DIY Essential Oils

Steam-distill your own essential oils at home.

- BY SUSAN M. BRACKNEY

You don't have to be a mad scientist to distill your own essential oils at home, but if you give it a try, you just might start to feel like one! Certainly, there is a fair amount of equipment involved, and the steam distillation process itself can seem a little daunting at first. But there's also something magical about being able to collect and bottle the very essence of your favorite herbs.

People have been extracting essential oils from plants for thousands of years, and the ancient Greeks are credited with having originally developed the still. (Interestingly, some of the small copper steam distillers that are commercially available today closely resemble some of the very first stills ever used.)

WHY DIY?

Whether you already routinely use essential oils or you'd like to start, there are many good reasons to distill your own. First, you'll have a better idea about exactly what you're getting. This is especially valuable since there are a lot of synthetic fakes out there. According to the authors of The Essential Oil Maker’s Handbook, some of the most faked oils include jasmine, lavender, rose, geranium, bergamot and rosemary. Some unscrupulous vendors may also “cut” very expensive essential oils with cheaper ones. ESIN DENIZ/STOCK.ADOBE.COM Product purity concerns aside, you might try steam-distillation because you simply haven't been able to find a particular essential oil for sale. When you distill your own, you can experiment with lots of different plant varieties and different parts of each plant to see what happens. Just don't expect to produce gallons and gallons of essential oil each time you try. One of the reasons essential oils are as expensive as they are is that it can take a lot of plant material just to distill a fraction of an ounce of these volatile compounds.