Distillation of essential oil and hydrolate | A magical process
I've fallen in love with distilling essential oils and making my own hydrosols. Distilling essential oils is a quiet process. Water, fire, and time meet to release the plant's spirit. The steam carries the scent, memory, and power of the herb, and each drop becomes a concentrate of nature's inner essence.
Here, I describe how distillation works. I show pictures from my own distillation and from when I took a distillation course (highly recommended!).
The image above shows us distilling heather with a copper still in the cottage in Östergötland, Sweden. We used a portable hot plate. Since we didn't have access to running water, we had to fetch cold water from the lake... many times! Eleonore ran up and down to the lake more times than I could count.
Essential oils have been distilled since ancient times, and the process has been refined with increasing knowledge of distillation. When distilling, you need three things: heat, water, and plant material. With the help of heat, water is heated into steam. The steam travels through the plant, carrying its essence upwards. With the help of cold water, the steam is cooled back into liquid form. Through the distillation of a plant, we get two products: essential oil and hydrosol.
To distill, you need plant material. Choose a plant with essential oils. Simply put, you should choose a fragrant plant. For example, mint, rose, and chamomile. Or orange peel and cloves. For our heather distillation, I had about 2 liters of heather.
The bottom part of the still is filled with boiling water (it goes faster if you boil the water first). The middle part of our still is tightly packed with plant material. The plant material is placed in a small colander so it doesn't end up in the water. Are you following? We want the water vapor to rise through the plant material, not for the plant material to boil in the water.
The hot plate should be on the lowest heat. You want the water to be boiling hot, but it shouldn't be a rolling boil, as the distillation process can easily overheat. When the steam begins to rise through the plant material, in our case heather, you will soon smell a wonderful scent spreading.
The biggest job during distillation is to ensure that you continuously add cold water to the top and third parts of the still. Through the cold water, we cool down the steam that now carries the essential oil and hydrosol. In this way, they transform back into liquid form.
When we distilled in the cottage, this was the most demanding part, as we don't have running water. We constantly refilled with new, cold water. The heated water flowed out through the plastic hose you see in the picture. But even when I have distilled with access to running water, this has been the most intense part.
Here you can see a video from the course I took in Austria:
The couple Malle-Schmikl, whom you see in the video above, have created a beautiful idyll in Klagenfurt, Austria, and built their own copper stills based on Leonardo da Vinci's old sketches. Long and solid experience and a lot of dedication. I had long wanted to take their course, which I can truly recommend.
.
At the end of the video, you see the final product. It is primarily hydrosol that is extracted in a distillation, and a small amount of essential oil. Here in Sweden, it is primarily essential oil that has become popular, but in many Eastern European countries, hydrosol is a staple. I love both and truly couldn't do without my heather or immortelle hydrosol.
From an esoteric perspective, the difference between essential oil and hydrosol can be described as follows: If the essential oil can be seen as the plant's spirit (concentrated, volatile, and powerful), then the hydrosol (also called flower water) is like the plant's soul (mild, present, and constantly changing).
Essential oil and hydrosol are born together in distillation. The oil rises as the essence of scent, while the hydrosol carries the memory of the plant's presence, in every drop of water.
Here you can find all Örtfabriken essential oils.
