Homemade Stills for Making Essential Oils

There are four essential components you need for a homemade still for making essential oil. You need a heat source, a holding tank, and condenser, and a separator. The process is basically the same procedure for making liquor but using much smaller equipment. Your homemade still is inexpensive and simple to make with these simple directions.

Supplies for Making a Homemade Essential Oil Still

To make an essential oil still you will need one clean gallon milk jug and one clean 2 liter plastic soda bottle, 6 to 8 feet of ¾ inch copper tubing, a metal tea kettle with a tight lid, a rubber stopper to plug the kettle spout, ice, a drill with a ¾" drill bit, a rolling pin or soup can, a meat thermometer, and a glass container. You will also need the plenty of the plants or flowers you wan to distill.

Prepare the components

Drill two ¾" holes in the 2 liter plastic bottle, one near the top and one near the bottom.

Cut the top off the gallon milk jug making it into a bucket. Drill a ¾" hole near the bottom.

Cut a piece of copper tubing long enough to reach from the kettle on the burner to the 2 liter plastic bottle. Cut another piece of copper tubing (about 5 feet long). Leave one end straight and long enough to reach from the 2 liter plastic bottle to the milk jug bucket and add 6 inches. Mark that length with a marker on the copper tubing. Starting from that mark and wrap the copper tubing around the rolling pin or soup can 7 to 8 times to create the coil. The bottom end of the coil lead should be at least 8 inches long and straight.

Assembly

Drill a ¾" hole in the rubber stopper and insert about 4 inches of copper tubing through the stopper into the tea kettle. Wedge the meat thermometer through the side of the rubber stopper when it is placed in the kettle spout. The goal is to seal the kettle so no steam escapes except through the copper tube. Feed about 6 inches of the other end of this piece of copper tubing into the drilled hole at the top of the 2 liter plastic soda bottle. Fill the 2 liter bottle with plant or flower substance and close the lid tightly. If you dry the plant substance first more of it will fit in the 2 liter bottle making a higher concentration of essential oil.

Place the copper coil into the milk jug bucket and feed the long end into the bottom hole drilled in the 2 liter plastic soda bottle. The short lead at the bottom of the copper coil will be fed through the hole drilled in the bottom of the milk jug bucket. This is where your essential oil will drip out of the still into the waiting glass container. Place the glass container under the exit copper tubing. Fill the milk jug bucket with ice water. Fill the kettle with water and place it on the stove on high heat.

The Process

The boiling water will create steam that is sent through the copper tubing into the 2 liter bottle filled with plant substance. The steam will penetrate the plants and create a vapor of essential oil that will run out the bottom tube leading to the coil. The coil sitting in ice water cools the vapor eliminating the water and creates the essential oil which begins to drip out the exit copper tubing into a waiting glass container.

Tip

Watch the meat thermometer and never let the temperature get higher than 175 degrees or your water will evaporate.