Hobby olive oil production

[psient]

HI:

Anyone done a dyi olive oil mill/extractor/malaxer/separator? I am planting a very small grove and want to produce my own olive oil. I have a mill and lathe and machining skills.

Thanks

 

[Iplayfarmer]

Sounds interesting. I know a few guys with old cider presses. I know that works nicely on a small scale.

How much does an olive press differ from a cider press?

 

[brin]

HI:

Anyone done a dyi olive oil mill/extractor/malaxer/separator? I am planting a very small grove and want to produce my own olive oil. I have a mill and lathe and machining skills.

Thanks

Use the search function on this site for Olives or Olive Oil ..there is a woman who started a grove and has her own mil etc. and the thread is extensive..you could PM her for advice...good luck

 

[zonta223]

Use the search function on this site for Olives or Olive Oil ..there is a woman who started a grove and has her own mil etc. and the thread is extensive..you could PM her for advice...good luck

Think you will find her user name is Rox or something similar..........She grows olives in France.
I tried to PM her but got no reply...perhaps you will have better luck.
But you may mean someone else?

regards

 

[JB4310]

I was thinking of Rox myself but I haven't seen posts from her in awhile.

I love olive oil, especially the good stuff mixed with good vinegar to make home made Italian salad dressing like my grandmother and mother taught me to make.

JB.

 

[creekbend]

I have never seen an olive tree before except on TV. This thread caught my attention. I am seeking only one question. How many years does it take an olive tree to mature and bear production quality olives?

 

[psient]

I have never seen an olive tree before except on TV. This thread caught my attention. I am seeking only one question. How many years does it take an olive tree to mature and bear production quality olives?

Hi:

It takes 3 to 4 years. The trees I am receiving number 20 and will be about 3 feet tall. In January I'll receive another 20. The total grove will then be 40 producing trees. I figure by about the time I retire I should be able to make table fruit and oil.

The processing of oil isn't complicated. Figure if a villager some 5 thousand years ago can do it so can I. I think all you need is a scope of the work and some design help. Rox probably didn't build one herself. I'll check out the thread though.

It takes a Hammer Mill, a Press or Centrifuge, A Malaxer, and a Collection tank. For 35-50K you can by a ready-made module that'll let you begin production immediately. Using China you can get the price down even cheaper.

The skills and tools/machines I have should be sufficient; mig,stick,tig,acetylene welding, horizontal saw, 13X40 lathe, Bridgeport mill. I plan to buy a vertical machining center sometime soon. That will be a big boon as it can do most any shape with precision.

If anyone runs across more information let me in on it please.

Thanks to everyone for their interest!

Jon

 

[JB4310]

I heard in Italy where olive oil is a huge industry, they have so many pits that they have stoves to make use of the free fuel.

When My mother and step father went to Italy a few years ago to visit the villages where their relatives still live, they hauled back several gallons of some super premium oil, man you could eat it straight up by itself, it was out of this world. They were both 80 years old, but even though they struggled with the load they were not gonna give it up :licking:

JB

 

[forgeblast]

Some of the corn stoves will burn cherry pits, and pellets.
Olive oil extraction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
shows a bunch of presses.

 

[jonyyuma]

Forgeblast, thanks for the info on the olive oil production. We are trying to eat healther..

 

[OldMcDonald]

