-purple color. Just a drop can significantly transform the appearance of a glass of water. I don't know how indelible this juice is yet but you definitely don't want to get any on tile grout or on a cotton dish rag. I intend to experiment with it as an ink or as a paint pigment. There are not many items I wish to paint red-purple however. Everyone already knows that the Declaration of Independence – was penned in fermented poke berry juice, right?

[kiwi Bruce]

Rose oil extraction is done cold in a flavorless animal fat, usually lard (rendered pig fat) the petals are removed from the boom and pressed into the lard by hand, about 2 kilos of petals per kilo of fat...they are only left in the lard for 48 hours and then ALL the plant matter has to be removed with tweezers (or you get that veggie smell)...the process is repeated twice more, then the lard is gently heated in a steam bath and the oils extracted (distilled to you and me) each kilo of rose petal impressed lard only yields .05 cc's of oil...very labor and time intensive activity...the end product sells wholesale for around $500.00 a fl oz which is why it's made in counties where they can get away with paying it's workers $hit.50 an hour...

[JellybeanCorncob]

Looks like they are, at least initially, steam distilling rose petals in this vid.
https://youtu.be/sbDrwg-HWzw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

JBC

[kiwi Bruce]

Enfleurage and Defleurage (from the pdf)
I have a pdf of the pamphlet...EXTRACTION METHODS OF NATURAL ESSENTIAL OILS
If you'd like a copy PM me and I'll send it to you...17 pages long

[JellybeanCorncob]

Looks Gross!
Yes, please! I would love a copy.
JBC

[kiwi Bruce]

CK your PM's...my back-up drive s#it the bed so I'll have to look for the original pdf link which was saved on that disk

[contrahead]

The words enfleurage and defleurage piqued my interest so I started looking about. Now my head hurts. These two small web pages are worth checking out (or in my case; re-reading once or twice until it sinks in).

Enfleurage 101

EXTRACTION WITH COLD FAT (ENFLEURAGE)

Check out section “(c) Alcoholic Extraits” where it describes “absolute of enfeurage”- separation of alcohol and oil in a low temperature vacuum still.

-------------------- -----------

When the fat is saturated with flower oil it is called “pomade”. This word caught my attention because of a movie DVD I'd watched just a night or two before. O Brother Where Art Thou - Dapper Dan

Dapper Dan pomade is still available or has made a small comeback. Some of the ingredients from perfumed hair pomades of the 1920s and 40s, are curious. Dapper Dan apparently contained petrolatum (petroleum jelly), coconut oil, carnauba wax and stearic acid.

Cutler's resin (from the palm wax link) warrants more investigation. Stearic acid might be used to harden candles or to harden candy. To improve storage life, stearic acid might be used to stabilize explosives and/or fireworks, by coating metal powders and inhibiting their oxidization.

[StillsNMash]

While I'm waiting on my beer to ferment and the reparation of the lid to my pot still, I was outside trimming roses of sharon and the mint patch we have that is I don't know how old. The stalks were about 3 feet high

, so I cultivated the stalks as much as possible and left some to regrow. I have about 5 pounds of mint in a bundle in my basement that I stripped the leaves off of.

I am totally ignorant on what to do with it, or what parts are good and not good, leaves notwithstanding. So, just as a messing around experiment, I took the stalks, broke them up, and soaked them over night in hot water to leech tannins or whatever out of them. I then boiled the resulting water down to concentrate whatever was in the water after the leeching process. I boiled about 5 gallons of the stuff down to about 2 liters. I tested PH at 9, and I need to use my 250 ml container to see what the SG is. I plan on adding citric acid to bring down the ph and adding what I need to in order to align the SG to 1.009 or 1.006 and just run it through the still to see what I get. The goal here is "mystery theater".

I've left the leaves alone and started researching what to do with them. So far ideas are to toss them in a blender to mascerate them to heck and collect them for oil, but not sure of the next process. I am still reading and learning, but wanted to share my "foolin around". Thoughts outside the box are greatly welcomed!!!

-Stills.

[stillanoob]

Funny that this thread pops up now. I have some really prime spearmint right now so I took some, bruised it up well by rolling it in my hands and jamming a 1/2 pint almost full of it. I then poured 95% over it and packed it down to squeeze out the air. I'll let it sit awhile and then heat in a double boiler and see what is left. If it is good I might make some ice cream with it, or?

[Bushman]

I am getting ready to pick our crop to run through my essential oil still.

[OtisT]

I am getting ready to pick our crop to run through my essential oil still.

I’m following.

