Essential Oil and Hydrosol

Distillation is often likened to alchemy.

Basically, the plant material rests in water, is heated, and turns into steam. The volatile botanical constituents will come out in the steam—they rise in the steam. The steam is then forced downward, into a cooler temperature, where it turns back into liquid. But as it turns back into liquid, the water soluble and non-water soluble aroma-molecules separate into oil and water—essential oil and hydrosol. It’s more complicated that this, of course, but this is the basic premise. It’s chemistry and physics, or alchemy, if you prefer.

Our essential oil goes either to our headquarters in New York, or our new entity in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

We batch our oil and the Omani government requires we add a best before label, which we do, but this doesn’t really apply to frankincense oil. We put a 2-3 year BB label on our bottles but oils should remain fresh and sparkling for at least 5 years, provided bottles are stored reasonably.

These are 100% natural products and we do not blend to a standard, so there will be some slight variations between batches.

We test our oil every so often but we don’t batch test. So our lab work will offer a “ballpark” figure for constituents. The shipping process is more complex from Oman, and so all of our oil is currently in NYC or Dubai. Please note that Boswellia sacra essential oil must be shipped as dangerous goods if sent by air. If you are in the US, you can order from New York and it will come via ground service. If you are in the UAE we can also send it easily by land, from our new warehouse. But any other country will have to have DG air freight. It’s not cheap but obviously the price becomes more doable the more kilos one buys. We currently have 2020 batch on sale only from New York. We have no essential oil in Oman at this time.

Our Frankincense/Myrrh codistillation consists of our Omani frankincense (Boswellia sacra) and Somali Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha.) This is a very interesting and unusual oil, as myrrh is difficult to work with. Myrrh essential oil and hydrosol weigh approximately the same so separation is usually quite tricky. As we don’t use centrifuges or salt; we leave the oils to their own desires, so we distill them together and the hydrophobic and hydrophilic molecules bond together. The resulting co-mingling molecules will then separate from the hydrosol.

For a list of the benefits of frankincense oil, please see our American website.

Spent Biomass & Concentrate

We found that the essential oil and hydrosol are only two of the glorious ingredients frankincense gives us. After the distillation we find the remaining bio-mass contains Boswellic acids. Essential oil does not contain boswellic acids in more than a trace amount They are too heavy, molecularly, to pass over in the distillation. They remain in the biomass. There are other aromatic constituents also, but we are not sure what they are. We have analyzed our post-distilled biomass using different labs, and they do contain BAs but we didn’t know what else to test for, as we are not chemists.

The spent biomass has a lot of possibilities but you will need to know what you’re interested in. We know that you can soak it in various oils, or perfume alcohols, and the BAs, as well as other constituents, will come out into the liquid. We think it would be nice for natural incense making, or even supplements. Or you could soak it in an alcohol, or perhaps incorporate it into something you are making? There’s a world of possibilities.

This is for DIY only. We have given some suggestions but you will need to have your own idea. We don’t have recipes for you. If you are interested in purchasing this to try, you can order a sample from our American website—it’s 1 lb size. That’s about 400 grams. We can ship it world-wide, no problem, but if you want to order larger sizes, it will have to come from Dubai. If you are interested in larger amounts of the powder, please email me.

This is frankincense with the volatiles removed. The remaining constituents are quite interesting indeed, and can be used for many things. After the essential oils are distilled out, the spent biomass is removed, pounded, and dried in the sun. Every few days it is broken up a bit more, to make the pieces as manageable as possible.

We’ve tested it, and we have some recommendations, and suggestions, but understand that this is not a known product; we are not giving recipes, or promises. You can make skin care, supplements, incense, whatever you like. It’s entirely up to you.

We offer the pebbles (Better for extracting out the constituents—or you can mill it yourself)

And the powder. (Better for incense, uses that need powder.)

We do not have large stock of this in the USA, although we do have some. Most of it will have to come from Dubai.  If this sounds like an exciting new material to work with, my suggestion is to order it off the website from New York and then see what inspires you.

The Frankincense Concentrate is a super cool and unusual product that is interesting and time-consuming to make. You can buy it to try from the American website

To Be Clear

The spent biomass is the pre-distilled frankincense, with the volatiles removed, and the heavier constituents, like Boswellic acids, remain behind. The Concentrate is an oil, either MCT or Jojoba, that has been exposed to the biomass for many weeks, and those aromatic constituents have leached out into oil.

To see all of our frankincense products, please visit our American Website