DIY Essential Oils with Extract Craft: Step-by-Step

January 10, 2024

Essential oils are an amazing way to support a holistic lifestyle. They can be mixed for custom botanical topicals, blended into homemade hand creams or body butters, or used for aromatherapy. But should you buy essential oils or make them yourself at home?

Key Takeaways:

When you make your own essential oils, you control the end product
There are multiple methods for making DIY essential oil
Each extraction method has specific pros and cons
Using low-temp, ethanol vacuum extraction may be your best option

Why Make Your Own Essential Oils at Home?

Commercial essential oils can contain all sorts of buffer ingredients that can weaken their potency or compromise the health benefits. You just can’t know for certain what you’re getting with essential oils

When you make your own essential oils at home, you know exactly what goes into each batch. You can experiment with different ingredients and techniques and create customized oils that match your needs.

5 Different Types of Essential Oil Extraction

Here are three of the most common methods of essential oil extraction. Some processes extract with a solvent for a more potent end product.

1. Maceration

For successful maceration, botanicals must be dried completely at a very low temperature before they’re chopped or ground and mixed directly with the carrier oil. The resulting mixture can then be agitated, left to rest, and repeatedly agitated over days or weeks.

Maceration does carry a rancidity risk, which can be combated by adding vitamin E oil to the preparation.

2. Cold Pressing

This solvent-free method, also called scarification, expression, or mechanical separation, is typically used for heat-sensitive citrus fruit peels. A machine crushes and pierces the peels, which are then subjected to a hydraulic press to extract the oils from the underside of the rind.

A centrifuge separates the essential oils from the plant pulp and juice.

3. Water/Steam Distillation

Another solvent-free option uses water or water and steam. If botanicals are in danger of clumping when added to the oil directly, they can be submerged in water instead. Heat or steam is introduced3. , condensing the solution into a separator. The extract floats to the top as it cools. The water left behind is typically fragrant and may be used as herbal distillate.

4. CO₂

CO₂ can act as a “solvent” but requires an elaborate setup and knowledge of how to run a high-pressure system. Liquid (pressurized) CO₂ is pumped into a container full of plant material, forcing the essential oils to leach into the CO₂. Next, the liquid is run through pressure-reducing valves into a separator.

The oil can be collected as the now-gaseous CO₂ returns to the tank for pressurization into a liquid again. Care must be taken to prevent leaks, as gaseous CO₂ is extremely dangerous.

5. Ethanol Vacuum Extraction

This solvent-based method relies on vacuum pressure and mild heat to extract hard-to-pull out botanicals rapidly.

With the SourcePro or the EtOH Pro, plant matter and food-grade ethanol are processed in a “plug and play” vacuum pressure machine that ultimately leaves the extract to be retrieved from one chamber and the reclaimed alcohol or ethanol from another.

Pros and Cons of Essential Oil Extraction Methods

series of bottles with herbs

This pros and cons chart can help you decide which DIY essential oil extraction process is best for you based on experience, required equipment, ease of process, desired potency, and your choice of botanicals.

Extraction Method	Pros	Cons
Maceration	All-natural extraction method Captures more plant essence Best option for dry plant materials	Time-consuming process Risk of rancidity increases over time Low potency results
Cold Pressing	Process preserves oil integrity Avoids heat damage to botanicals Best option for citrus peels	Labor-intensive process Requires specialized equipment Low potency results
Water/Steam Distillation	Popular method among DIYers Adjustable temperature and pressure Best option for many herbs and spices	Requires a complex setup Heat can alter oil composition Steam pressure can be dangerous
CO2 Extraction	Process produces high-quality oils Extracts highly pungent aromas Best option for seeds and fruit extracts	Demands specialized equipment Liquid CO2 considered hazardous Presents high-pressure safety concerns
Ethanol Vacuum Extraction	Process uses low temperatures Easy for DIYers with SOURCE machine Best option for most botanicals	Smaller size machines only hold 500 ml; professional users will need the larger 2L version to extract at scale