How to: Easy homemade spice fragrance and flavor oleoresin collection with Wisesorb Flower Drying Silica Gel Crystals.

 I’ve come across a novel concept, in extending the use case scenario, in my studies and observations regarding chaparral plants of California, in the case of implementing Wisesorb’s Flower Drying Silica Gel Crystals - not only as a desiccant, yet I’ve found that it seems to bind spice | herb oleoresins to the structure of the silica particles.

Wisesorb Flower Drying Silica Gel Crystals, image courtesy of Amazon and Wisesorbent Technologies.

What does this mean, in particular?

Within the world of spices, I imagine that I would update this blog article, in days and weeks to come (I started on this project idea at the end of February, 2023) with exciting developments in detailing a rather simple and relatively labor and machinery-free method of processing fresh plant material in to an accessible pure oleoresin, which can be observed as in the image below:

A closeup of Wisesorb Silica Gel crystals with some fresh spice herb material and bits of oleoresin.

What an exciting thing to observe, for a fragrance and flavor enthusiast, perhaps with the added feature of bearing an artisanal crafting aspiration, in manufacturing ingredient concentrates from scratch. Imaginably, from this point, I could keep loading the silica gel crystals up with fresh spice herb materials until a satisfactory amount of oleoresin had built up in the crystals, at which point, I could perform a simple solvent extraction, of my choosing, of such, dependent, perhaps, upon the plant’s best reputed solvent, determined per species of harvested plant. In this instance, I came across a fresh, minty, mesquite-smelling chaparral plant in my local commonplace whereabouts.

Update: my backpack with this project, started, in it, had been stolen from me, so I can not currently continue this blog article. Hopefully, some day, I’ll be able to come back to it.

Essential Urban Survival Technique - Thwarting an Ether Faucet Attempt.

 Any well-traveled trekker | overnighter of the urban landscape knows the feeling well: 

Having happened upon life, as such, as that sleep becomes unfortunately inevitable, at an inopportune time, in an inappropriate locale; that is, might seem as though it’s somewhat the sufferer’s own fault, for grazing in unfamiliar territory. 

 Even so, don’t be afraid, and don’t be discriminatory in where you set foot, about town; simply go about life as a well-prepared individual, well-resourced, well-packed, and you’ll do just fine. 

I’d not done so well, in previous years, but I’m nearing upon age 40, and I’d say that I’d experienced the vast majority of life experiences that I’d possibly come across, in my time, and there’s not much that could be done to me that I hadn’t experienced, previously, as a well-heeled trekker of the Los Angeles urban landscape. Just this past week, in fact, I thwarted a so-called (nicknamed via my own predilections) ether faucet, which is a classic simple petty theft’s criminal’s doing, or perhaps they’d do worse, to a lady, or something like that. 

It happens as misfortunately as described, just prior: a sudden need to fall asleep at an inopportune time, in an inappropriate place; perhaps a poor part of town, infested with tents, cockroaches, trash, rioting going on - that sort of thing. The police are on top of it, or something like that. People have to rest, sometimes, and letting loose an ether faucet will put the freeze on things, so to speak. 

What is ether?

I don’t really know what, or which - (ether) is the particular ether in question, and I’m not going to look it up, either. For my purposes, ether could potentially be a fragrance chemistry industry solvent, (… eh, I won’t elaborate on it - I don’t own any, myself), and ethers are a particular class of chemical compound, aside from that. It’s the sort of thing that could get somebody some unfortunate attention, perhaps, from the authorities, that is. My purpose here isn’t to educate the reader about ether, the drug: the primitive anesthetic that it is, as a basis. I had first learned about it from the drug-lore film, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” in which one of the guys was playing around with it, and look how Johnny Depp ended up - handsome heartthrob, early on, and well in to his later career, yet he’d been beset with tabloid scandal, in his later years, for living out his acting career roles (ostensibly) to a real-life pitch, in the behind-the-scenes sort of lifestyle that inevitably becomes the duty of the actor, playing the part. The other guy, Guillermo Del Toro, (or something like that; this is all off the top of my head, here), ate more food, throughout life. A bit more innocent, as far as analysis goes. I hadn’t caught wind of any poor press about him. Johnny Depp, on the other hand, had recently hit the scandal headlines, with his breakup from Amber Heard, a model, etc. etc.

