How to Make Essential Oils

Have you wondered about how to make essential oils? Well, you can do it at home, but it's not really efficient or cost effective. It can take many pounds of plant material to make only a few drops of oil.

You basically need your own still. Here are some instructions from Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art that will yield some essential oil but is mostly useful for making hydrosol (scented water).

You need these supplies:

• pressure cooker (stainless steel*)
  
• vegetable steamer (stainless steel)
  
• hose clamp
  
• 1-quart (or larger) glass jar
  
• 10 feet of 1/4-inch diameter copper** or food-grade vinyl plastic tubing
  
• 5-gallon bucket
  
• dried or fresh herbs you want to distill

*Use stainless steel because aluminum may react with the essential oils.

**If you use copper tubing, tape off one end and fill the tube with fine sand to prevent it from kinking. Slowly wrap it around a small bucket or something else with a cylindrical shape so that the tubing spirals in a way that fits into a 5-gallon bucket.

1. Put the pressure cooker on a stove burner. Fill it half-way with water. Place a vegetable steamer inside the cooker, propping it up, if needed, so that the bottom is above the water line.
   
   
2. Place the herbs you want to distill on top of the steamer.
   
   
3. Put the lid on the pressure cooker, but instead of placing the regulator vent on top of the cooker, put a 10-foot length of food grade tubing over the outlet, using a hose clamp to make sure the fit is tight.
   
   
4. Drop the other end of the tubing over the edge of the counter.
   
   
5. Place a 5-gallon bucket on a chair, and coil the suspended end of the tube inside the bucket so that it wraps around at least four (4) times.
   
   
6. Put enough cold water and ice in the bucket to cover the coiled tubing.
   
   
7. Drop the end of the tube that is in the bucket over the edge toward the floor. Place a very clean small-mouth jar (at least 1-quart) on the floor, and insert the end of the tubing into it, positioning the tubing so it falls straight into the jar.
   
   
8. Turn the burner on medium-high.

The water will start to boil, creating steam inside the pressure cooker that rises through the herbs and captures and removes the herb's essential oil, which flows out of the cooker through the tubing. When the steam inside the tubing reaches the cold water in the bucket, the steam condenses and converts back to water, literally dropping the essential oil.

Some oil will float on the surface of the water as it goes into the jar, but the product will be mostly hydrosol.

Another set of instructions on how to make essential oils.