Hydrosols and Essential Oils

[Guest guest]

Hi y'all,

 

While I was traveling in the USA, somebody on this list asked a question

similar to the below. Maybe this old post will help .. Butch

--------------------------

> Can someone tell me the difference between the regular EO and a

> hydrosol? thanks

 

I'd be glad to tell you. Nobody should feel bad about not knowing such

things cause its not knowledge we're born with and we dang sure don't

learn it in school. Fact is, there are folks selling Hydrosols who will

give you a line of Humma-Humma and start dancing a Shuffle-Shuffle if

you ask them too many questions about the subject ... ;-)

 

An Essential Oil is a volatile oil derived from a plant part - normally

an aromatic plant and it can be from the leaves, blooms, roots, bark,

needles, seeds or inner woody parts of that plant.

 

VOLATILE IS AN IMPORTANT TERM - it is the other name for Essential Oils

- Volatile Oils.

 

Essential oils (to the purist - and I'm one) are the results of steam or

hydro-steam or hydro-diffusion of those plant parts. I do not consider

CO2 oils, Absolutes, Cold-Pressed or Expressed Oils or other forms of

plant extracts to be Essential Oils - even if they might be volatile.

 

When we load a still with aromatic plant parts, we use a process of

steam or hydro-steam to extract the volatile oils and this is a dynamic

process that master distillers take pride in accomplishing because it

can be done incorrectly. The water or steam in that still is heated to

a boiling point and this creates the action called distillation.

 

During the process, the volatile oils and some of the water will go from

a solid/liquid to gaseous state, run through piping which then runs

through a cooling unit - and they revert to a liquid state again. The

volatile oil along with the waters that carry it (hydrosols/hydrolates)

will slowly drain down into a Florentine Flask (or some other catch

basin of a sort) and we will see those oils floating on top of the

hydrosol. There is a petcock in that Flask and as the Essential Oil

raises to a level above the petcock it runs down into a large glass

catch jug. The Hydrosol in that Flask runs off into a catch area and

its later pumped into a holding tank.

 

So the EO is a volatile oil created in the manner I described above. An

EO will contain those non-water soluable chemical components of that

plant - the Hydrosol/Hydrolate will contain the water soluable parts of

the plant and also the Essential Oil (non-water soluable) parts of the

plant (in small amounts) so its factual to say a Hydrosol/Hydrolate will

more closely approximate the true nature of the plant than will the

highly concentrated Essential Oil itself. Accordingly, you'll have a

different chemical profile twixt the two. Is one better than the other?

Nope! They can complement each other to a great degree but they both

have their own special uses.

 

In fact, according to the Turkish Institute of Standards, Rose Hydrosol

must have at least 1% Rose Otto. Some folks will get their pencils out

on this one and then wonder how Rose Hydrosol sells for $41.97 a gallon,

which is $5.25 a pound .. or 33 cents an ounce .. and contain Rose Otto

at a rate of 1% that is worth close to $4,000 a kilo, or $1,814 a pound

or $113.38 an ounce .. which would put $1.13 worth of Rose Otto in each

of those 33 cent a pound ounces of Rose Hydrosol. ;-p

 

Fact is .. the Rose Hydrosol has been cohobated one time to remove the

lion's share of the Rose Otto .. a third distillation would not remove

any more Rose Otto .. but it would burn the smell/taste of the Hydrosol

plus be a waste of time and energy costs for the producer. So .. think

in those terms when you buy Rose Hydrosol. And for those Hydrosols from

EO that are not expensive, there is no cohobation so you might find as

much as 6% EO in the Hydrosol.

 

Contrary to some of the information that is out and about, obtaining the

Essential Oil is the true reason for distillation. Some claim that they

distill for Hydrosol only and my reply to that is Hahahaha - and that

reply is shared by all who are involved in commercial distillation down

where the rubber meets the road. You might do that with a small table

top still but from a commercial standpoint its financially irresponsible

and incredible. Not a lot different than saying we bar-be-que a side of

beef to get the tallow. BUT - there are still village folks around even

here in Turkey, who use a crude form of stove-top distillation to obtain

these aromatic waters we call Hydrosols/Hydrolates - but what they are

getting is not really a true product of distillation but rather the

condensation of steam following heating the plant material in water.

 

So - from distillation we get four products - two are valuable for use

in aromatherapy and natural healing and two are not. The valuable two

are the volatile oil (Essential Oil) and the Hydrosol/Hydrolate. The

other two products are the spent plant material - which is used as fuel

or fertilizer, and the spent water that was used in the distillation

process. The spent plant material will come out of a steam still on a

plunger type device that is raised up from within the still. It sits on

this plunger like sand dumped from a bucket by kids on the beach. The

spent plant material from a hydro-steam still (like Rose blossoms) is

discharged from the bottom of the still into a trough where it flows

into a holding pond and it stays there until it drys - then its hauled

off by the villagers to be used as fuel or fertilizer.

 

The Hydrosol/Hydrolate and the spent water are two different animals.

The spent water is no different than the water running from your washing

machine after completion of all cycles.

 

Remember, the Hydrosol/Hydrolate went through a process of converting

from solid/liquid to gas and back to liquid and it carried with it a

part of the Essential Oil - normally in a percentage of as low as 1% to

as high as 10% in some plants. You can read in some novels that the

range is .5% to 2% but that is not accurate info. My distiller in

Australia has a heckuva lot higher concentration of EO in his Tea Tree

Hydrosol and we have a higher concentration in the Oregano and Rosemary

Hydrosols we produce here.