Anyways…

An ether faucet. A scum bag tweaker’s crude weapon in assailing a targeted victim who stays out too late, or who ventures off in to an unseemly part of town, without imbibing in drug use (breaking bread) with the locals, who’d like to rob or rape the person being targeted, or perhaps it’s some measure of riot and crowd control, implemented by the authorities, following an outbreak of acute societal unrest, in the civic center area, about town. This was somewhat my experience of things, as I woke myself up, out of the narcoleptic, deadening slumber, which happens to accompany an uncharacteristic chill, to the limbs and body; a noticeably chill wind about the air, and an incapable self, as for getting up, waking up, and getting out of the area, for that criminals could easily thwart the individuals defenses, and gain access to their valuables, or possibly kidnap the person, and commit foul things, for a ransom; for example. 

Fortunately, I was well-equipped with an orange flower absolute spray bottle, 

just large enough to hold several dozen sprays, and yet, orange flower absolute: complex enough, to thwart an aerosol-based attack as crude as an ether faucet. I sprayed one spray, after coming to realize that I ought not sleep it off, and be content, and the tiredness was immediately swept away. 

There were intimations of a mockery of me, coming about, in my misfortune, of “some girl” sitting down, in front of me, where I lay, on the sidewalk, saying stuff like “hey, how’s it going?” 😘

That was my opportunity to get up, and get about, on my way, to my standard haunt, which I won’t disclose. The tiredness came and went, intermittently, throughout various parts of town, but my orange flower absolute reconstitution did the job quite well. I used Poucher’s formulation (Poucher was a noted armed forces scholar, in literature and in photography). Here’s his recipe for orange flower absolute, which can also be further researched through Google Books online. 

  An ether faucet is a horrible thing to burden, but hey, maybe it averted a worser societal outcome, all in all. Being properly prepared, with a complex aromatic aerosol compound is simply part of the technique in appropriately surviving the threat, coming through, with all valuables and reputation intact. It smells great, for that matter, and it’s a unisex sort of fragrance. Take heed, though, certain formulations of an orange flower absolute could be overly simplistic, or detrimental, in the sort of chemistry involved in what ether is, which I don’t quite know, myself, and I don’t really care to investigate it, online, for that matter. Just order some ingredients, and make the stuff yourself. It’ll assist you in embodying a more outgoing and adventurous self, as the cold months to come, ahead, accommodate the sort of robbery tactic that succumbing to an ether faucet would entail. 

The At-Home Parfumerie - How to mix like a semi-pro.

 After procuring a shelf-rack, or so, of fragrance ingredients of your choice and specialty, it’s time to employ “interval-mixing” in to the creative and manufacturing process.

The iPigeon.institute slight return shelf rack of perfumer’s ingredients, essential oils, and aroma molecules.

Making a simple “natural” smelling fragrance is not difficult - just purchase expensive and high-quality ingredients. But, in order to attain the scent profile of a higher-end cologne for men, for example, it requires some ingenuity in the logistics of “what’s going on | in” the fragrance. 

My mixing palette | my working process. I tried out what I would call “interval mixing,” which capitalizes on the notions of the deeper underlying chemistry behind the individual ingredients.

On one hand, the fragrance ought never quite completely fall out, from the bottom, itself, in to a poor-smelling thing. If you’d done this, don’t dump it - it’s largely against the law, internationally, and it’s poor morals. Instead, just save the fragmented artifact of manufacture, as a token partial that could be returned to, that might slightly fulfill some future need, even it it’s just drops of the stuff.

