How do you make homemade olive oil using home grown olives?

1. 88

   mistyhorizon2003posted 15 years ago

   How do you make homemade olive oil using home grown olives?
   
   I am hoping that following your comment on my "Best vegetables to grow for profit" hub, you can answer this based on yours and your Husband's experience. I have an olive tree, (very small right now), but would love to make my own olive oil in the future but would like to know how easy it is to do.

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2. 61

   Tatjana-Mihaelaposted 15 years ago

   This is a bit complicated, Cindy, for being made at home, at least if one has more olive trees. We have here very long tradition of preparing olive oil - so we have on almost every island (and in the towns on the coast) small "factories" which have all equipment for preparation of natural olive oil.   So - people deliver their olives to the "factory" -  (olive oil processor) and get their own olive oil.
   
   From the one grown up olive tree one gets aprox 3-5 litres (6-10 lb) of olive oil . 
   
   But here is the whole cold procedure of preparation, with one olive tree and little effort, I belive it can be done at home as well :
   
   1. The olives are washed to remove leaves, sand, debris etc.
   2. Olives are then crushed into a paste .
   3. Paste is mixed for approx. 40mins to bring together the microscopic oil molecules.
   4. Olive paste is pressed to separate the oil/water mixture from the solids (this is a bit difficult part,you need olive oil press for that, but I belive that it might be possible to use wine press for that step, or...be inventive).
   5. Oil is separated from the water
   6. The oil is finally cleared by filtration (not nessessary).

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