What is a quality hydrolat or floral water?
A quality hydrolat or floral water is first and foremost extracted from a quality plant. This may seem obvious, but it’s worth pointing out: a high-quality plant can, if carefully cultivated, harvested and distilled, produce a high-quality hydrolat or floral water. In contrast, a poor-quality plant – whether cultivated without care, harvested too early or too late, mistreated during harvesting, improperly stored or stored too long while awaiting distillation – will not produce a high-quality hydrolat or floral water.
So what is a quality plant?
To obtain a quality hydrolat or floral water, the minimum requirement is that the plant distilled be of organic or wild-growing quality. This is because the distillation process extracts and concentrates the molecules present in the plant in both the essential oil and the hydrolat, without distinction. As a result, the pesticides used to grow plants in conventional agriculture can be found in high concentrations. When turning to aromatherapy for self-care, it is therefore essential to choose products free from such toxic products, and therefore to choose organic essential oils and hydrolats.
Organic plants as a minimum, but then what?
A quality plant has been treated with gentleness and care, whether planted, grown or harvested. As is often the case, the method of production and the attention paid to the plant will have enormous consequences in the virtues conferred on its user. At Boèmia, plants are grown with care, harvested by hand and conscientiously. Harvesting by hand minimizes the stress caused to the plant. A stress which, with mechanized harvesting, results in the secretion and dispersion of the most subtle and volatile molecules contained in aromatic plants. To extract a hydrolat or floral water of the highest quality and subtlety, it is therefore important to harvest the plants by hand, taking care to minimize stress.
To illustrate this argument, which may seem surprising, we invite you to search for and watch two videos: one of a lavender harvester in action to see how badly the plant is mistreated, and one of a manual harvest where the plant is respected.
Distilling a quality hydrosol
Once you have high-quality plants, carefully cultivated and harvested by hand when fully ripe, you need to distill them to extract the best possible hydrosol. Once again, the process and the care taken at this decisive stage of production will play key roles in the quality of the extracted hydrolat.
Still material
At Boèmia, as with many small-scale producers, distillation takes place in traditional, small-capacity copper stills. Used for centuries to extract essential oils and hydrosols, copper is now being replaced by stainless steel. Indeed, stainless steel offers a number of advantages: it’s sturdy, making it possible to build large, solid tanks; it’s easy to maintain; and above all, it’s virtually inert: in other words, it doesn’t chemically exchange anything with the plant during distillation. It is thanks to this last property that it has become so widely used in the chemical and food industries.
Copper, on the other hand, is mechanically fragile and difficult to maintain, as it oxidizes. On the other hand, it is an excellent heat conductor and exchanges chemically and intensely with the plant during distillation. It has been used for centuries in perfumery to enhance the aromas of jams, fine spirits and fine cuisine. In fact, it is still favored by artisans of taste, notably gourmet restaurants. Distillation in copper gives the extracted hydrolats and floral waters much warmer, more enveloping, rounded and subtle fragrances than stainless steel. In terms of olfaction, the material brings an obvious extra soul to the hydrolats extracted in contact with it, as well as better preservation.
If you’re looking forquality organic hydrolats or floral waters whose scent transports you to the heart of the plant, chances are you’ll be more receptive to products extracted from copper than stainless steel.
Concentration kilograms of plant / Litre of hydrolat or floral water produced
When steam is passed through a vat of plants, we collect hydrolat at the alembic outlet. After a while, if we prolong the distillation process, the plants in the vat will be exhausted, and the hydrolat leaving the alembic will look more and more like distilled water. The more concentrated the hydrolat, the more aromatic molecules it contains, and the higher its quality. To qualify as a hydrolat, the ratio of Kg of plants divided by the number of liters of hydrolat produced must be greater than or equal to 1. For example, 30 liters of laurel hydrolat produced from 30 Kg of laurel leaves. This is an objective guarantee of quality. At Boèmia, we have chosen to indicate the concentration of our hydrolats on the back label, which can vary from 1 to 3 or even 4 kg of plants for 1 liter of hydrolat.
There’s a lot more to be said about the art of distillation to obtain the best possible organic hydrolats, so I invite you to<u> read our article on distillation.< u >
The intention behind the bottle
As opposed to a synthetic molecule produced in a laboratory, a hydrosol is a product derived from a plant that has grown in contact with the four elements of earth, air, rainwater and sunlight. It is therefore a living product. The intention behind the bottle is therefore of the utmost importance in determining the quality of the hydrosol: are we dealing with a passionate producer, with strong values of respect for the living, of reconnecting with nature and its benefits, who treats his plants like his own children? Or a laboratory riding the “natural products craze”, exploiting growers and large monoculture areas for maximum profit?
Where to find and buy the best organic hydrolats on the market?
In the field, you’re more likely to find quality organic hydrolats and floral waters in a herbalist’s shop or organic food store than in a hard discounter or pharmacy, where the brands are often the same and come from large laboratories.
You can also find quality organic hydrolats and floral waters at markets and farmers’ stores.
We also invite you to visit our essential oil distilleries in the same way you would visit a wine cellar. Meeting and chatting with the producer will give you an insight into the intention and work behind each bottle.
Where to find and buy the best essential oils on the Internet?
Hundreds of websites selling essential oils and hydrosols promise you the best quality in the world at ever-lower prices. Most of the people behind these shop windows have never picked, grown or even distilled a single plant. They tell you that they travel the world to find the best organic hydrolats. Beware: in reality, you’re more likely to come across low-quality essential oils and hydrosols bought in bulk on foreign markets.
Choose your hydrolats from a producer like Boèmia, and take an interest in their values and production methods.