 

Anyway - back at the ranch. The spent water is that water that actually

came into contact with the plant material and is later discharged from

the bottom of the still. It was boiled but not distilled - it didn't go

from liquid to gas and back again, and it has no use whatsoever.

 

Now don't get confused on the below info - its merely an explanation of

a second distillation process of some Hydrosols/Hydrolates - or to be

exactly correct, a second distillation of a water that is heavy with EO

and will be the Hydrosol/Hydrolate after that second distillation.

 

This other process is called cohobation - that is, a second distillation

of a heavily-laden water/oil (or Hydrosol/Hydrolate itself) - NOT of the

plant material itself. The plant material is dumped out before this

process begins and this process is even conducted in a different still.

Unfortunately, you can read in a recently published book on Hydrosols

that cohobation is repeated recycling through the plant material in the

still - but it IS NOT TRUE!! ... :-(

 

Try to redistill Rose Blossoms after the first distillation and I expect

you might blow the still up because they are packed tighter'n a gnat's

butt stretched over a wagonwheel. But it matters not what would happen

because it isn't done in the first place!

 

Cohobation is always done for two plants - Melissa and Roses - because

the oils are precious. I'm not in the habit of preaching hypothetics or

hearsay so I'll say that I have heard that Melissa is cohobated in the

same manner as are Rose Blossoms - but I have not seen Melissa distilled

so its heresay on my part. But I've probably seen more Rosa damacena

(Rose Otto) distilled than any American or European around so I can

speak with some authority on this one and I'm gonna use Rose Blossoms as

the training aid for the point I'm making below.

 

Cohobation means that after the first distillation - and catching the

first (or raw) Rose Oil that results from that distillation, Hydrosol is

drawn off into a holding tank - then the Hydrosol is redistilled in a

different still that is used for cohobation only. In that first

distillation, we got maybe 20% or less of the Rose Otto that will be

rendered from that process (which used 1,500 kilos water and 500 kilos

of Rose Blossoms). The oil-laden water from that distillation still

contains as much as 80% of the Rose Otto and at near $4,000 a kilogram -

you reckon that anybody is not gonna use that water as a hydrosol - or

is gonna let collection of that remaining Rose Otto slide? So much for

distilling only for the Hydrosol .. ;-)

 

That second distillation (cohobation) is where the lion's share of the

Rose Otto will be rendered. The first rendering (called raw or " chi "

oil) is a dark oil that is so valuable that if sold it would fetch 10 or

12 thousand dollars a kilo. But its a small amount of oil. That raw or

first or chi oil is drawn off, filtered and placed in the laboratory of

the distillery while waiting the second distillation (cohobation) of the

hydrosol/hydrolate or oil-heavy waters. When the cohobation begins, you

will see that Florentine Flask begin to fill very rapidly with a golden

colored Rose Oil. This'll make you excited - take my word for it. :-)

 

The second Rose Oil coming into the Florentine Flask from the cohobation

process is later be mixed with the first oil and it becomes the precious

Rose Otto that thrills the soul. The Rose Hydrosol from that second

distillation is again drawn off into a holding tank. What we wind up

with is a Rose Hydrosol with a percentage of at least 1% Rose Otto in

it. Folks - its finer'n frog hair!

 

You CANNOT make a hydrosol/hydrolate by mixing distilled water and Rose

Otto together. It will not have the proper chemical content that is

found in a distilled hydrosol! Many of the Aromatherapy novels tell you

how to do it but I'm telling you now - and willing to let you lose as

much as you're willing to bet - that it CANNOT be done and aside from

the lack of therapeutic value of the concoction you prepare, you will

find many other drawbacks to anything you make yourself - like the fact

that the Essential Oil will always float on top the water and you will

have to shake it every time you use it - or use an emulsifier which will

take away the natural element of the product .. so why bother?

 

Hydrosols are not expensive at the still - in fact, for most aromatic

plant distillations (Rose is an exception) the hydrosol is dumped out

with the waste water simply because there is more produced than there is

a market for. I pay almost as much for the barrels to put my hydrosols

in than I do for the hydrosols. And then comes the high costs of all

the export documentation, air transportation from Turkey to Maryland,

then ground transportation from Baltimore to my company. When Chris

visited Turkey the first time, she took a bath in 25 kilograms of Rose

Hydrosol - the first time that's happened here (I've been told) since

Cleopatra did it a few years back .. ;-p

 

By the time I am finished with all the permits and export processing,

paying for air transport from Turkey to Baltimore International, paying

freight forwarders and customs brokers in Baltimore and then for ground

transportation from Baltimore to Friendsville .. we gotta buncha value

added to that hydrosol. That value added is what folks are paying for -

plus the fact that I have something they can't get otherwise without

signing over their bird dawg and/or first or next born young'un ... ;-)

 

That's as far as I'm going on this now and believe me folks, this is a

short post. I can't begin to adequately describe the distillation

process with words alone or in one post. BUT ... the URLs below will

explain and SHOW you the process described above. They take you from

early morning harvest to transporting Rose Blossoms to the distillery,

loading the stills, and seeing the process of distillation - to include

the first oil dripping into the Florentine Flask - and then the second

oil. They also show you folks standing under a vat of Rose Hydrosol

letting it run all over our bodies, face, eyes and mouth and grinning

like Cheshire Cats all the while ... :-) Check these URLs:

 

http://www.av-at.com/distillation/rosadamascena1.html

 

http://www.av-at.com/stuff/triptoturkey.html

 

Y'all keep smiling, Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

Bulk/Wholesale/Retail GC Tested EOs, Rose Otto, Hydrosols, and lots of

other goodies shipped from Maryland.