Steam Distillery....Uh Say What?

For Christmas this year, my father bought me a wonderful set of 6 essential oils. Very good quality with strong scents. I was perusing Amazon.com for the sister sets when I began reading the descriptions of how the oils were made.

Being a crafty little witch myself, I know how to make essential or flavored oils using alcohol, vodka or a carrier/base oil, like olive oil (both cold and hot). Something always nagged at me though. There has to be a more natural way to obtain the oil. ALL plants have some sort of oily substance in them, to some extent. So, I brought up my favorite search engine and began looking for "how to make essential oils" for about the hundreth time....but hey, you never can tell when you will find new information about an old subject.

Lo and behold I did find something new. A link for making essential oils using STEAM. That's right, steam, in glass tubes and bulbs like some Mary Shelley, Steampunk, mad scientest, lab aficionado.

Count me in!

Now I took high school chemistry and I was pretty good at it too, so this set-up does not intimidate me at all. The hot plate, the bulbous beakers, glass valves, stoppers, etc. etc. etc.....pretty straight forward. Now I really liked this set-up from heartmagic.com because it is designed for the non-chemist, the plant bits or "biomass" doesn't sit in boiling water and it won't burn. They also give a pretty detailed description of the set-up and process and yes, I will admit, my eyes did glaze over for a bit. Get on to the making of the oils, right?!! Well, you still have to read the directions. Duh.

Potential Problem #1: You do need to have running water at a certain rate and temperature (20 degrees) as part of the cooling process. I don't know about you but I don't often measure the rate of flow in my faucet or the cold water temperature but they give you the hoses and it should be relatively self-explanatory I suppose.

Potential Problem #2: I want one! To make my own oils, add to diffusers, candles and soaps and to make tonic waters like honest to god rose water.

Potential Problem #3: It's $400  *CHOKE* Yeah, I wish I was kidding but it is made complete of glass and it has to be strong enough to withstand heat. They removed rubber stoppers and pieces and replaced them with glass components to maintain the purity of the product so really...it should be worth it right? Well sure....but I still don't plan on spending 2 months worth of food budget for myself and my kid on one. Drat....and I was really getting excited there for a second too :(