Has your process changed from your first attempt at extracting mint oil? If so, please share your process and if possible yield when you get that far. My new neighbor just invited me to pick “as much mint as I want” from several beds they have growing. I may be doing a batch of this myself very soon.

Otis

[OtisT]

I just completed distilling my first batch of spearmint oil.

Collecting and cutting the mint
I started with a mostly full kitchen trash bag full of fresh spearmint. I did not strip it down to only leaves, but I did cut out the heavier woody branches. I cut everything into short pieces with scissors, maybe 2 or 3 inches long per cut. Then I went through the mint again, grabbing a bundle and cutting every 1/4” to 1/2”. I did not have a scale handy so I don’t know the weight, but the cut up mint filled a volume of about 1.5 gallons when packed well.

Fresh cut mint

2 gallon bucket with about 1.5 g of chopped up mint

I put one gallon of cut mint in the boiler then filled it with water to about 2 gallons total.

Mini still, 2.5 gallon boiler.

Insulated boiler

My still uses an internal 1500w foldback element. I was concerned with scorching so I operated the still at 500 watts for warmup and the entire run. No scorch, but it sure took a long time to come to a boil. About 3 or 4 hours. Ug.

1500w foldback element

[OtisT]

I was not sure how much I should be collecting. I decided to collect in small increments so I could learn where the oil comes and when things start to run out. I ended up collecting a liter total before I shut things down. The hydrosol I was collecting was cloudy from the first jar to the last. Maybe I should have run longer, but it was getting late.

Each jar smells strong of spearmint and has a film on the top, but really only the first two or three 100 ml jars have noticeable balls of oil floating on top. Even the first jar is just some balls of oil, not enough to create a solid layre.

Balls of oil in jar 1

You can just see the oil from the side. (Left side)

I’ll let these settle and see what shows up. I should have all this in one jar so I can collect the small amount of oil, but I want to see if more oil separates out and if so, how far into my collection the oil will extend.

Otis

[Bushman]

Looks good, I have found mint has a lot more oil than lavender. I am still experimenting with putting it in thinner containers with thin necks to contain the oil together in a smaller volume and then using my eye dropper to collect and separate.

[stillanoob]

I tested my spearmint extract last week in some vanilla ice cream. We let it warm up so that it was easy to mix in the extract. Really good, not bitter and would be even better with the vanilla out of the way. So yesterday we took the last of the really nice spearmint and made another batch. It is soaking now so in a couple of weeks we will make some spearmint ice cream and I bet it will be delish!

[Bushman]

I tested my spearmint extract last week in some vanilla ice cream. We let it warm up so that it was easy to mix in the extract. Really good, not bitter and would be even better with the vanilla out of the way. So yesterday we took the last of the really nice spearmint and made another batch. It is soaking now so in a couple of weeks we will make some spearmint ice cream and I bet it will be delish!

[OtisT]

A few Personal observations about my mint run.

I used 1 gallon volume of mint, cut up and compressed, in my 2.5 gallon boiler. I think I could have easily put in twice that, if not more. It really loses volume when in hot water. I only yielded a few drops of oil (so far.) I don’t see much more forming as it settles.

Like juniper oil in a gin run, almost all of the oil appears to come over in the first jar. For me, that was the first 100ml. Unless I find a use for the hydrosol, there appears to be no need to collect so long next time. I verified this by watching some YouTube videos of folks extracting oil from mint. I saw folks load a 20+ gallon boiler (screen on bottom, low volume of water, steaming the mint) and they collected less than a liter for the entire batch before they shut down. Looks like they got maybe a few ounces of oil total for about 20+ gallons of packed mint (whole stocks, not chopped or processed.)

I was worried about a scorch because I used an internal element. I did keep the power low, but no issues with scorch and cleanup was a breeze. Still a bit of mint oil smell in the system, and I’m thinking (hoping) a small cleaning run with heads will wash that out for good.

Considering the small yield I am seeing, I don’t think this is worth the effort in my small still. When I get the energy to do this again, I plan to use my 15 gallon thumper with steam injected from my big still. I will also not be cutting up the mint. That was a lot of work for very little return. (It was still extremely fun and gratifying). Based on what I saw others on-line do, cutting it up is unnecessary, and that cutting was the majority of my effort in the whole process.

Next year I hope to do this on a larger scale. In addition to having mint everywhere, my brother just picked up a half dozen planters of lavender to plant, and a couple of rosemary bushes too. The hill those are going on gets full sun all day long and there is a natural spring running down that hill all year round, so they should all do extremely well.

Otis