Home Distiller

My wife keeps buying them and they cost a fortune. I'd much rather make them myself. All that I've read so far is that if I use plants to make them it could take 50-100lbs per ounce!

Is there anything easier to make them out of such as citrus, or cinammon?

Id be interested in making anise seed oil for testing with absinthe...

The thing we use it for is for this thing we have that you put oil on top and you light a tea candle underneath. It's like a mini fondue. Makes the room smell really nice, and totally kills any cigarette smoke smell.

These little half ounce bottles sell for a few dollars at least, so I'd be happy as can be to find something I can get a few ounces out of.

if im not mistaken, I read that they are steamed or somthin....

I make unsweetened German style Spearmint Schnapps from fresh spearmint I grow in the garden, around the porch, well hell, its everywhere. It has become a weed. Tasty weed though.
I just pack my doubler with mint leaves and run 100 proof through. It picks up the mint oil really well. I have never investigated concentrating the oil though.

Sorry for the double post. I just wanted to add that if I use steam is used instead of alcohol, the oil of spearmint will seperate when it is cool.

and it should! how could you else collect the oil?

Obtain a copy of Essential Oils by Julia Lawless. It contains every plant used for essential oil, what they are used for and the best way to extract. It also shows a diagram of a still for this purpose that you guys could easily make.

It is different to those used for alcohol.

G

Yeah it seems to me if I just soldered in a doubler to my pot still that it would do the trick.

I have an unlimited supply of mint in the spring, so that is something to consider as well.

According to http://www.copper-alembic.com onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow it isn't advisable to use your still for both things you are going to drink and essential oils, as the oils will impregnate the still (especially the harder to clean parts) and might contain undesirable things.

Chances are I would just build a little purpose built still for making essential oils anyways.

It's interesting, here's some info I found on making essential oils.

Seems that they basically just use a pot still with a screen in the boiler and put the mint leaves or whatever on top of the screen.

You then separete the essential oils from the distilled product knowing that oil floats on water.

I guess a link might help...

http://encode.com/exec/epure.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Steve, check out UR's gin basket on his reflux still.

Alterantively, I have done some gin (botanical essence extracts ) with the Wok method.
It is nice because the herbs or spices don't contaminate my still.

Steve,

I am planning an acre or two of different herbs to grow and extract oils from this summer, so have been doing a lot of research.

But also for your purpose, not just the oil, but the condensed water will still be highly impregnated with those aromas and could be used as well.

The pure oils you collect will be extremely strong, much more potent than what you would normally purchase.

when making uzo or sambuka i get a heap of annaseed plant and throw it ontop of the was in the potstill then put the lid on, the stem passing thru the plant carrys a nice annaseed oil over into the spirit.

when distilling esential oils you use water for most, the oils dont mix withthe water and will ither be hevier or lighter then water so you end up with a container containing water with a layer of oil on top or bottom.

you use a tube simmilar to the little inline hydrometer holders that some have made here which you use to collect your oils of the top of the water.

read read read.

I've been looking at essential oil extraction recently. My sister uses lots of them and pays plenty for them too, so I've been looking. Anyway, I'm fascinated by supercritical carbon dioxide extractions. I'm convinced, right now, that it can be done at home... somehow.

Check it out on the nets. It's interesting.

sorry for the quick sidetrack.
Decoy, you wouldnt want to share your ouzo recipe by any chance?
I've searched high and low but cant get any further than it is an aniseed flavoured brandy type drink with a myriad of optional herbs that change from recipe to recipe.

I do alot of orange oil (+)-Limonene distillation and the proven method for me is to peel between 5 and 10 oranges with a potato peeler and add them to about 300 mL of water (about 100mL for every 3-3.5 oranges will do) i then run this thru a simple distillation setup (not a fractional setup like you moonshiners use). The limonene will come through first and it will also "float" on the water so you can pull it off with a pipette.

on a good day 3 oranges will make about 1.5mL of Limonene this way, but it depends on the oranges

This works well for me, as a college student I steal oranges from the school, so its all free there may be a better way for others tho. (btw, when peeling the oranges try only to peel off only the orange part, the white stuff contains no limonene and therefore is useless, as for the innards; it may contain limonene, im not sure. The good part about this method is that we make the oil and still have food to eat at the end )

this evenining, I'll try to get the taste of lychee's in my spirit.
I'll boil it in a pot, and hang the fruit above the surface, and close the pot with a lid, at a low heat.
curious how it turns out, but I think lychees don't have enough taste, maybe, i'll add something different

The shells might have some of the smell.

stoker wrote:this evenining, I'll try to get the taste of lychee's in my spirit.
I'll boil it in a pot, and hang the fruit above the surface, and close the pot with a lid, at a low heat.
curious how it turns out, but I think lychees don't have enough taste, maybe, i'll add something different

There's a company here in SA that makes a lychee 'mampoer' (mampoer is basically the South African word for moonshine). Not sure how they do it, but I would love to taste it, I love lychees.

Cheers,
J

Marionette wrote:The shells might have some of the smell.

too late, the shells are already in the garbage bin

I added 1 kiwi

mtnwalker2 wrote:Steve,

I am planning an acre or two of different herbs to grow and extract oils from this summer, so have been doing a lot of research.

But also for your purpose, not just the oil, but the condensed water will still be highly impregnated with those aromas and could be used as well.

The pure oils you collect will be extremely strong, much more potent than what you would normally purchase.

The tea tree oil distillers over here harvest the tea tree, put it through a hammer mill and load it into a box similar to a shipping container. They put on a sealed lid and blow steam into the bottom ( I dont know if it's superheated) and condense the steam which comes out the top. The condensed liquid goes into a huge glass cylinder where the oil seperates on the top of the water and flows off the top while the water flows out from underneath. They sell the water as well as the oil. I believe it's used for rubbing down racehorses and showhorses. Probably helps with ticks, biting flies and other parasites as well as making their coats look good.

Unfortunately the industry is going the same way as the eucalyptus industry - cant compete with overseas imports. The foreigners dont have the natural pests we have. They may have a huge weed problem in the future however.

that's called steam distillation.
the oil has a lower boiling point in combination with steam.

I'm just getting into the oils game and about done assembling a soxhlet extractor to do some experiments for a friend.
I need to get the book and learn a little more on oils and plants, but for now I plan on using a solvent (ethanol) extraction method. Now how handy is it to have some quality ethanol on hand for experimenting

The plan right now is to run it on top of the 1000ml flask in a pot of water. Mating glass to copper could be a pain but I think with the fit I have my new Jiffy buttermilk biscuit mix should seal up real nice.

I also have just jumped into the oils game, and have purchased (I think) one of the better consumer models of steam distiller available from heartmagic.com. Yeah, the site is a little... "funny", but they make a hell of an extractor. The ingenious separatory funnel / solvent siphon works exceptionally well, and you can watch the oil accumulate as it is collected. Very nice.

Recently, I took a gin recipe and gave all of the ingredients a good mashing up, then just threw them into the biomass flask together. The resulting essence smells VERY much like gin, but I haven't been able to add it to anything yet. Cooking up some neutral spirits tonight, though, so we'll see how it turned out.