hello everybody this is Ariane Arsenault from La Fille de la Mer and today I'm not
making soap, I am going to show you the process of distilling some fresh
coriander that is freshly picked from my garden. I have a beautiful copper
still, this one is a 10 L column rotating Alembic and I got it from Candles and Supplies
from Cindy Rumpf Novack and I've been using it quite a lot since I got it
this summer and I want to share this process with you, as I did show a couple
pictures and people are really interested! Now I am NOT a specialist at
distilling plants, herbs and botanicals but I'm having a lot of fun doing it,
I am learning so many things and I want to share that with you. I have this great
book called Harvest to Hydrosol by Ann Harman and this is where I got most of
the information on how to distill and also Cindy from Candles and Supplies has
guided me and helped me a lot. So let's get to the first step of distilling some botanicals.
This is the first batch of coriander that I've distilled this summer
so what we did this morning we just cut the green seeds from the garden
and we cleaned them out and what we're gonna do now is we are going to put them in
a stockpot with warm water because of the waxy outside of the coriander seeds
they need to be pre soaked in a warm distilled water for 24 hours before
distillation. If you could be here and smell the hydrosol, coriander has a very
sweet green and kind of a zesty lemony scent. It smells so great and I'm gonna
be using it to make some coriander soap! Let's take apart the copper still:
This is the head and the gooseneck and here is the column so we're gonna open
this up and here is the pot. It is where the herbs are going to go with the
warm water and you can use this alembic to do a hydro distillation
meaning that the herbs and botanicals will be in the water, you can also do a
steam distillation using this part of the still and the water being in the
bottom or you can do a combo: so a hydro and a steam distillation at once. Now for
the coriander I'm only going to be using the pot and the hydro so I'm not going
to be using the column and I'm actually going to be closing it just like so and
then connecting it to the condenser this will be filled with cold water that will
allow the steam to go through the gooseneck and then cooling down making
the gas go back to liquid state and we will collect the hydrosoul from ithis part.
So here we go, with the Alembic on a scale and I tared my scale and I will start
to introduce the coriander into the still and it's only the green seeds and some
leaves and the stems but that's all that is going in. I've cut off all of
the roots and everything else from the plant
and I know that I have about a kilo of coriander and I'm gonna fit into this still
I already have 536 grams for my first bowl and
let's go ahead with the second bowl
We have 1198 grams of coriander and I will add a three-to-one ratio of
distilled water to the alembic. Here is my warm distilled water I'm going to
pour it on top of the cilantro or... the coriander because cilantro are
actually the green leaves and the coriander are the seeds. So I'm pouring
this over my coriander and I'm just gonna close it up and let it soak for 24 hours.
I will be back tomorrow to distill!
It has been 24 hours and the coriander
has been soaking in the water and it's now ready to distill so here's my setup
I have removed the column from the Alembic. I have also sealed with teflon tape
right here and right here, my pipes so that none of the steam escapes before
actually being transferred from the condenser into my collecting recipient.
How this works is that the pot will boil, the temperature will rise and steam
will be collected here through the head, it will go through the gooseneck and
when it goes back down into the condenser; this is cold water, it will go
from steam to liquid and the hydrosol will come out right here. Now this needs
to be kept at a cooler temperature than the steams so that it goes from
being a gas to being a liquid or steam. I have my little setup here so I have
two pipes so this one is hooked to a little aquarium pump with a flow valve that
will adjust the speed of the water going up so water is going up this way and
then out this way and then we will keep recycling the same water
for the whole process. It will always be cooler than the steam. Also one thing
to have on hand is a distillation log and this one was provided to me by Cindy
from Candles and Supplies so I've got all of my information in here and it's
important to take notes so that you have everything you need. After doing
your distillation you have all of your information correct and then as I distill
I will note the time and then my total yield I will fill up this part as I go.
Let's fire up this alembic!
I can hear a rolling boil in the pot from this alembic and from the
thermometer you can see that it is at 70 degrees Celsius so the bottom of course
is boiling but here it's not as hot yet so I can still touch it, with short, shortly
without burning myself but it's getting really hot and I'm thinking that
the steam is gonna start to go through the condenser very soon... oh! It is! See?
We have our first drops! So when this happens so it's 10:29 am so I'm gonna
note the time so we have the first drops of hydrosol that are exiting, they just like
literally... I started filming they weren't coming out and now they are! so I'm gonna
now plug in my little aquarium pump so that we get this fresh water rolling and
that we don't overheat the condenser. I really like this little pump it is very
very quiet for a pump so you can see the water is going up. I just need to adjust
whoops! I need to adjust so that the water flow goes in at the
same rate and it's going out and just so you know the water that is in the
condenser is just cold tap water it will never be in contact with the hydrosol.
the hydrosol is made with distilled water while the condenser is just cool
water from the tap. okay and you can see that it's steaming so it's getting hot!
and that's why it's important to have the cold water coming in from the bottom
so the heat rises up and then the hot water exits right here.
Here we have the tube where the hydrosol is exiting so I have this
little fine mesh strainer just in case there would be any particulates coming
up with the steam so that they get caught up in there and they don't end up
in the hydrosol. It's also a very hmm magical moment as this is also when all
of the beautiful aroma from the hydrosol starts to fill up the room!
Coriander's smells really green, it smells really fresh and zesty. I really
love this herb. All of our hydrosols are bottled in glass clear bottles and we
keep them in the fridge at cool temperature and away from direct sunlight.
The whole process of distilling this hydrosol took a little over an
hour and a half and I'm now going to show you the finished product.
Here is 2 litres of beautiful hydrosol. Of course there's essential oil floating on
top but I'm not gonna bother separating the essential oil from the hydrosol because
I made such a small quantity that I would have... I don't know... like not even 5 ml
of essential oil so I'm just gonna bottle it and leave it in with the hydrosol.
I have these two glass containers that I really like to bottle hydrosol.
This one is a 750 ml and the other one is a 2 litres so we're
gonna be using the big one but for smaller quantities I really like this one.
Both were purchased from SKS bottles in the US and I clean them with 70% grain
alcohol and let them dry upside down before storing any hydrosol in them.
I will now label these so that I remember the date they were made. I will
also write the lot number on the label that is corresponding to my distillation
log sample and now I need to disassemble the Alembic to clean it out! And because
I have some warm water in there from recycling my water, the water from the
distillation that was used for the condenser is now really hot and I'm
gonna be able to reuse this water to clean out my Alembic using hot soapy
water and then I'm gonna do an alcohol rinse in everything, everything is gonna
be rinsed with alcohol, dried up, sealed up and ready to go again!
I've added the label to this beautiful hydrosol. I will now put it in the fridge so that it
stays good for a long time, usually the shelf life of a hydrosol kept in the
fridge is about one year. We don't use any preservatives in those until we use
them in our products either soap, creams emulsions or other cosmetics. If you would
like to learn more about making hydrosols and using a copper alembic I
highly recommend that you get Ann Harman's book: Harvest to Hydrosol. You can also, if
you're in the Pennsylvania area and are near Candles and Supplies, I'm sure Cindy
would be happy to let you know her schedule for distilling classes and she
also sells the alembics so you can get one! I didn't take a private class with
her but she has guided me using this alembic and getting my setup perfect so
that I would be able to distil at home and we are at thousands of kilometres away
so it's really something that is possible! I hope you've enjoyed this video,
thanks for watching! If you have any questions please leave them down below
in the comment section and I will see you again very soon