Book Review: Harvest to Hydrosol, Ann Harman

Harvest to Hydrosol, Ann Harman

botANNicals 2015

Annie Harman is a distiller extraordinaire and I am happy to consider her a colleague as well as a friend. Her and I have talked back and forth alot about distilling over the years and I can attest that she is the best person to have authored this book - the first of its kind. This is a must have guide for distillers of hydrosols; either at home as a hobby or professionally.

As a bibliophile it is not surprising that she starts the book out with a history of stills and distilling. It is fascinating to read about the different types of stills used throughout history.  This is followed by advice on how to choose a modern day still to fit your needs.  Annie has the utmost respect for her stills and uses an analogy of the still being the Earth and the distillation process representing the earth’s water cycle of evaporation, transpiration and condensation.

As a scientist, Ann recognizes the importance of safety and keeping the work area/distillation area clean and sanitized. Being made typically on the farm, hydrosols/distillates are prone to being contaminated by airborne bacteria and fungus. She has great advice here.

Much of the book is about observations she has made during her distillations and its good that she has great record keeping skills. These observations dispel some common myths of hydrosols. The Appendix includes chemical analysis (GC/MS) of some hyrosols she has had tested.  I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in distilling, even for experienced distillers who want to learn how to make it more of an art.

Distillation is both an art and a science and very few ‘rules’ apply.  However you choose to distill, know that this is an evolving field. Nothing is written in stone  and there are many ways that you can choose to do your distillations. Make sure to make careful observations and document what you do so that you learn from every distillation you perform and find the right way for ‘You’ to distill.

You can purchase this book directly from the author at https://copperstills.com/products/

The Importance of Farms

Farms are important for many reasons including preserving open space around a city, providing wildlife habitats, as well as the crops they produce. Most people are well aware that their food comes from a farm in the form of vegetables and meat. But are you aware of the other, non-food crops that come from a farm? Throughout time people have always had a rich relationship with plants and plants that were particularly useful then became cultivated. The study of this relationship is often called Economic Botany. 

Plants produce fiber, medicines (both traditional and modern), spices, herbs, perfumes, vegetable oils, waxes, latex, resins, poisons, psychoactive drugs, and alcoholic beverages.

Smaller farms might be especially important because they are more likely to have biodiversity on the farm than large corporate farms that are interested in a single crop.

Lets look for instance at some of the uses of plants that are grown on a farm.

Arts and crafts. Many plants can be used for arts and crafts. Various types of grasses have been used for making baskets, mats, and hats. People are even using pine needles and lavender stems to make baskets. One of my favorite crafts is the lavender wand.

Medicine. Herbs are important medicines used throughout the world. Some of the top medicinal herbs that can be grown in Colorado are Echinacea, Mint and Chamomile. 

Modern medicine has obtained many of their drugs from plants too. Some of these pharmaceutical crops include Yew grown for Paclitaxel, Camptotheca grown for camptothecin, and Galanthus woronowii grown for Galantamine (an Alzheimers drug). The active ingredients from these plants are extracted after harvest for preparation of the therapeutic substances . GlaxoSmithKline makes digoxin from foxglove that is grown in the Netherlands. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/83/8325/8325digoxin.html

Perfume. Scent is one of the most delightful things about herbs and this property also makes them important in sensory gardens. The most common way of obtaining scent or perfume from plants is by distillation to produce an essential oil. However, there are other ways that scent is extracted as well. Common plants used for perfume are lavender and rose. On our farm we distill aromatic herbs to obtain the aromatic water. We routinely distill lavender, rose, tulsi, cucumber, lemon balm, clary sage and mint.

Fiber. Fiber crops can be used for clothing, basketry or building materials. Common crops used for clothing are hemp, agave, cotton, and linen. Animal hairs are also common fibers used such as wool from sheep and mohair from angora goats.

Flavor. Culinary herbs provide the bulk of plants grown for flavor. Some of my favorites are Basil used in pesto, garlic used in a variety of dishes and sage.

Cosmetics and Beauty. This is the area that I am most familiar with since I grow herbs to use in Colorado Aromatics Skin Care. Herbs provide an abundant amount of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents; far more than what you could add to a product from other sources. Perhaps one of the most important herbs used in skin care is calendula, but the number is limitless due to the variety of benefits they provide. Growing these herbs allows us to produce a unique, highly functional, farm to skin brand and to be members of our local farmers market.

Fatty Oils that can be used for cooking and more including cosmetics. In Colorado sunflowers are grown for this purpose although most are used for the production of energy.

Alcohol. The most obvious plants grown for alcohol would be grapes for wine, barley for beer and other grains for distilled spirits. But many other herbs are grown for flavoring alcoholic beverages too. For instance, juniper for flavoring gin. Other herbs used in alcohol are coriander, anise, cardamom and licorice. At Colorado Aromatics, we grow lemon balm for flavoring Trinity Absinthe. 

The Society for Economic Botany is a professional society who's members study the relationship between plants and people. You can find them here.

http://www.econbot.org/