Creekbend, As with many things, the answer is "It depends", and upon many possibilities, mainly your own treatment of the young plants, but an important factor appears to be (anecdotal evidence only) the treatment of the cuttings up to the point you buy them. Growth of the trees you purchase can be influenced a great deal by the cuttings raiser - push them along so they reach selling stage faster, or hold them back for a sturdier plant. It is difficult to tell the "age" of the cutting when you buy it, but for an example, I bought 277 trees of two varieties in 2006, and from two suppliers. The varieties were Negrinha do Freixo and Cobrançosa. You are not likely to come across Portuguese varieties in USA. The Negrinha is yet to produce anything, and the Cobrançosa from the same supplier have very few bearing fruit as yet. The other supplier's Cobrançosa are mainly fruiting a small quantity. I topped up to 299 (regulations mean seeking permission to plant) in 2009 from a third supplier, using Cobrançosa and a few Cordovil de Castelo Branco. I had lost quite a few trees to a minus 7ºC frost the previous winter and filled the gaps with the Cordovil. Most of the new Cobrançosa and Cordovil are fruiting. I planted another new grove of 141 with Cobrançosa and Cordovil in the early Spring of this year, and almost all these trees are carrying a few ounces of fruit. The average size of all trees I bought was around 3 feet, and they came in pots of one or one and a half litres. Spacing is 6x6metres.

Psient, I drafted the response to Creekbend before I saw your post #7. No offence taken I hope, but the timing of first production is very variable despite what you read. I think Rox probably eventually realised that the cost of setting up her own equipment was not economic with her 1360 or so trees. I sell as much of my production as possible for table olives to a local buyer. This means I pick the fruit by hand to obtain better quality. There are many olive mills in the area, several within 20 miles, and lesser quality fruit goes for oil. I know one of those mills took in more than 4,000 tonnes of olives two years ago.

At the same time, I would be the last person to put you off making your own mill, in fact I would encourage it if there are no nearby mills. What I would do though is to go for the old-fashioned method. Grinding is far better than hammer milling. You want a smooth paste for pressing, not a hammer milled product that will have small pieces of pits in it that will not press. There is oil in the pit too and that is why grinding to a paste has always been done. The pits are often removed from table olives sold commercially (I use a cherry pitter for my own) and so are indeed a surplus that can be burnt – very similar to corn cobs being available I suppose – and I use those too. On a small scale I think cleaning out the hammer mill afterwards would take more trouble than the oil is worth. After grinding, use any sort of press you can come up with and then float the oil out of the water in a barrel or similar.


I will send a PM to you both with more specialist links, maybe not today. For general reading from a US site, see The Olive Oil Source | Everything but the Olive and although it is incomplete with promises of “coming soon” it is still a very good and informative site.

I am not sure how far I can go without breaching advertising rules, but will take a chance on this paragraph being deleted by the Administrator. I recently published a long eBook “How not to make Millions – but still live a rich rural life” that gives a small amount of additional information about olives in Europe. Olives are not a specific topic in the book, so the information is not concise enough to copy it.

 

[forgeblast]

Are there dwarf varietys out there to grow indoors being in zone 5 I wont be able to leave them out.

 

[OldMcDonald]

forgeblast, Not specific dwarves that I know of. Super intensive groves are grown close spaced in rows, more like hedges in fact, for mechanical harvesting. The olive is a remarkable species though. It will survive and produce fruit in even worse conditions than the grape. Have you ever seen pictures of the high Douro where Port is produced?
If you want to, there is no reason why you cannot grow and crop olives in small containers. I have had them set and mature fruit in the 1 litre pots they arrive in. Admittedly only half a dozen surplus that I ordered, and they only gave about a dozen olives each, but they fruited. You can grow them in whatever sized containers you can move into winter protection. Being a TBN member you must have the ability to move heavy loads!! Practice your Bonsai skills and aim for a thick trunk with up to six branches radiating from it, four will give you a decent crop. Restrict the tree height to whatever suits your winter accommodation. Even if you have to construct supports for the one and two year old fruit carrying twigs I am sure you will enjoy it. Eat the olives rather than go for oil. If you do it I can give you a quick and simple recipe for preserving them.

 

[psient]

HI:

I have a grower/nursery that I can rely upon to support my initial planting and husbanding of the trees.