On my most current excursion and creation, however, I managed to deftly control the flow of creating a fragrance, with a collection number of ingredients totaling about 100, or so, give or take, without having created a poor-smelling product, which had been how many of my attempts to create a distinctly masculine-smelling fragrance product had turned out. I’d been getting some tips, through nightly searches about the facets and characteristics of ingredients, their expected percentage fill, of the entirety of a composition (fragrance or parfum base - which, in and of itself, take up perhaps 15-30% of the bottle, and the rest is water and alcohol (40-50%) and perhaps the rest of the fill is made up of quick notes, nuances, clean-ups, and touch-ups with essential oils, terpenes, crystals, musks, colors, etc.).

I wanted to do a men’s fragrance that was light-feeling, syrupy sweet, yet rich in savory background, such as that it would entice the olfactory sense’s relationship with the visceral and primal urges of hunger, upon encountering it. Easily gourmand, yet imagining a rich and eloquent debouter of enterprise and establishment to follow - picture a starving population, for example; yet many people refuse to eat, when offered food, or when found asking for charity. What could spark and inspire their neglected self-care better than a timely happenstance passersby encounter, on the street? What better disposition could there be, alongside the context being well-fed, in the American way? (or French, in nature, as I sometimes refer to). 

The secret to my creative process, in this instance, was to come up with a decent enough floral base - I chose Narcissus, in this instance, with 3-4 or so full and generous squirts from the dropper, although just 1, to begin with, in a pool of perfumer’s alcohol, in the bottle. 

Then I started to work my way around the fragrance’s underlying inspiration, which would be a light, crisp, and refreshing citrus assertion, for which I used some terpene ingredients, such as Limonene D. There was kumquat oil, as well. After this stage, I went back to tradition and rounded off the composition, as it was, with Lavandin Grosso. Then I grabbed my powders and crystals, to musky up the scent, and ground it, with concentrated force. I employed Ambroxan to ground out this first stage. 

The next phase I went in to was to add the primary natural characteristics that would shape the quality facets and natural appeal factor of the fragrance, using primarily essential oils, at this stage. I used Ginger CO2 (don’t ever get a ginger that’s not at least a CO2 extraction - my lesson learned), myrrh oil, tonka bean absolute (lots), jasmine tea perfume extract, citron oil, ylang ylang, cedarwood (atlas), and teak (just a little). Here, in this stage, I found that I wasn’t ruining the fragrance, by this point, so I decided to test out employing my crystals, which smell good, in and of themselves, but I’d read up on their common usage recommendations in a fragrance composition, and it’s typically at the 1%, or 0.1% or less. I have Exaltone, by Firmenich, and Ambrocenide, by Symrise, which I used, in this stage. 

Then, my inner animal 🦔 perhaps, started to perk up, and I thought about the ingredients, and their place in fragrance-making, which is largely based on descriptions of the properties, chemical name, and organoleptic properties of the material. I thought about ketones, which I’d read, are sometimes characterizable as metabolite products of the body. (Wikipedia). Oh, yeah. And just prior, I’d put some stuff in to the mix, like anisaldehyde and oud base, one of which had been touted as “the smell of the bathroom, toilet included” sort of thing. I figured, “well, these things have some basis in how they are created, as by-products of microbial, fungal, or plant life (even animals, in the past mostly), 

but, continuing forward, though, given that the ingredients had an appeal, on top of that I was creating this composition, as my main aspiration, and meanwhile, the fragrance base hadn’t turned bad on me, just yet, I figured that it was time for me to try and encapsulate the essence as it was, in this stage, so I added some musk ketone powder, for the sake of the fact that it (ketones) affect biological processes; I imagined that the oud base, or the dimethyl anthranilate, or pyralone (it was all of these, perhaps, in the end, to be honest; a modest amount of each of them) - these components, and the bacterial sorts of processes of interaction, reaction, or metabolism, of the energy products available, based on the richness of the ingredients, in and of themselves, much different, and more natural-smelling, since I was employing essential oils, mostly, at this stage, (some farnesol, also), and I’d formerly tried to employ these ingredients, of the [toilette] - means to an end (like, eau de toilette), and the mixture would end up getting worse and worse, the more I added to it, from here. 

