Storage / Protection / Refrigeration of Essential Oils

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Storage / Protection / Refrigeration of Essential Oils

 

Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:50 pm

 

Hi Dale, and other good folks ..

 

Gonna answer this one then gonna confirm some orders then gonna reply

to a large number of relatively routine (but important) posts been

sitting in my Hold Box for too long afore folks start writing poison

pen letters to me .. then gonna go sit my butt in a dentist's chair

and let that Sadist rascal drill for gold then gonna go to the Pub

tonight and spend my money, call all the wimmens Honey and wake up

singing the blues. ;-)

 

Meantime .. while answering this post I will ramble a bit. I do this

cause when I write something I sometimes imagine what kind of

questions that writing brings to the inquiring mind(s) of one or more

of the many good folks on this list .. and I try to answer the unasked

questions.

 

And Dale .. as I know you are taking Martin's AT Course .. I know that

much of what I write here is common knowledge to you .. and to a lotta

good folks on this list. But I am not writing only to you or them.

 

I think that on a list with 850 + members (which is where this list is

now) the AT/EO experience level will run from 0.5 to 10+ and unless a

question is technical in nature we should (methinks) try to provide a

reply that is not only directed to the one we are writing to but to

the other 850 + folks who might not yet have attained the experience

of the one to whom we are directing our reply. To do otherwise would

be to ignore the majority, who are most likely in the 4.5 to 7.5 range

... but to do so can make some folks think we are talking down to them.

So what can we do? Answer: Our best!

 

So .. as usual .. this is sorta a longish post. ;-)

 

> Help me...I have so many oils now that my fridge can no longer be

> considered safe for food. Kidding!

 

Likely it is we can keep mayonnaise or chopped chicken gizzards for

5-6 times their normal shelf life if we have some EO in the refrigerator.

 

> Still. I thought I'd order the extra stuff now because winter is here

> and I could store them in my basement which is normally 60 degrees.

 

Nothing a'tall wrong with that .. IF .. we have no mold spores in our

basement. Some EO will kick mold spores in the butt like Mohammed Ali

would Child Molester Freako Jackson .. but some can be contaminated by

mold spores .. around half the Hydrosols I can think of and most all

of the Carrier Oils I can think of could be contaminated by mold spores.

 

Many basements have mold spores .. that's one of the reasons some

folks have chronic colds, respiratory and other problems. Another

reason is some folks depend on antibiotics too often .. its a bit like

smoking cigarettes or shooting heroin .. the more we use the more we

need to use to feel normal again .. for a short period of time.

 

Such addictions/abuses sorta remind me of falling in love .. or peeing

against the wind. We can get all kinds of warm fuzzy feelings if we do

either .. until it cools off .. then we just feel the chill and smell

the odor. ;-)

 

As for ordering EO afore the Winter gets too cold .. as a seller of EO

I can think of a two good reasons why I'd like to see folks do that ..

and I betcha I am speaking for other sellers too.

 

1. We wanna get our stock value down as low as possible afore that end

of year inventory cause Uncle Sugar uses that against us.

 

2. My Gross Sales are larger in the month of December than in any

other month .. and 70%-75% of those sales are during the period 20

December to the end of December. Means .. nice spouses give nice

spouses nice gifts of EO during that period. Also means my folks in

Maryland are gonna be jumping through their butts to fill the orders

then .. and regardless of how quick they get them out the door .. the

U.S. Postal Service and FedEx will be backlogged .. and buyers gonna

wait longer anyway.

 

> I also have a nice dark room where no one goes now as the basement

> is not renovated.

 

Sounds like a fine place .. finer'n the storage area most large

sellers keep their EO in. We're lucky in that Friendsville only has

around six weeks of warm weather a year .. we go from Fall to Winter

to Fall to Spring and then Fall again. Very high it is in them thar

Appalachian Mountains. Gotta air conditioned storeroom we keep EO in

cause its hard to get a 25 or 50 kilogram barrel of EO in most

refrigerators .. plus a refrigerator for particular bottled retail

size oils .. explained later in this post. But all oils do not need to

be refrigerated.

 

> Advice please...should I even unpack the box they arrived in - which

> by the way your folks do an awesome job of packing?

 

Thankee ma'am for acknowledging their efforts. My SOP for packing is

that they must pack for a drop from a 2 story window .. and Wholesale

oils valued at $35 or more are encased in specially designed styrofoam

overpacks (expensive they are) .. but even then we find the gorillas

and elephants in USPS and FedEx sometimes sit on the packages or do

gorilla stomps on them.

 

Howsomeever .. ain't nobody no time ever had a loss that was not

covered by either commercial shipping insurance or my company's self

insurance. And its gonna stay that way long as my doors are open - no

exceptions!