My issue is with the construction of the actual equipment. I see that there are a lot of hammermills available but these seem to be for non-food applications. There are some modern units that will do the process from beginning to end but these may turn out to be too expensive. Right now Crushing the olives seems to be the first thing. Hammermills do not appear that conceptually complex in their engineering although they require machining fairly cumbersome parts. The hammers themselves seem to be something that could be machined but I'm not sure. I suppose I could buy a used beat up one and backwards engineer mine to fabricate although that seems less desirable than getting ideas for others. Probabaly the best way is to design something simple but effective from scratch. Something not intended for production but will get the job done. Since there are a lot of farm folks on this site I thought I'd see if anyone has done something similar; crushing an oil crop for extraction of the pulp in order to further process it. That's really all the hammermill is for.

I may post on the machinist forums I belong to as there are a lot of fellas that make parts there and some do parts for farm machinery.

I don't know how to approach this project and am just fishing for ideas.

Jon

 

[OldMcDonald]

psient, I appreciate what you are saying, but ask yourself, why are olives ground to a paste rather than hammer milled in the countries where olives are a major crop? I am sure you could make a grinder if you are able to make a hammer mill. Steel will grind equally as well as stone. Buying the equipment is obviously a non-starter, so you have to make it. Bear in mind also the maximum quantity of fruit you can grow. IF, a big if, you can produce 20 kilos (44lbs) of olives per tree when they are mature, and you are more likely to average half that year in year out, you might have 100 litres of oil, perhaps a shade more if the oil content was high. How much per litre, over your lifetime, is the project going to cost? I know none of us really accept that cost as being a reason not to go ahead, but maybe with 40 trees you should concentrate on them for eating in the early years. Even sell a few and use the money to finance a grinder project?

 

[psient]

psient, I appreciate what you are saying, but ask yourself, why are olives ground to a paste rather than hammer milled in the countries where olives are a major crop?

Thanks for the Feedback!

I am not sure I understand. Commercial oil production employes hammermilling as a common way of creating the olive paste. There is also stone milling.

You might have 100 litres of oil, perhaps a shade more if the oil content was high. How much per litre, over your lifetime, is the project going to cost?

This project isn't for commerce. I am sorry if I have given that impression. This will be for my own consumption and for that of those I share with.

Even sell a few and use the money to finance a grinder project?

Are you suggesting selling the trees themselves?

[/QUOTE]

 

[forgeblast]

Omd, Thank you for that info. Really appreciate it.

 

[GLyford]

There is also stone milling.

I think that's what he was calling grinding. I think he was also saying you could use textured (stainless?) steel plates instead of stone: easier to make, clean and maintain. In other words, olives are soft enough you don't need to use stone. I think he was saying that the milled (your word) or ground (his word) product was much better than the hammered.

Are you suggesting selling the trees themselves?

No, I think he's talking about selling any olives you have beyond what you'd eat, and would otherwise use to make oil. Then use the money from that towards the next season (more of a long term view, not "get everything set up right away").

 

[OldMcDonald]

psient, GLyford has taken the words out of my mouth. I am aware that hammer milling is done in some places, but I would suggest that it is done more in the "new world" than the "old". I have not been through many mills, but none of the ones I have been in hammer the fruit - and a couple of them are very modern.

I knew it was not be a commercial venture, I just felt that in the early years you would not be harvesting sufficient to warrant making the full equipment. It is going to cost you a fair bit of money. As I posted earlier that is no reason why any of us who use this forum feel we should not go ahead with the project. These projects are what we want do with our lives. You can get by with just the crusher, a simple press and containers that are suitable to let the oil float to the top. You will not produce as much as using the full technical set up, but you will be under way quicker and can add other bits of equipment later.

.My house is a former olive mill, but the only equipment left is some old grinding stones - two of them sitting on a concrete "leg" to form tables under the grape vines that form some summer shade just outside the front door.

 

[zonta223]

(I use a cherry pitter for my own) .

Can you please tell me what kind of cherry pitter.
I produce some table olives and to use a hand cheery pitter of a few 100 kilos of fruit takes shall we say a LONG time..:laughing:

Bob