Now, I didn’t actually add orange flower absolute, but I did do an ad-hoc Schiffs base, although I added the hydroxycitronellol in an equal amount to the iso butyl quinoline (pyralone), because I wanted to emphasize the citrusy character of the composition, and because the source and main composition was so rich in material, to begin with. All in all, at this phase, I threw in a small (mini) scoop spoon’s worth of musk ketone, in to the mix, because I figured that the ketone element, added in to the composition, would detract any ongoing (and eventual) free-radical occurrences from proliferating, and, in turn, I end up with a garbage composition. The musk ketones would keep the developing energetic processes distracted, and meanwhile, I have the buffer of these expensive crystals as the basis of what the mixture [could] eventually smell like, if needed; although it still hadn’t turned bad on me, which is important. 

Then I threw in some Iso E Super, after gently gyroscope-rotating the mixture around, and making sure that the crystals became well-incorporated in to the existing mix - 

Oh yeah! I forgot, at first, I started out with some very primary facet components of many to any type of fragrance composition - rose petals, jasmine sambac absolute, neroli oil, from Morocco, (at some point, in the composition; perhaps later on), and santalol, in modest amounts, each of them, yet somewhat only at the time being, of how small my beginnings were, in creating this mixture, and these ingredients, for having been expensive. (They still are expensive, for that matter, yet they’re quite essential in a fragrance composition, for how the smell’s purpose and character become modulated in to a new olfactory experience, at the command of the hand of the perfumer.

Some small vials of expensive essential oils and rich absolutes.

Having taken on this new, and progressively (intervals-bounded) methodology in manufacturing a fragrance composition, which I’d found somewhat difficult to do, for men’s sorts of fragrances, in the past, I now felt more at ease, in applying more ingredients, such as gurjun balsam, rhodinol, lauryl acetate C-12, para cresyl isobutyrate, nectaryl (to peach sweeten things up), beeswax absolute (for even more, and long-lasting sweetness), as well as two scoops of ethyl vanillin (with the small flat scoop).

Every invested gourmand would understand, as well, the fascinating combination and compelling novel effect (which I called “mooshy-moo”) that black pepper oil has upon a richly-established vanilla, as the “latest thing.” It’s a quite comforting and warming sensory experience. 

I didn’t want to leave any trails unmapped, so to speak. In intervals, I had planned to do the dump of crystals, such as Nerolin bromelia, as last-stand additions to the mix, yet I ended up tossing some in, a bit before I finished, since the perfumer’s alcohol works fast, yet I gyroscope-rotate the mixture, at this stage, to speed the musk ketone reactions up.

Then I thought, 

Hey, I have some celery ketone, as well! How about that, for the gourmand floral fragrant citrus (petitgrain got it’s own intervallic development ketone-assisted cycle in on it).

That’s about all, for now. 

Except for the onion skeet skeet - just 4 drops, (not of pure onion oil - significantly diluted, a few drops to 2 or so fl. oz.) - for the acrylates (thanks, Calvin Klein, for that tip off [context]).

Oh, yeah, there was Cetalox, as well. Benzyl Benzoate, and I topped off the composition, once I was fairly satisfied with it, with benzyl alcohol, to have a solvent base to incorporate the insoluble oils and water (also added at the end) together in to a miscible solution. I put some Yellow (Lake) and Basic Fuschia (2 drops), for color. There was trans-2 decanol, a tiny bit of humulene, and several drops of cinnamon bark oil. I put a drop of Geosmin into it, as well.

I started my Parfumerie Hobby at www.perfumersworld.com [Product Review]

Being in the business of public relations, at times, keeping up appearances is of the upmost importance. It takes presence, of many shapes, ways, and forms, in order to make a lasting good first impression upon the general public. 

