There are three main ways to extract oils from the seed/nut/plant etc:  Cold pressed, expeller pressed, and solvent extraction. The first two involve a machine that mechanically presses down to get the oil out. The last one involves a chemical to help extract as much as the oil from the plant as possible.

The reason behind this post is because while searching for oils I found an organic grape seed oil, and sorry to disappoint you, but we won’t be using that.  As romantic and lovely as it sounds, at $145.00 a gallon it would make our product too expensive for the consumer to purchase. After speaking to the supplier about the cost of his oil, he mentioned a couple of things regarding the process of extracting the oil from the grape seeds.  This got me thinking… I should probably know all this!!

So I did some research and found that there are three main ways to extract oils from plants and it is important!  How the oil is extracted really does matter.
You may have noticed the different oil options that are available to you on the shelves of your super market, specialty store, etc, etc.   Canola oil, for example, might say, “expeller pressed” or “cold pressed” on the bottle. Or it might just say “canola oil”.

Expeller pressed means that the oils were extracted from the plant using a chemical-free mechanical process.  The harder the nut or the seed that you are extracting from, the more pressure that needs to be applied. This results in more friction and higher heat.

Cold pressed, which is the method usually used for delicate oils, means that they are expeller pressed, but in a heat-controlled environment.  The temperature is kept below 120-122 degrees F.

Solvent extraction is the method used in pretty much all conventional oils. This method uses solvent extracts to get the oils out of the plant which not only produces higher yield, but it’s less expensive than expeller and cold pressed methods, and its’ quick.  The problem is that the solvent that is commonly used is hexane.  Some companies say that the solvent is evaporated during the process, but other say some of this chemical remains in the oil. I think this method is suitable for extract big quantities oil.