Have you ever thought that you could make a hydrosol at home? If you have a garden or live next to a beautiful park or a forest where you can harvest fresh plants – you should try to make one!
Homemade hydrosols (or floral waters) are easy to make; you don’t need any special equipment (a big stove pot will do).
You can keep a hydrosol in a fridge much longer than an infusion (up to three months) and use it in many ways! Hydrosols are great natural face toners, and you can add them to almost any of your DIY cosmetic formulations.
WHAT IS HYDROSOL?
Hydrosol (or hydrolat, or floral water) is a product obtained by steam distillation – water steam goes through fresh plant material, traps aromatic molecules, and then condensates (becomes liquid again). Condensed steam enriched with aromatic molecules is hydrosol.
Typically, hydrosols are a byproduct of essential oils distillation, but today, many companies only specialize in hydrosol production.
Making a high-grade essential oil at home isn’t easy, but you can absolutely make an excellent hydrosol!
Just harvest your plants and prepare a stove pot – you are ready to go!
HOW TO MAKE A HYDROSOL AT HOME
Now, suppose you are serious about making your own cosmetics and have a lot of beautiful plants in your garden (roses, aromatic herbs, camomile, etc.). In that case, you should consider buying a distiller (I use this one).
It is not expensive, but the outcome and the quality of hydrosols are much higher than when you make it with the stovetop method.
But if you just want to try and don’t have any special equipment – no worries, we’ll do it with casseroles today!
I explain how to organize a distillation process at home with a regular stove pot in my short video:
HYDRATING FACE TONER
And if you are ready to go further, use your hydrosol to make a Hydrating Face Toner:
- 94 ml of your homemade hydrosol
- 3 ml of Natural Moisturising Factor
- 3 ml of natural preservative “Preservative Eco”
Naural Moisturising Factor is a cosmetic ingredient that imitates the natural moisturizing mechanism of our skin. It is a great face toner component, as it helps keep your skin deeply moisturized during the day. I use NMF that I order here.
Preservative ECO is a natural preservative system that helps to protect your toner from yeasts and bacteria. I’ve been working with this preservative for many years now and happy to recommend it. You can buy it on different websites; I order mine on skinchakra.eu.
