How to Make Essential Oils At Home With an Essential Oil Distiller

Have you wondered how to make essential oils? 

Essential Oil Distillation Equipment in a French Museum

You can make essential oil at home, but the process isn't efficient or cost effective. It can take many pounds of plant material to make only a few drops of oil. You also need an essential oil distiller.

Note: Some internet sources claim to tell you how to make essential oils but give instructions for an infused oil. An infused oil involves letting herbs soak in a vegetable oil. Infused oils are sometimes used for cooking and can also make good aromatherapy carrier oils. However, an infused oil is not an essential oil and does not have its benefits.

Using an Essential Oil Distiller

An essential oil distiller extracts essential oil from plant material. Here's the basic process for steam distilling essential oils:

1. Plant material sits in a basket above a steam generator (or boiler).
   
   
2. The boiler heats water and the vapor rises through the plant material. The steam releases the plant's volatile oils and collects them.
   
   
3. The steam-oil mixture moves into a condenser. The mixture condenses into a liquid combination of water (hydrosol) and a layer of essential oils.
   
   
4. A separator splits up the essential oil and the hydrosol.

In a commercial essential oil distillery, a large distiller can process hundreds of pounds of plant material. But if you want to make essential oils at home, you can buy a home essential oil distillation kit.

Usually, essential oils are distilled from fresh plant materials, but sometimes the plant is first dried. Dense or thick material, such as roots and seeds, are crushed or chipped before distillation.

If you want to distill an essential oil, you must first know what part of the plant to use. Leaves? Flowers? Roots? Seeds? Twigs or wood chips? Research an essential oil to learn what part of the plant to use.

The amount of essential oil produced during distillation depends on four main factors. The most important is the type and quality of the plant material. The other three are distillation time, temperature in the distiller, and the operating pressure of the distiller.

Other details also affect yield, such as plant harvest time (time of day and year), climate conditions, and the amount of volatile oil each plant contains. The typical yield of essential oil from plants is between 0.005 and 10%. For example, plants that produce a relatively high percentage of oil (such as sage, thyme, and rosemary) require about 500 pounds of plant material to produce 32 ounces of oil.

In other words, if you plan to distill rosemary, expect to use about 15 pounds of rosemary leaves to get one ounce of oil. For a low-yield oil, such as rose, expect to use many more pounds for one ounce of oil.

Source: Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art

Here are two books with instructions on home distillation of essential oils: The Essential Oil Maker's Handbook and Tabletop Distilling.

How to Make Essential Oils Using a Homemade Still

This process will extract some essential oil but is mostly useful for making aromatherapy hydrosol (scented water).

You need these supplies:

• Pressure cooker (stainless steel*)
• Vegetable steamer (stainless steel)
• Hose clamp
• 1-quart (or larger) glass jar (sanitized)
• 10 feet of 1/4-inch diameter copper** or food-grade vinyl plastic tubing
• 5-gallon bucket
• Dried or fresh herbs from which you want to extract essential oil

*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 the tubing 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.

Follow these instructions for making essential oils:

1. Put the pressure cooker on a stove burner. Fill the cooker half-full of water. 
2. Place a vegetable steamer inside the cooker, propping the streamer up, if needed, so that its bottom is above the water line.
3. Place the herbs you want to distill on the steamer.
4. Put the lid on the pressure cooker, but do not place the regulator vent on top of the cooker. Instead, put a 10-foot length of food-grade tubing over the outlet, using a hose clamp to ensure a tight fit.
5. Drop the other end of the tubing over the edge of the counter. 
6. Place a 5-gallon bucket on a chair.
7. Coil the suspended end of the tubing inside the bucket so that the tubing wraps around at least four times.
8. Put enough cold water and ice in the bucket to cover the coiled tubing.
9. Drop the end of the tubing that is in the bucket over the edge toward the floor.
10. Place a sanitized small-mouth jar (at least 1-quart) on the floor.
11. Insert the end of the tubing into the jar, positioning the tubing so it falls straight into the jar.
12. Turn the burner on medium-high.

The water will start to boil, creating steam inside the pressure cooker that rises through the herbs and removes the 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.

Source: Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art

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About the Author

Carol Wiley is a retired massage therapist and freelance writer with a deep interest in essential oils. She uses her experience and knowledge, along with research, to bring you information about aromatherapy and massage and links to more resources.

If you find this site useful, you can show your support by buying through my affiliate links. The site is a labor of love, and I appreciate any income that helps keep it up and running.

Buy essential oils at Aromatics International or Rocky Mountain Oils.
Buy massage supplies at Massage Naturals.
Buy anything at Amazon.

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Photo Credit: © Service communication du Conseil général des Alpes de Haute-Provence (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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