Author Topic: pressing oil from rapeseed? (Read 9256 times)

suomi · « **on:** January 20, 2009, 04:25:04 pm »

We are hoping to grow rapeseed and press our own oil, has anyone here ever done this? advice or info would be most welcome.
Im not so interested in sunflower oil as I prefer the flavour of rapeseed.

thanks.

rustyme · « **Reply #1 on:** January 20, 2009, 05:06:17 pm »

http://www.piteba.com/eng/index_eng.htm

Hello ,
the above link is for the piteba hand operated oil press. It can press a number of different seeds/nuts etc , to get oil . There are small scale electric presses available , but they are very dear. Even the hand operated one in the link isn't really cheap . It is however very sturdy and I am sure would last well. It would have to be strong as I have tried pressing oil a number of ways . The easiest (but not the fastest !) was using a bottle jack and a strong bit of metal pipe with loads of small holes drilled in it . One end of the pipe was sealed with a metal cap , the other had a strong metal disc that was made to fit inside the pipe as a sliding fit. The pipe was filled with seed ( I used sunflower ) the sliding plate placed inside and the whole thing was then turned upside down , so the cap was at the top . the bottle jack was then placed against the sliding plate and pumped and the cap was resting under a fixed metal beam (actually it was a landrover bumper !!). The sliding plate squeezed the seed as the bottle jack was pumped , and out of the holes in the pipe came sunflower oil . I had a bit of shaped metal to act as an oil catcher and the seed had been warmed to help in oil extraction . As I say it worked, but would be painfully slow if you had a large amount to do . The hand crank press above , would be much better for pressing say a couple of pints/litres when wanted . I pressed about half a pint of oil from bought seed and I also pressed about a pint or two from home grown seed. The home grown seed was much easier to press and gave more oil too, but as I say I was using sunflower seed. The reason I chose to go with sunflower was they tend to have fewer pests that zap them , rape seed is prone to all the problems of cabbage growing and to get a good crop you have to spray with chemicals to kill all the bugs . That would mean death for my bees plus I don't use chemicals at all . The amount of oil from seed depends on type of seed, but if you work on about 33% oil by weight you will be about right . The solids left over from pressing can be fed to animal stock as feed ( oil cake) so no waste . You can even filter any used oil and turn it into bio diesel or filter it and use it as straight oil for a suitable engine, even less waste ....perfick...

Hope my rather long winded reply is of some help/interest !!.

cheers

Russ

suomi · « **Reply #2 on:** January 21, 2009, 02:52:26 pm »

Thanks rustyme

the press looks perfect for what we need, yes a little expensive but we were looking for hand operated press that will last forever!
we also thought about making our own press but after reading about your experience.... (great discription

) well I think we will save up to buy one! also love the idea that nothing is wasted, we have chickens and sheep so they will be eager to eat the oil cake.
we dont use any chemical sprays here so it will be interesting to see what amount of crop we end up with.
ooohh really looking forward to trying this out!
thanks for teh swift reply, you are a star.

rustyme · « **Reply #3 on:** January 23, 2009, 12:02:25 pm »

hello Suomi,
no probs, glad the link helped. It does look a very good little tool . There are a few videos on youtube of the tool actually in use. I tried a few different ways to press the oil . One was an old hand mincer, the old cast type. It didn't really work at all . Mushed up the seed a bit , but that was about it . A friend bought a new ,cast again , juicer. The type used to juice wheat grass etc. It did do the job JUST , but it felt as if it was going to break at any minute , was very hard to keep fixed on the table , and was just not quite upto the job . It juices wheat grass fine though ...lol. So on a small scale it looks like the Piteba is the one to go for . I will be getting one at some point but it may be a year or so yet . If you get one ? I would be interested in how you get on with it !!!

cheers

Russ