Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

  Hydrosols: The Tipping Point is Safety! by  Anya McCoy  |  Nov 2, 2017  |  Hydrosols ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  1 comment I purchased my first hydrosol in 1989, a lovely gallon of Rosa damascena from the May 1989 Turkish harvest. The well-known aromatherapist must have given directions on storage and use, but I don’t recall them. I still have some of that hydrosol, archived for decades in a refrigerator, brought out now and then to sniff, or transfer a bit to a sterile sprayer for use on the tips of my hair. No sign of microbial growth, the main problem with hydrosols, but I am aware that sometimes the growth does not show up as dark swirls or gunk on the bottom of the bottle, it can be invisible. For readers who aren’t familiar with what hydrosols are, they’re the water from distillation, and they contain water-soluble aromatics of the plant. Many now distill just for the hydrosol, which is a slightly different process from distilli...

  Make Hydrosol the Simplers Herbalist Way by  Anya McCoy  |  Jan 17, 2016  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  Ask the Perfumer ,  Herbalism ,  Hydrosols ,  natural aromatics  |  4 comments Simplers Distillation to Create a Quick and Easy Hydrosol There are times I just want to spray a delectable floral, spice, herb, or other botanical water on my face or body. The well-known botanical waters rose or orange blossom, are also known as hydrolats, distillate waters, or hydrosols. I’ll call them hydrosols for this article because that is perhaps the best-known name for them. What’s the difference between Hydrosols and Simply Boiling the Botanical? When you boil a botanical, whether it’s a rose or oolong tea, you are making an infusion. All of the properties of the botanical are being drawn out into the hot water, and you can drink it ‘as is’. When you make a hydrosol, many of the chemical properties of the botanical are left in the water...

  Distilling Cornutia grandifolia for perfume and health by  Anya McCoy  |  Oct 29, 2015  |  Anya McCoy ,  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  Healthy perfume ,  Herbalism ,  Hydrosols ,  natural aromatics ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  2 comments I’ve long been obsessed with a tropical member of the Mint family Labiatae and focused on obtaining some plants of it to grow in my fragrant garden. They were harder to find than I imagined, but I got two in small pots about a year and a half ago. You can read more about them  here. These plants are as aggressive in their growth habit as mints; instead of growing horizontally via runners, they grow vertically, leaping skyward at an astonishing rate. I don’t fertilize them, and they don’t have any pests or diseases. On a sunny Sunday in Miami, Angie and Julia showed up to harvest them and we worked together on the distillation of the big, soft, velvety, fragrant leaves. The lea...