By chance, I met the owners of a local winery at a holiday event where I was showing off my lavender and lavender products. After an absolutely wonderful discussion on essential oil distillation, they mentioned they had Rosemary growing on their winery. They planted it mainly to attract bees and other beneficials. And they were interested if something more could be done with it. It sounded like a splendid opportunity to experiment with something new.I'm not a complete stranger to Rosemary. I have a number of bushes planted around the farm. Mainly for ornamentals in the garden, but there is one faithful bush just behind the kitchen that serves all our our culinary rosemary needs. Last Spring, I rooted about sixty cuttings to start a small test field come this Spring. To tell the truth, I did this the year before last as well, but didn't quite have the hang of it. Well, practice makes perfect! So Rosemary is something I want to know. It, like Lavender grows well in the climate here at the farm. I was excited to get started.
The following week, I connected with the wine maker at the winery, and we arranged for me to pick up a sample of rosemary to distill and create some sample products. In the photo above, you can see a sample of the wonderful crop.
I received about 47 pounds to run my tests. According to the research that I did, the oil yield should be about 1-2%. So that should come out to one-half to maybe one pound of rosemary oil. Part of the test is to verify yield, as well as quality. So let's see if we meet this expectation...I started up the distillery early that morning, about 8am, and let it fully warm up. Since I wanted to also sample the hydrosol quality, I let it run for a while to ensure a good flow of distilled water before loading the rosemary into the retort. In the photo above, you can see the fresh Rosemary ready for distillation!
General observations, the Rosemary oil compared with Lavender, seemed a bit shy. Typically with lavender, I see a good eruption of oil easily within the first fifteen to twenty minutes. With the Rosemary, some oil flow started in this time frame, but it was slow. In fact, the Rosemary seemed to release her essential oil slow and steady. A much smoother curve over time, compared again to Lavender which seems to release her oil quickly, then taper off. Interestingly, the total distillation time was about the same however. The bulk of the oil produced within the first hour to maybe hour and one half with the Rosemary. After ninety minutes, the process was pretty much complete. I let her run for an additional thirty minutes, mostly because I wanted to get some experience on the outside of the curve. Just in case there was a late eruption. There was not. Now I know.
At slightly over two hours, I was down to less than one milliliter a minute. In fact, less than one half a milliliter a minute. So I decided to call it. I opened up the retort and lifted the basket of spent Rosemary out of the distiller, and loaded it into the wheel barrow to bring to the compost heap. Ahh the smell! Absolutely unbelievable! I must have the nicest smelling compost heap in California.The oil quality was divine. Very sweet. Not camphorous at all. It was quite exhilarating actually. I must say a different experience than eating it. The hydrosol smelled close to the essential oil. Not quite as earthy as the lavender hydrosol. I like it a lot.
Yield had been about one-quarter pound. That's only about 50% of the low end of the expectation. In reflexion, I think this had to do with weather conditions at harvest. It had rained that day, and the Rosemary was still slightly wet. I'm willing to bet the excess moisture skewed my initial weigh-in. To verify my hypothesis, I will need to run another batch that is picked dry. Next time.
I have arranged with my farming partner and soap master to do some blending and craft some soaps and lotions as samples. Stay tuned for the next blog where I will talk about Rosemary soapmaking!
In the meantime, stay healthy.
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