New User from Utah. Hydrosol distillation and other body products

[Darnol91]

Hope everyone’s day went well today. My name is David and I’m new here! I’ve lurked on the forum for a while now, but finally decided to become active.

A little about me: live in Utah, but I’m from Louisiana originally. I swam competitively in college and I am a pilot (recreationally). I have a standard poodle and a gorgeous demon of a cat - she’s a rag doll. I enjoy being outside, playing with my dog, spending time with my girlfriend, and now making different health/beauty/body products.

So far I’ve made a few loaves of soap, somewhat successfully. Two different lip balms, two different lotions and some room spray. I’m currently looking for a hood emulsified body scrub and lip scrub recipe, so if you have any you’d like to share, please do so!

I look forward to learning more and more from here. If anyone would like to connect and discuss new recipes, or products you are thinking of adding to your line, give me a shout! I’m also about to build a still to begin making my own hydrosols, if you are currently doing this, please reach out!

 

[lsg]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[SandyBrown]

Welcome to the forum! I'm 22 and I'm also new, live in the Us and work here. Now I am in practice in a young it company.Learned about this forum from a friend.

 

[Darnol91]

Thanks Sandy and LSG!

sandy - I “followed” you. What resources have you found to be the best so far? I’ve bought a couple of books and obviously researching on this forum. So far I’ve made three batches of CP soap, all of which have turned out better than expected. I made one body scrub that was a bust. Two lip balms, one lotion bar (bust))and one light lotion.

I also paid to join the swift crafty monkey blog and it has a ton of great info! I’d highly recommend it.

 

[SandyBrown]

Thanks Sandy and LSG!

sandy - I “followed” you. What resources have you found to be the best so far? I’ve bought a couple of books and obviously researching on this forum. So far I’ve made three batches of CP soap, all of which have turned out better than expected. I made one body scrub that was a bust. Two lip balms, one lotion bar (bust))and one light lotion.

I also paid to join the swift crafty monkey blog and it has a ton of great info! I’d highly recommend it.

Since I'm a newbie I'll read the forum to figure it out.

 

[rymalia]

I’d love to see your progress in building a still - that sounds fun.

I got sort of inspired about hydrosols last week - we had just bout our Christmas tree, and a length of cedar garland, and I wanted to see if I could extract something from the cedar, since it smelled so great. I did a stove pot steamer hydrosol distillation with the inverted and ice on top - it was all pretty fun, but the hydrosol I ended up with kinda smelled like an ashtray! Oh well. But having an alembic or other proper still setup looks really really cool - I would love to see one get built!

 

[DeeAnna]

Christmas trees are sometimes sprayed with colorant or treatments to retard needle loss, so some of the off odor could be from that.

Also people over distill when they make hydrosols. The steamer you describe will do a nice job as a hobby setup, but it's easy to over-distill and end up with a poor quality hydrosol.

Open the still from time to time, remove the accumulated distillate, and see how it smells. Set each portion of the distillate aside in its own separate container -- don't just dump it all in one container -- and resume distilling.

There will come a time where the odor in the distillate smells off -- like hay, over-cooked vegetables, etc. Discard that distillate. The good smelling stuff is what you want to keep -- that's your hydrosol.

Smell each portion after it cools and evaluate the aroma. Maybe the first portion you collected doesn't smell all that amazing either, so maybe you want to discard that too. Let your nose be the guide.