Making lavender oil in bulk

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EvilTOJ

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I posted this earlier, but accidentally in the Fragrance Reviews, I'm hoping for some actual help here. I now have in my possession a lot of lavender flowers. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT! I have maybe five or six paper grocery bags's worth stuffed full of flowers and stems. I'd like to turn it into some kind of aromatic for soap, but I'm not sure the best way to proceed. So far the best technique I've found has been to crush the stems and flowers up and let them steep in warm olive oil for a few weeks. Is this the best way to do it? If it is, what's the best way to use the lavender sludge in soap?

It's been incredibly frustrating finding good info on how to do what I want to accomplish. Most recipes and forum posts I've found on the internet just reference buying essential oil, which I'm not going to do since I have all these lavender flowers.
 
What you are describing is a lavender infusion and unfortunately, the lye will kill the scent. You can use lavender-infused oil in other products like lotion or hair conditioner and preserve more of the scent.

Making EO from lavender flowers requires a special still. I don't know much about the process, unfortunately.
 
What other ways can I use then? I've also been reading about soaking herbs in vodka or everclear and using that as some kind of oil. I've read mixed posts about letting the alcohol evaporate and leaving just the aroma, vs just leaving it as is and using that.
 
Or you could try for a lavender floral water. Brain dead, can't remember how to do that right now, but you could google it. Great for lotions. Infused lavender oil is wonderful for soap, if only for label appeal. I love infused oils of all kinds in soap, chemists may argue the benefits, and maybe it's just me, but I love the idea of something special added with the herbs infused in oil.

I once made tincture of lavender in vodka, supposed to be good for depression. It was so disgusting I couldn't down it, and I've downed plenty of tinctures that tasted unpleasant though they were really good for some ailment or another. My dosage - a dropperful or two of tincture under the tongue for as long as you can stand it. It was totally disgusting even at that.

Would love to hear from you chemists out there! Maybe I'll have more brains tomorrow...
 
Okay, so you are thinking about infusing lavender cuttings into oil and you want to figure out if it's worth it. Let's do some rough math.

The aroma is in the essential oil and lavender EO comes from the flower buds. If the stems and leaves contain aromatic chemicals, it's to a considerably lesser degree -- to the point that most lavender growers who make the EO try to harvest only the flowers with as little foliage as possible.

But, hey, let's assume the leaves and stems provide some EO. The yield of lavender EO from the buds and flowers is 0.5% to 1% by weight. Given that we're including the foliage as well as buds and we're only infusing not distilling, let's assume the yield of EO from infusion is 0.5%.

So if one of your paper bags contains, say, 20 lb of lavender cuttings, then a very generous estimate of the EO yield from a bag is 1.6 ounces by weight. Multiply that by 5 bags and you get 8 ounces of EO.

A paper bag has a volume of roughly 1.5 cubic feet. To infuse 1 bag's worth of cuttings, that translates to roughly 10 gallons of oil per paper bag's worth of cuttings. Let's say you reuse the oil with the other 4 bags to concentrate the aromatics into the same 10 gallons of oil.

Not all of the aromatics will end up in the finished oil and you'll have some losses of oil during the process of infusion, so let's assume a final yield of maybe 50% or so of the EO. So after infusing 5 grocery sacks of lavender cuttings in the same 10 gallons of oil, you may end up with 4 ounces of EO in about 8 gallons (about 60 pounds) of oil.

The usual dosage for EOs in soap is 3% per pound of oil. The 4 ounces of EO you have in your 60 pounds of oil is more like 0.4%. That dosage might add a small whiff of aroma to the soap, but is not likely to add much more than that.

You ask -- Will infusing the cuttings in oil actually work? Sure it will. Is it the best way to get lavender scented soap? The math says "no". Lavender EO is used in soap for a good reason -- infusions and the like just can't extract concentrated essential oils like steam distillation can.

Have fun with your experiment!
 
Check THIS out - a microwave distiller! [ame]http://youtu.be/y62W7pzyu2E[/ame]
 
Yep, those small scale distillers do work, but, IMO, they're basically a fun science experiment -- not terribly practical and incredibly energy inefficient. Here's a homemade steam distillation setup: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F34cySojqU[/ame]

We did the math on these distillers in another thread in which the OP had lots of roses and wanted to get rose EO. The distillation yield for rose EO is under 0.001%, compared with lavender at 0.5% to 1%.

Even with lavender, you would only get a few drops of EO from each batch, since you can only process a small amount of plant material at a time. Distilling to get the hydrosol is probably a more reasonable goal than distilling to get the EO. Unfortunately, the aroma from a hydrosol does not survive in soap, which was a goal of the OP in this thread.

DeeAnna <- newly anointed math goddess, wearing a crown of crumpled Post-It notes and waving her slide-rule scepter :) My cats are terribly impressed....
 
Well that's very discouraging. I got all this lavender because my mom has a bunch of bushes on her property, and since they were stinking up her sewing room I offered to take them. I plan on selling my soaps some day soon, and it'd be nice if I basically have an unlimited supply.

However, I'm not going to be deterred! I'm going to experiment and see if I can get a process to work to my satisfaction. I'm not planning on making soaps with heavy scents anyway, so if the strongest aroma I get is just a hint I will be happy with it.

What about superfatting with heavily infused oil, do you think that would make any difference?
 
If you're doing cold process, no. If you're doing hot process, maybe. You'll just have to try it and see.
 
If you have some money to play with you can buy a proper distiller that will produce the essential oil a little easier.
 
A good cooper still is an expensive proposition. However you can purchase a glass still set up for less than 150 bucks (still nothing to sneeze at. no pun intended.) I hear that you are frustrated, and I understand that, much of the information on the internet about distilling essential oils is a sales pitch. Here is a link to a still that one can use at home, http://www.hometrainingtools.com/lab-distillation-equipment/c/2056/ this is as good as a home still gets for the money. It is not a epically amazing French still, it also does not cost 100,000 dollars.
 
What about making bath teas with the buds. You could mix it with other botanicals or sea salt for a great relaxing soothing bath. I do a chamomile and lavender tea.
 
Thanks for that MzMolly! I think some kind of distillation setup is going to work best for what I want to accomplish, and that helps. I've dabbled in trying to make stills, but I've never had a reason to really get into making one.

Once I figure out a good means of making a distiller, I think what I'll do is grind up all the plant material and let it soak in alcohol for a few days. I just so happened to find a perfectly cromulent blender for free, so I'll use that to grind it all up.
 

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