 

Which reminds me .. good recyclers we are fer'shur.. and as many of my

wholesale customers already know and practice .. those who return

those overpacks to us via FedEx Ground/U.S. Postal Parcel Post, etc.,

receive a credit of 150% of the shipping cost for sending them back to

us. :-)

 

As for whether or not you should unpack your EO from the box/wrappings

they came in .. matters not either way .. less'n you get a hankering

to do some serious sniffing in the middle of the night .. which

happens to me from time to time. I dream about the odor of some EO ..

haven't told folks about this before cause already too many folks

think I am not a normal person .. and they're not all wrong.

 

> Will they be fine sitting on those shelves of a dark room at 60

> degrees all winter?

 

Yes ma'am .. but some oils need to be refrigerated. Refrigeration is

not gonna harm any EO, Carrier or Hydrosol .. but it can temporarily

change the density of some EO and most Carriers. If we refrigerate

Olive Oil (can't imagine why anybody would do it) it will " Winterize. "

Means .. it'll turn cloudy and thick .. takes a while of exposure to

room temperature for it to come back to its original configuration.

 

Some folks are now wondering if freezing will harm an EO. The answer

is NO! I can't imagine why anyone would want to freeze and EO in the

first place and in the second place some EO would be very difficult to

freeze anyway. Can we extend the shelf life of an EO by freezing it? I

know of no research that would support this .. but logic tells me that

long term exposure to extreme temperatures is not good for any

chemical component .. so my unqualified opinion is that there is no

benefit to freezing an EO. Why would anyone but a pack rat want to do

it anyway?

 

" I betcha my mama got a whole lot more frozen EO in her stash than

your mama has. " ;-)

 

Most Essential Oils are not near as delicate as the rumors in this

industry claim them to be. Losing an oil is about as rare as causing

harm from use of an oil. Either almost has to be a blatant violation

of the unwritten laws of common sense. Unfortunately, we find that the

preponderance of embellished information leans toward the protection

of EO rather than safe use of EO.

 

If you are a routine end user of EO .. it might not be to your

advantage to buy (for example) my 20 ml of this or that .. might be

better for you to buy 10 ml .. and if you haven't dealt with a

particular EO provider in the past .. it might be a good idea for you

to request samples of EO prior to purchase .. this especially applies

to the costly EO.

 

> There have been posts before but I'm being extra careful.

 

One of those posts is below .. I was able to find it in my Rat Nest

files cause I gave it a proper subject in the first place .. which

I'll gently remind our list members to try to do all the time so we

can find those suckers when we need'em. Hard to find a post when the

subject line is something like, " I Have a Question, " or " I Need

Suggestions, " and such. ;-)

 

> My rose otto eo is here now too!! Just need reassurance.

 

Don't refrigerate the Rose Otto .. or Anise Seed .. see the post

below. Its not an old post .. but this is a dynamic list .. getting

lots of new members daily and I know many of the new folks missed this

one.

 

Oh yea .. in a day or two I'm gonna tell y'all about some new research

on Rose Otto .. research I am glad to see .. research that forces me

to make an exception to a statement I used to make that NO Essential

Oil had therapeutic properties capable of being able to do a

particular thing (physiologically) for us human critters. ;-)

 

> TIA

> Dale

 

Yes ma'am .. gotta post or so to answer from you .. and from some of

the other good folks on this list .. and my lack of response the last

few days or maybe a week has nothing to do with neglect of friends ..

its just a matter of me acting like a Turkish truck driver .. trying

to load 10 tons on a 5 ton truck.

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www/AV-AT.com

 

PS: It is a good idea to refrigerate Hydrosols .. they are mostly

water and refrigeration can help to extend the normally expected shelf

life.

 

 

 

Butch Owen <butchbsi

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 06:26:21 -0700

Refrigerating and Otherwise Protecting

Essential Oils

 

Hi Jennifer .. other good folks ..

 

> One more thing, I keep my EO's in the fridgerator because I had read

> they would keep fresh and potent longer.... Is this correct thinking?

 

Generally speaking .. its a good idea. Can't harm any of your EO by

refrigerating .. and some (like cold pressed Citrus, all " Blue " oils,

and Elemi (Canarium luzonicum) should ALWAYS be refrigerated.

 

But .. if we refrigerate some EO, Rose Otto (Rosa damascena) and Anise

Seed (Pimpinella anisum) come to mind now .. when we take them out

we'll find they have crystallized. Won't hurt them as they will come

back to their normal consistency/density when they warm up to room

temperature.

