Make Your Own Oil Infusion - Part 2

Last week’s article was about creating an herb or flower infusion that involved months of waiting time. But what if you wanted to try an herb infused oil faster?

Well my friend, in today’s article I’m going to show you how you can do that.  It’s still going to take you some time, but not nearly as long as having to wait 2-3 months.

1. For this method you’re going to need some empty teabags. 

Find some unbleached tea bags and fill them with the herb or flower of your choice. In my picture, I’m using some dried rose petals. You have to make sure the herb and flower are completely dry because you don’t want to. Introduce any water to your oil or infusion. 

2. Fill your teabags halfway because you want to leave some room for the oils to move around the petals in your teabag. You can fill more than one teabag if you have more than one cup of oil you wish to infuse. 

3. Sew or staple the tea bags shut ( I prefer to sew).

4. Place your teabag in a pot. Make sure your pot is completely clean and dry. Again, we don’t want to introduce any water to our infusion.

5. Pour the oil you want to infuse into the pot, turn the heat to low.

What you’re going to do is heat up the oils until they are warm. You don’t want the temperature to go above 90-100 degrees F. You want the oils to stay warm and not get too hot.  The burning point of many oils can range from 300-500 degrees F. We don't want our oils to get anywhere near burning point. Monitor the temperature and heat your oils for at least 3 hours, longer if you can. The longer the oils and herbs warm up together the better. If you have a slow cooker and you can control the temperature, use that instead of a pot and stove top. 

6. After at least 3 hours. Turn the heat off, and let the teabags sit in the oils until they cool.

7. When the temperature is cool enough for you to hold the teabags in your hands, put some gloves on, take the tea bags out,  and squeeze them to get every bit of infused oil out of them.

8. Strain the oil through a cheese cloth or strainer to separate any herbs or flowers that may have escaped the tea bag.

Now you have an oil infusion that took you a fraction of the time it would take to make the infusion we learned last week.  You can use this oil for added skin benefits to your soap.

Which method do you prefer?