How Extra Virgin Olive Oil Is Made

For many many years, going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, people have used presses to extract olive oil from the olive, the press is used to separate the olive oil and vegetation water from the solid body of the olive. Once these two have been separated, a decanter is used to separate the oil from the water. In able to gain a fine olive oil, there is a process that must be used before the olive is pressed.

First of all the olives must be ground into paste by using millstones, ancient, heavy rocks, they can also be called ground stones. To make sure that the olives are fully ground into a paste, that the fruit enzymes gather enough flavors and aromas and to make sure that the olive drops form into larger drops, the olives must remain under the millstones or approximately forty minutes.

Once the olives have been grounded the past is placed on fiber disks. These fiber disks are stacked one on top of another and put into the olive press. Pressure is then placed onto the disks, compacting the olive paste and percolating the olive liquid and vegetation water. To make this process a lot less complicated, water is run down the sides of the press to facilitate the percolating process.

When the pressing process is over the two liquids are placed in a traditional decanter to separate them, although this process can also be done using a vertical centrifuge. This process separates the two liquids a lot faster then when using a traditional decanter thus completing the process of olive oil extraction a lot quicker.

Once the extraction process has been fully completed, the cleaning process begins. This process has to be done thoroughly because if not the remaining past will begin to ferment on the millstones and disks causing other oils to get contaminated and change the taste of the oil completely. Every time new oil is to be made, a complete check that the press and millstones are completely clean must be done.

The advantages of making olive oil using this traditional pressing method include a better grinding of the olive and easier to pomace as less water is added. But there are also disadvantages that include a difficult clean process, a lot more manual labor and a longer time space between harvesting the olives and pressing them.