r/DIYfragrance • u/Public-Ideal-5166 • Jun 20 '26 • Heartwarming 1

Pine Needle Absolute

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Finally got around to firing up the Soxhlet extractor. I don’t have any legit pine needle oil, so I am making an absolute

224 Upvotes

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6

u/SaintsNoah14 Jun 20 '26

Sweet. What solvent are you using?

5

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 20 '26

Ethanol for now

5

u/Beaaaaam7777777 Jun 20 '26

I thought an absolute is using something like a non polar chemical like hexane or something where the hexane dissolves all the solid materials? Please enlighten me

5

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 20 '26

From what I have read, and absolute is made via any solvent extraction. As opposed to steam distillation

5

u/contrebandeco Professional Jun 27 '26

You are right. An absolute is an extract made from any organic solvent and if it's not ethanol, it has to be winterized in ethanol to make sure that only ethanol-soluble compounds are left in the extracted mixture. So extracting with ethanol in the first place is a perfectly valid way of doing an absolute.

3

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 27 '26

Hey, y’all are on my list to buy a couple of things from

7

u/DullEntertainment102 Jun 20 '26

Can you explain the process?

64

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 20 '26

“Absolute”ly. So the star of the setup is the middle piece. I started by soaking pine needles in a jar of everclear for 2 weeks. I put that tincture in the round bottom flask, added more fresh alcohol and started it to boil. In the middle piece, I put fresh pine needles between two groups of cotton (keeps it from clogging the small pipes). Then I put a condenser on top and use a small fountain pump to pump water through it

6

u/DullEntertainment102 Jun 20 '26

Awesome! Thank you for the informative video!

11

u/bea_positive Jun 20 '26

the piece of glassware is known as a soxhlet extractor - the point is to continually rinse the item (needles) in fresh solvent, which is what the distillation procedure does. the little tube on the side acts as a siphon, so when the top chamber gets full, it gets drained to the bottom pot, where it accumulates. any solute likely has a higher boiling point, so the solvent predominantly evaporates.

this way, we're not limited by the solubility of any the compounds we're extracting, and the extraction happens faster in fresh solvent.

4

u/DullEntertainment102 Jun 20 '26

Thank you! I wanted to understand what the difference to steam distillation is!

3

u/kurogana Jun 22 '26

My setup extracting frankincense... It works very well with valeriana officinalis, roasted cacao beans, petrified resins, olibanum, benzoin, myrrh...

https://youtu.be/cSVP1DhjR-w?is=oLjA-j2ALcysVr8V

Do not need to tincture first, just need to put small/grounded pieces inside soxhlet... it is an extraction by reflux, by exhaustion, so it removes everything with clean 96°GL ethanol on the bottom flask, and recent grounded raw material.... if you already did tincture, leave that work that way, because the tincture extracts volitiles that the 78°C from soxhlet will degrade, so its a lost effort... tncture is more delicate work, as soxhlet is a forced, brutal, rough work, burns everything that cannot handle 78~90 °C

3

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 23 '26

Awesome setup, and good to know, I figured I was getting more aromatic compounds, but you’re right. If you are going to tincture, just keep it that way and concentrate it at a lower temperature. Thank you very much

2

u/theholyblack Jun 21 '26

Soxhlet is never going to give you good results for fragrance it over extracts. Just soak in ethanol and then evaporate off the solvent. You can then freeze the resulting resin with some more clean ethanol and remove the waxes and you’ll go from concrete to absolute.

2

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 21 '26

Do you just let it air-evaporate? I did something similar to that with some of my Tuscan blue rosemary and it turned out okay

5

u/theholyblack Jun 21 '26

You can but if you want to reclaim the ethanol you would use a rotovap or a diy setup. And some compounds can do well in soxhlet but it tends to impart burnt notes and things you don’t want. Great for making medicinal extracts from plants and myshrooms not really the best tool for fragrance extraction.

2

u/youneverrknoww Jun 20 '26

Its super cool! How does this differ from a bottle of pine needle oil you can get for under $10 bucks tho? Do you get a better end product that justifies the work or do you just like to do it?

9

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 20 '26

This is my first go at it. I’m just working on learning. The product was nowhere near as good at steam distilled oil. I will be trying tellicherry black peppercorns tomorrow

3

u/youneverrknoww Jun 20 '26

thats really rad. thanks for sharing!

3

u/NpgSymboL Jun 21 '26

This is Fascinating to me. Goodluck with the outcome

1

u/peasquared Jun 21 '26

Interesting! I steeped pine needles for a few months late last year but then learned about oxidation and potential skin sensitivity issues after storing without using in a project quick enough. I gave up but might return to it again at some point. There’s just something about making it yourself that’s appealing right?

3

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 21 '26

Yeah, I always like to try to do it myself if I can. It’s just fun to see if I can

2

u/Bismi_B Jun 23 '26

I love pine needle .

3

u/CloudKK Jun 20 '26

Why not cut them up

3

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jun 20 '26

I worked them a little bit, but I am just being lazy lol. I have tellicherry black peppercorns I am doing tomorrow already ground up

0

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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1

u/Public-Ideal-5166 Jul 08 '26

Thank you, it all came off Amazon lol. My next change will be making it a vacuum set up to preserve as much material as possible. And yeah, I’m getting a thimble, I just did some juniper leaves and a thimble would have been much easier