For me, in coming from a background of having been an introverted person, by nature (and I still am), I’ve learned, from my former uplifting relationships, from my past lives, various skills in which they’d been brought up more suitably for the sake of pleasing the crowds, and putting on a public face. I was raised of a different sort; my mother, being Cantonese Chinese, and both my parents conservative, at that: they had a disdain for superficiality and frivolity, and I was commonly reprimanded for trying to put on a colorful ruse, for the public, although my impetuous self sometimes won through, and I indulged various facets of persona marketing staked upon impressive physical features, which I felt would assist me in my business ventures, and bolster my professional identity. 

Over time, I developed various niche hobbies that I pursued for the advancement and development of my aesthetic environment, such as interior design, topiary decorations, cultural effects, and parfumerie creations (aromatherapy). Being that we live in a time of scaling-back, of luxuries, living in smaller spaces causes the aesthetics pursuer to find creative and neat-fitted manners in which we can entertain our public. Social media is one of the ways in which we can communicate our online and internet presence identities to others, and significant advancements in decentralizing and distributing the facets of cultural attainments and establishments have become vast foray for the interested, and, for the ones who are seeking to develop their aesthetic pursuits, using all available resources, the modern digital day and age, in what social media affords us; we are presented with an unprecedented set of opportunities and resource for learning what others have gained, through achievements in aesthetics and design. 

Parfumerie, and aromatherapy, in general, is one of the subtler finery attainments to pursue. Offering gifts of fragrance is one of the ancient and biblically historic rituals and gestures of praise and worship:

Psalm 141:2 NIRV- May my prayer come to You like the sweet smell of incense. When I lift up my hands in prayer, may it be like the evening sacrifice.

A well-intentioned and virtuous resource of fragrant offering, of ourselves, is one of the simplest ways in which we can impress upon others, and gain sociable merit and supply in which we can more easily and effectively strike up a conversation with others, when we are out and about - meeting our peers, out in public, for example. 

I personally carry around four different fragrances, currently: Spicebomb, by Victor & Rolf, Dior Homme, Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille, and Miss Dior Absolutely Blooming perfume. I like strong and spicy scents. My latest fascination is with Hermès Citron Noir, and I’m planning on buying it as soon as possible. 

I decided to have

a multi-faceted approach to my own perfumes cottage industry production - partially, and to begin, as an invested experiment, in seeking to imitate, or replicate, somewhat, my favorite fragrances, from scratch. Discovering online resources for procuring fragrance and aroma ingredients is a bit of a challenge, at first, or for the uninitiated. I happened upon (much more easily so) chemistry lab suppliers who carried the ingredients, and curiousities of organic and other sorts of chemistry supplies, of which, for me, was all part of a learning experience. As it turns out, the layperson is able to browse and view chemical suppliers’ web sites, yet upon completing the online checkout process, we (as the layperson) would encounter a barrier in the transaction, as the requirements are that the receiver of the products would have to be some sort of established, certified, and licensed laboratory. 

Www.perfumersworld.com is a great compromise to that barrier from establishing a beginner’s collection of fragrance resource materials. I was able to order sizable amounts of fragrance ingredients (they measure their product prices by gram measurements), suitable enough for me to prepare a variety of sorts of fragrances. I’m somewhat intent on just sitting on, and casually observing, via the olfactory sense, the character and nature of the ingredients, as I read up on the individual substances, and familiarize myself with their properties, as individual components of mixed fragrance compositions, which I will eventually get in to.  

Fragrances fresh from the supplier have some of the manufacturing process’ byproducts upon them, still, as the various products are manufactured via differing methods of extraction and production. I’m planning on letting the products cure, and mature, so to speak, and eventually, the solvent smells will be less prevalent, upon opening and smelling the individual bottles and containers that the ingredients came in. 

The purchasing process with perfumersworld.com was a quick breeze, and quite efficiently managed. I was able to purchase 20 ingredients for under $450, which was my allocated budget for the project. I ordered the package on Friday afternoon, and they were gone for the weekend, but they responded to me on Sunday night, in regards to the shipment. I wanted to add an ingredient, and the customers service representative answered me quickly, and I had my shipment sent out to me on the 11th. Quite quick service, it was. 

