Hydrosols

Only Sterilized Packaging Components - Hydrosols

When bottling hydrosols for your own use or for resale, it is imperative that you use only clean, ideally sterilized, containers. Bottles are not clean when  you pick them up from the warehouse; at the least they are dusty. Whatever method of cleaning you use, wear gloves. Some of the sterilizing liquids, like Ethanol, are hard on your hands. and if you touch a clean area with bare skin it will no longer be "clean".

If you are bottling for home use and will be using up the hydrolate in two or three months, you may find it sufficient to wash the bottles in very hot soapy water and rinse them in a mild vinegar solution or to run them through your dishwasher. For more efficient home cleaning, wash the containers, then dry them in a five-hundred degree  oven  for twenty minutes.

Bottling for resale requires that you use 95% ethyl alcohol (ethanol), Hydrogen peroxide, or a more efficient sterilization procedure than washing and drying. If you are using plastic caps, do not put them in the oven but do ensure that they are thoroughly dry before bottling begins. Plain water added to a hydrosol shortens its life, and tap water may contain a number of chemicals or bacteria.

Spray bottles are the best choice for small quantities of hydrosol. The sprayer unit can be disassembled quite easily, and ethanol or hydrogen peroxide can be used  as sterilization liquid. Boiling sprayer parts may work, depending on the brand of sprayer: you will have to experiment if you wish to try it. However, boiling will not kill all bacteria, and if you are bottling for resale, ethanol is the best choice. Never use anhydrous alcohol, as this has been chemically treated  to remove the water content of ethyl.

Food-grade hydrogen peroxide is another viable choice if you cannot obtain ethanol. Both the bottle and the sprayer units can be sterilized with peroxide in the same manner as with alcohol, be sure to use food-grade peroxide and not the topical hydrogen peroxide used for wound cleaning anda bleaching. be careful, peroxide is very strong.

Ethyl alcohol has an advantage over peroxide in that it evaporates very rapidly. Thus, once rinsed, any residue left behind will totally evaporate in a minute or two. I have found it difficult to dry out the drips of hydrogen peroxide fast enough to feel no recontamination occurs under nonlaboratory conditions.

The best method with peroxide is to rinse the items with the peroxide, then dry the parts in a hot oven. Aseptic bottling of foodstuffs often uses this process, although it is automated in those cases.

The protocol we use at Aqua Vita is easy and quite effective. We sanitize just the number of bottles we intend to use immediately. All sprayers are separated  into their components and placed in a sealed container of alcohol (sealed because the alcohol evaporates readily).The bottles are then filled  and rinsed with alcohol.

The large containers of hydrosols are removed from the cold store only long enough to fill the bottles so that the overall temperature of the bulk quantity dies not change. Some bottling is done in the cold store. The sterile bottles are filled with the hydrosol; the sprayers are removed from the ethyl, quickly dried off, and reassembled; and the lids are put on. We set up a little assembly line, and although it is slightly labor-in tensive, the benefits justify the efforts.

Reference: Hydrosols, The New Aromatherapy: Suzanne Catty