 

Refrigeration slows down some chemical deterioration .. far less so

for the distilled oils than for cold pressed oils .. with some

exceptions to that statement too. Almost anything said in this

industry will have an exception or two .. and many things will have

many exceptions because the statements are wrong from the git go. ;-)

 

But .. lack of refrigeration is not as harmful for oils as is exposing

them to light and oxygen .. two things needed to sustain life .. and

the two things that age oils .. and human critters.

 

Y'all know how to protect your oils from light .. use colored glass

bottles .. and keep them in a dark place.

 

As for protecting them from oxygen .. the easiest thing is to keep the

tops on tight. Also .. if you are using large bottles you can pour the

oil into smaller bottles as you use it up .. this reduces the dead

space that oxygen creeps into. Two other ways to do this .. get a

bottle of the spray Nitrogen from a good wine shop .. this is good to

top off the larger bottles as nitrogen is heavier than oxygen and

displaces it .. and nitrogen is NOT harmful to ANY essential oil.

" Nitrogen flushing " is not easy to do for small bottles but something

else we can do for the small ones (besides switching to smaller

bottles) is to drop pure glass beads into them. That too will displace

oxygen.

 

(NEW INFO .. not in the original post. Be careful if squirting

Nitrogen in a small bottle cause it might force the EO to fly up ..

and into the eye. If this happens .. its not gonna cause permanent

harm but it is gonna make you learn a new dance or two.

 

If EO gets in the eye, how do we handle it?

 

First .. lemme tell you how we should NOT handle it .. we should NOT

do what many of the novels say we should do .. flush with milk or

vegetable oil. Why? Because that is convoluted thinking .. EO will

dilute in milk and vegetable oil .. dilution is NOT what we want as it

will merely spread the diluted EO around the eye.

 

What should we do? We should flush the eye with fresh, clean water!

Why? Because the EO will NOT dilute in water and we want to flush the

EO out of the eye .. the EO will bead up and flush out with water ..

it will also flush out with milk or vegetable oil .. but that is after

it has completely covered the eyeball and we have become expert at

dancing that new dance.

 

Those who want to practice the misinformation common in this regard

can do so if they want to .. but keep in mind that we can not find ONE

professional distiller in the entire world who would consider doing it

any way other than how I have explained it. One professional distiller

on this list .. my Aussie buddy, Dennis Archer, has had EO in his eye

more than one time and has supported my position on this list more

than one time. Enough already .. back to the original post. ;-)

 

Where does one find these pure glass beads? I have no idea. I have

often considered having some of the Turkish glass makers do me up a

few thousand of them .. just didn't get around to it because (1) I

doubt that folks would bother with them .. and (2) we don't use them

in my company .. we use nitrogen flushing for our stock .. not in the

little bitty bottles .. but for our shelf stock.

 

So .. in addition to refrigerating oils .. we gotta keep the tops on

tight, keep'em out of sight .. and treat'em right by reducing exposure

to oxygen.

 

My statements above are not cutting edge or avant-garde .. they are

simply plain old common sense IF we understand the chemical processes

ongoing when heat, light or oxygen hits oils.

 

Since I began messing with EO (in 1995) I have seen few new questions

asked about them .. we continue to put out the same old fires and

squash the same old rumors. Rumors often created by instructors who

quote unreferenced " novels " written by writers quoting other

unreferenced " novels " .. and by the misinformation/disinformation and

marketing hype put out by some who wish to make an easy buck. The

industry of AT thrives on misinformation. Were it not so there would

be a " Bible " folks could turn to and get all the answers .. wouldn't

need Newsgroups like Oils & Herbs.

 

Actually, there is nothing really critical about most of the bad info

unless it is unsafe info .. but the situation we have created in AT

does much to ensure that AT is never validated .. never accepted as a

viable alternative mode of self treatment.

 

One can talk or write on Aromatherapy and rarely be wrong as there are

no universal " truths " in AT .. plus there are many ways to skin the

cat when using EO .. and things that work for some don't work for

others. But when one speaks or writes on Essential Oils its no longer

in the realm of personal opinion .. they gotta do a bit of research or

they gonna be challenged by them whut have done it.

 

I have no intention of ever devoting time to writing a book on EO or

AT because they are the least significant things I have done in my

entire life. I might write on some experiences I've had .. maybe

Largemouth Bass fishing or SCUBA or raising Bullfrogs or Bird Dawgs ..

something real important and interesting like that .. but never on AT

or EO. But I will never entitle my book " The Complete Book of

Anything " .. I always run away from books with such titles. ;-)

 

> Thanks

> Jennifer

 

Yes'm .. welcome you are. Y'all keep smiling. :-)

 

Butch http://www.AV-AT.com