Hello Back again with agarwoodindonesia
Distillation technique is actually a very old art. Known from 3000 BC, not much has changed since, but after the invention of boiler in Industrial Revolution era, it paced up distillation techniques even more. Ernst Gunther in his book cited Von Rechenberg describe basically there are several distillation techniques.
The first and the oldest techniques of them all is water distillation or Von Rechenberg name it Hydro Distillation, it is the first distillation techniques known to man since the dawn of distillation. The principal of distillation is very simple, it use the process known as osmosis. The heat from fire below breaks and rupture the cell walls of plant material with the heat helps out the oil inside the plant material to comes out and eventually water will comes in and replace the lost of the oil material. Usually the best way to this is by powder the plant material for roots, woods and seeds, this material is also use for material that easily to become lump when hit by steam such as ylang-ylang and some other flowers. Somehow this distillation tech produce softer or sometimes heavier type of aroma, because contradict what people believe, this type distillation is not based on the vapor point yet on the solubility in water, so common that the heaviest part of the oil usually comes out first because they usually contain resinous material which quite soluble in water. And this also explain the heavy smell that you found in water distilled oud. As for oud soaking cannot be applied in every material since different species=different wood structure different yield and different smell.
Secondly the improved technique maybe some people disagree but I found it to be truth. Since I use it so much. It is like water distillation but using a perforated grid and then we put the plant material above it, the plant material should not be too finely grind yet its should be at exact size and finding this exact size is tricky, it need practice and practice and experience is the best teacher. Because if the materials are ground too finely the vapor in which it is wet vapor will make the material swelling and making inter particle spacing narrowed and the swelling of the material will block the diffusion of the oil and the material above it will also done it and subnormal yield will be gained. And if you grind too coarse the vapor will actually passed trough without contacted the whole material. The type of the oil from Indonesian material from this tech is usually light bright smell as long it doesn’t goes dry up and burn.
The third after the invention of boiler comes the full steam distillation, the principal is the same like water and steam but only by adding a boiler in which apart from the plant material retort, the vapor is pushed trough the plant material, the yield is usually quite high, but the disadvantage of this technique is the heat which usually at 150 C that will burn oud if it it applied to oud, since oud especially Indonesian have high resin content in which it will be burn at that high temperature, caramelization to be exact so it create soya sauce, rubber or something else which unpleasant to our nose.
The forth is uncommon to be use in oud distillation is solvent extraction, however this technique is used to extract resin from agarwood not the oil. Because it has become a thumb rule that resin will always more than oil, usually the gain of resin is about 4%.
Recent years had brought up supercritical CO 2 extraction , for floral material this is good, but not for oud, the pressure in which so high will press the wood and eventually brought out something else then oil and the smell will be weird.. also the distillation apparatus will be quite expensive.
There is also other way to distill, instead of using high pressure some people are thinking of using vacuum distillation, the advantage of vacuum distillation are, shorter length of distillation time, natural smell and improvement of smell do lower temperature, some raise in the yield because suction make the material loosen itself. The disadvantage of this process is the system should not be leak if not it will oxidize the oil in which imply in “peanuty” smell and this not happened only to oud also to other EO that is produce using this tech. Personally I am interested in using this tech, shorter time, better yield, better smell. I hope I can do it soon enough.
I hope you don’t get bored to read. Thank you for your attention and thanks for reading.
Hellooo Helloo back again with agarwoodindonesia. It’s almost a year that I never writte anything here, don’t think I didn’t wanted to write anything here but I am busy learning my self about distillation, it’s being a bad times for me and Iam learning the hard way. Yet I want to share something with you people.
Do you ever come accross with some dreadfuly rubbery smell? or harsh nauseatic smell from oud?
That my fellow readers called as “still smell”. What cause it anyway? why this monstrous note ever end up on my Oud oil? that would be your next question.
The answer is “still smell” or “pot smell” is caused by water than runs out in the charge ( material) still. So the oud get that burnt smell . This is in the case on water distillation or hydro distillation and water and steam distillation. Still smell also happened in steam distillation this is because the operator may charge the material inside the pot with super heated steam constantly. What is super heated steam? In the world of distiller there are 2 kinds of steam. The first is known as “wet steam” this is the steam that we know everyday from our daily activity such us boiling water in a pot. This type of steam is never beyond 100 C it has low pressure and this kind of steam use in water and steam distillation. The second type of steam is super heated steam also known as “dry steam”, this steam is generated from a boiler oil which boil water above it’s boiling point so it has very strong pressure and heat since usually this type of steam is over 100 Degree Celcius. If this type of steam constantly applied to plants material eventually it will dried up the plant and make it burn if no strict control were apllied. GÜnther in his book Essential oil volume I page 149 mention us about it. On the contray water and steam distillation and water or hydro distillation use wet steam with low pressure yet there is a risk when the water runs out it will eventually burn the plant material inside. So this is why you get that monstrous nauseatic smell.
There is common problem among us distiller quality VS Quantity for those who doesn’t aware of distilling essential oil they must be demanding quality over quantity. Since they pay much. But most distiller see quantity over quality is better because they think this is a rare product no one will ever complain.
I jumped distilling not a long ago, I learned the hard way 6 month of agony and pain also insult. Truly distilling is like cooking at first it was hard and difficult once you know the best recipe and the way to optimize your device and you will win the a good prize.
It’s being so long I’ve never write again. Not that I am lazy to update things up lately my hands are full busy thinking about other things. People around the globe are well known that oudh oil or Dehn Al Oudh are expensive. In this article I would like to explain almost about everything that related to dreadful price of oudh.
The first reason why oudh oil are expensive is it’s very hard to find it’s raw material. From all of the oudh trees in the jungles in Indonesia, only 10% of total population are fill with oudh resin. This made things harder since we cannot tell in which of the tree is really fill in with resin. So one thing or another you must cut the tree chop it and make it into pieces.
This make the second reason it need extensive labor, can you imagine cut down then chop down the tree into pieces even dug out it’s roots with only 1 or 2 people? And then you need to track the infection path on the tree chop the tree by follow this path . It’s not an easy job, Then cleaning the resinous part. Done yet ? nope not yet. Since this is hardest and the scariest part. Transporting it out. Many crooks out there that want quick cash want this tree. Especially the filled ones.
The last reason why Oudh oil is expensive is the difficulties in extracting it out. Since scientifically proven that Oudh rendement ( Raw Material VS Yield Comparation) is very low 0.1% (that if you are lucky enough) so to get 100 Grams of Oudh Oil you will need at least 100 Kg of raw material. Distiller use left over from the chopping process since if they use the incense (Upper Medang, Gubal) grade. It would a waste of money if distiller doing so since the wood itself sells. And in Oudh there are 2 substance impregnated inside the wood. These are the oil and the resin, the oil you can smell it when you burn it, the resin is what you see bubbling out from the wood. Both had their distinctive smell. So what happened if I distill high grade wood? Surely a gambling position. There is a big chance I lost the wood completely without gaining oil.
Also the complex part in distilling if you use temperature too high you will gain only water with Oudh odor no oil, even you had doing this distillation for 3 whole days non stop, so you need to check up the fire each and everytime. This is what happened in Indonesia mostly distiller are small scale family distiller not humongous distiller like in Thailand or Vietnam or India. They don’t use state of the art technology or correct distilling technique, they satisfied themselves when they gain oil. Since getting oil itself is an ever joy experience.
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