building a still?
Jul. 14th, 2005 23:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhai was joking about building a still, and lynn joked along, saying he was surprised i didn't start my exploration into natural perfumery with doing so.
*chuckle*. not that this really required thinking some more, but i did -- and i believe that this process is fairly typical: i get interested in something people are doing, i'll watch them for a while, and then i start several steps back from what they're doing, at a stage where i can understand how things fit together to produce the outcome that has others excited. i really do like to know how things work, and i like to make them work. i don't go all the way back to some semblance of first principles until much later, though, except that i might do a lot of reading on those principles fairly soon.
frex, i see and feel interesting textures and patterns, which leads to learning how to knit/crochet/needlecraft, which in turn leads to spinning/dying, which leads to growing dye plants, and might in the long run lead to me breeding sheep, alpaca, or silk worms (exposure to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oakenking's endeavours in that area is very, very bad for me). :) i usually collect connected aspects of interest while moving backwards along the chain of production -- spinning and dyeing are separate subpaths, and i came to dyeing long before, and am just revisiting it lately, branching out from natural dyes into synthetic ones.
as regards the perfumery, i'd normally be some months from thinking of making my own extracts. but i am talking about the still already because i've basically been growing plants for fragrance for a long time since, and think that steam extraction of some of them ought to be fairly easy and give good yields (say, for lavender), and guess what time it is? right, harvest time for the first flush.
there is still a wee bit of neroli smell left on the paperstrip. alas, i have neither easy access to mass quantities of bitter orange blossoms, nor will simple steam extraction do the job.
*chuckle*. not that this really required thinking some more, but i did -- and i believe that this process is fairly typical: i get interested in something people are doing, i'll watch them for a while, and then i start several steps back from what they're doing, at a stage where i can understand how things fit together to produce the outcome that has others excited. i really do like to know how things work, and i like to make them work. i don't go all the way back to some semblance of first principles until much later, though, except that i might do a lot of reading on those principles fairly soon.
frex, i see and feel interesting textures and patterns, which leads to learning how to knit/crochet/needlecraft, which in turn leads to spinning/dying, which leads to growing dye plants, and might in the long run lead to me breeding sheep, alpaca, or silk worms (exposure to
oakenking's endeavours in that area is very, very bad for me). :) i usually collect connected aspects of interest while moving backwards along the chain of production -- spinning and dyeing are separate subpaths, and i came to dyeing long before, and am just revisiting it lately, branching out from natural dyes into synthetic ones.as regards the perfumery, i'd normally be some months from thinking of making my own extracts. but i am talking about the still already because i've basically been growing plants for fragrance for a long time since, and think that steam extraction of some of them ought to be fairly easy and give good yields (say, for lavender), and guess what time it is? right, harvest time for the first flush.
there is still a wee bit of neroli smell left on the paperstrip. alas, i have neither easy access to mass quantities of bitter orange blossoms, nor will simple steam extraction do the job.
no subject
on 2005-07-15 10:04 (UTC)besides, i wanna read all about it! (and smell all about it too, but, you know, i'll settle for reading and pictures :)
n.
no subject
on 2005-07-15 18:28 (UTC)I adore the scent of 4 0'clocks, and I've never seen it for sale anywhere, so I thought I'd try my own. Quarts of flowers produced an ml or so of oil. I decided I would just enjoy them in the garden. Tea olive is the other fragarence that I wanted to try and make, but I was told it was difficult to extract, and I have a source of good quality oil in Charleston, SC; so I didn't try it.
Got everyone at BeachBoink hooked on the tea olive oil this year, too!
Pam
Tea olive oil rocks!
on 2005-07-15 21:25 (UTC)Next time I am going to see if they have some Confederate Jasmine when we are in Charleston.
Re: Tea olive oil rocks!
on 2005-07-16 00:40 (UTC)I used to have some confederate jasmine oil around here, but as I remember, it's not as good as the real thing. When I get back from my Annual Summer North Migration, or, as it's starting to be known, The Endless Quest to Get He Who Plagues to Leave Early for BoN Boink,I'll see if I still have any of the confederate jasmine oil.
Hmmm, what's your zone? I could try and root you some of my confederate jasmine?
Re: building a still
on 2005-07-16 22:14 (UTC)and yeah -- i actually would expect it to take veritable cactusloads of flowers for certain fragrances, such as neroli, jasmine, or rose. how much raw material it takes is going to be very much dependent on which plants we're talking about, since different plants contain vastly differet amounts of aromatics. and then the method of extraction also matters; i'd expect less yield, and worse, less "whole fragrance" from boil-it-in-water distillation than from steam distillation.
lavender oil seems perfectly possible to make at home. in fact i bet lavandin would even give better results because my lavender x intermedia plants are more aromatic than my true lavender ones. i expect rosemary and mint to also be easy and give decent yields. we'll see whether i am totally off my rocker. :)
anything where the fragrance comes from delicate flower petals is probably a bitch. commercially they extract oils from those with solvents -- i don't particularly want to work with hexane at home. :)