Tuberose Hydrosol California

This year marks my second distilling tuberose flowers. It’s been a journey, a learning curve, an expensive experiment that I’m glad I tried. It took all of last year to find an ethical grower who wasn’t mono cropping this dynamic, spicy flower. By the time I found my flower farmer, I had one week, one chance to make it happen in the still. After resting a few weeks, the tuberose hydrosol revealed its creamy spice profile. I dried the remaining buds for future incense projects. I maintained contact with my grower to ensure I would have access at the beginning of the harvesting season. This year was a waterfall of tuberose harvest. I worked with the flower in so many ways, first macerating them in jojoba oil to use as the base in my Tuberose Flower butter, I began a tincture so use in some future perfume projects and then I distilled on the full moon. This is where I witnessed an opalescence of the distillation. The powdery musk notes were prevalent immediately after the distillation and didn’t require resting time. I dried some of the partially expired flowers for incense and then planted the stalks to bloom out the remaining bulbs. The flowers are expensive and took a few hundred dollars out of the supply budget but it also provided me with the opportunity to visit the farm and pick my own flowers before they went to market the next day. It was like shopping at Macy’s before opening during Christmas with a American Express black card. So totally worth it.