Mixing scents from essential oils
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Okay so I've been slowly trying to learn how to mix my own scents from natural substances. I especially like the mostly gourmand scents, which are the only things my wife really goes for as well. I thought I'd leave a few notes on my progress so far.
For many notes, steam distillation of oil produces a scent that is flat, cooked or chemically. Clove oil doesn't smell nearly as nice as cloves and the same is true with cinnamon. A cold alcohol extraction does the trick for cinnamon perfectly. I'd like to try CO2 extractions for cinnamon and cloves to compare with cold alcohol extractions.
I've only found a few good foodie notes so far. These include the citrus notes (esp. orange oils, styrax benzoin, vanilla and cinnamon.) These all mix together nicely. I also have some hydrosols of apple and cherry which are halfway decent, but not incredible. Juniper or pine is nice but some people may be allergic and if the note is too strong some people associate it with gin. I'm happy so far using just a drop of evergreen scent in an otherwise foodie scent to make it a touch more masculine, though I'm thinking that cinnamon may do an even better job of that.
Since alcohol extractions seem to have benefits that steam distilled oils do not, I'm trying to find a way to add alcohol based scents to oil based carriers. I've tried adding sorbitol-80 and monolaurin to coconut oil (yeah, monolaurin comes from coconut oil) to try and get the alcohol and oil to mix. It works a little bit, but not perfectly so I'm limited on how strong the oils can be, or I have to shake them before using. I'm open to suggestions here.
Oil based scents certainly seem the way to go in terms of longevity and evenness of diffusion. I just need to find the good way to take scents which only dissolve in alcohol and mix them into oil.
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I mostly gave up on trying to mix scents, but there were a couple of EOs I rather liked all on their own, like sweet basil and sandalwood.
My understanding is that CO2-extracted essential oils are supposed to have the qualities you're looking for -- clean, unadulterated fragrance in oil format. -
Cool. Good to know. I'll have to try sweet basil... actually, come to think of it I have an alcohol extraction I made from basil flowers a while back and never decanted. I'm not sure I ever found a good sandalwood, but I only ever bought the dirt cheap stuff. I'll see if upping the quality makes a difference.
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