As you can see, the shipment moved very quickly, through DHL Express, and I received my shipment within a few short days, which was great on me, for how eager I was to receive the package. 

The supplies smell great (most of them), and I can’t wait to familiarize myself with the individual ingredients, and start creating some fragrance products on my own. 

Quick update on the green pine cone development effort: an ad hoc cottage industry occupation, at minimum.

 I've had the pine cone sunken into a handful of mud I collected from beneath a leaking fire hydrant, and prior to finding the mud, I determined that the pine cone might do well if it was given some blessings and offerings of Texas Cedarwood essential oil from Aura Cacia as well as some ConcenTrace liquid ionic minerals. In addition, I supposed that I could, perhaps, inspire some sort of ionic burgeoning of bringing the cone's still-living ostensible self to sprout a sapling branch out of it, if I made a reaction of the ionic mineral and oil coating of it along with some tobacco smoke and heat from the fire of the rolled cigarillo tobacco from underneath and around the pine cone; it seemed to attract some gravity unto itself with the combination.

After a few days of traveling around with me while coated with the mud and being brought out into the sun for some intervals in time, I brought it out of the mud bag upon arriving back at my place, and I washed the cone off with warm water.

The particularly special thing that was notable about the pine cone, despite the fact that it had browned a bit, and that the tips of the spikes of the cone had seemed to develop nodes at the tip; one had broken off, and I've yet to identify just what these nodes entail in the scope of the lifespan and development of the pine cone as it expends it's life energy into something. Perhaps it's not been a proper induction into sprouting into a sapling, yet I'm still hopeful for it. What I did nitice, though, which was of promise, was that the oil, mineral liquids, and tobacco smoke ash combination left a thick, resinous smooth and shiny black tar with a beautiful spicy scent.

I decided to keep on in developing the incense-like resin basis of what the cone might merit, and I'm working on covering it with a new and more dedicated purpose towards establishing an incense resin development cycle for a purpose that I might apply to green pine cones; perhaps I'll make it an outing basis out to the mountains nearby, locally, to establish a collection of similar young pine cones to establish one of the cottage industry aspirations that would inevitably arise from doing these various treks around town, and establish various takes on incense products from scratch and by hand that obviously herald from such cultures as northern French African infusions of trade and society from which the Morrocan variety of Texas Cedarwood essential oil, particularly fine, as it's offered by Aura Cacia, for the disparity in price of the bulk-sized alternate offering of Texas Cedarwood oil by Whole Foods Market brand, which is taken from the a Juniper or Spruce of a Mexican varietal.

Ostensibly, with so much nuclear disparagement of the soils and atmosphere of the regionally localized environment; this being Los Angeles of southern California; it makes for a notably less fine and distinctive array of aromatics of the tree's specieal or acute conditioning produce capacity at this time, in addition to being diluted with a carrier oil, (I belidve), in the Whole Foods Brand offering. In some cases, not particularly much to disparage the much more actual aromatics and volatile oils in what's offered, by weight; yet I'm interested in developing products and distinction in end product in line with ethical and sustainable offerings, as my first-outset in doing things of product-related manufacturing and finery considerations at hand, in the same vein as the iPigeon branding heraldry of racing pigeons trade convention and social economy basis of meeting and establishing well-wrought and considerate relations where such distinctions are trusted from the source, as I'm responsible for in my own .institute output and for sustainable work developments that may arise from having the extra time, care, budgeting, and conscientious discernment of having had ostensibly finer pigeons, someday: to show for such slight, yet significant (in terms of my single-handedly retail purchase at Whole Foods in that I have a choice between two bottles, both of them seemingly slight in their purpose, in some consideration); I'd obviously make it the finest available as ad hoc development findings, and perhaps develop from there, based on aesthetics and merit that make the difference in making sustainable and secure establishments in relationships to come.

[Sorry, long-winded; I'm being regionally trifled by localized and regional playback of competitive minds and Disavowal of all sorts of reasonable basis in showing face in the development cycle].