Essential oil process - steam vs immersion blender

Hi gang. I am moving towards purchasing a still. In additional to {not making spirits} I have a very active rosemary bush that gives me a rather good sized harvest a few time a a year.

When distilling for essential oils, is there a reason to not blend the ingredients in water with an immersion blender? I keep seeing complicated setups using just steam and whole plant material…wouldn’t smaller bits and pieces net more oil extraction?

Thanks for the feedback…

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check with @Josh_Melnick. He taught the essential oil class for science in the past. cheers!

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@nicksilva thanks for the referal.

@Josh_Melnick Hi Josh. Do you have a thought on this?

Clayton I’m not sure about rosemary specifically but macerating/disrupting the cells of many plant material releases enzymes that act on the plant materials they are now in contact with and could change the aroma. Usually not for the better. The volatile oils you get might not have that not so fresh aroma.

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I have done citrus, sassafras and cinnamon in our Soxhlet extractor. Just not big enough to get decent amounts. A lot of people just use a pressure cooker to hold larger amounts of starting material. Either way no need to pulverize the material.

As @cbraz1 points out the crushing of too many cell walls via physical means can release compounds you do not want. An example would be garlic, if you mash it to a paste it becomes very strong and hot due to the reaction of Alliin and Alliinase.

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I can get some limited small samples of flavors and extracts if folks want some for projects. In my business I sell to food manufacturers.(I am a manufacturers rep.) have about 800 products.
I’m sure I’ll try to offer a class on Aroma, Taste and all about the senses and food…if there’s interest.
NOTE:: I’m not trying to make money @DMS or find customers. This is just for fun. If folks are trying to create some flavor in a project they are working on or learn more about the technology and use of these materials.

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Organoleptics can be fun, biggest challenge I’ve seen is training people to a reasonable base standard

Im just looking to experiment. I plan to buy/build a still next year, and was curious how many ways I could utilize it, and wondering why you needed to steam vegetable matter.