A DIFFICULT MASS MAKING HANDMADE OLIVE OIL.

I like to make handmade olive oil two or three times by year, using the traditional system with manual press. Nowadays are used  by the olive oil industry modern centrifugal extraction systems. Here the olive crop is usually in November and December, and this year I bought a new grinding mill, so the crushing of olives was easier. For the first production, I used ripe olives, 100% "Gordal" variety, harvested one day before.

 

 

Sometimes there are difficult masses. Then the olive oil is not released sufficiently, and no matter the time you are kneading, the olive oil don't flow normally. And this was just my bad luck this day.

When all it's ok, at the end of the kneading if you let the mass quiet, in a few minutes you see olive oil in the surface gaps, and when you are pressing you can see olive oil and a dark fluid, flowing from the press plate separately. In this case I couldn't see oil on the mass surface, and in the press all was dark fluid, with very small olive oil drops.

Usual image after kneading

Normally I'm kneading 1-1.5 hours the mass of crushed olives in a pan ,over a warm water bath, controlling that the mass doesn't exceed up to 28 Celsius degrees. In this case I was kneading 2  hours, but it was for nothing.



Image with the difficult mass, after kneading

I have read that sometimes there are difficult masses because are very fluids, but the mine seems normal, it wasn't very fluid. Speaking with olive oil mill experts, nobody had a reason to explain it.

Next day I repeated the process with the same olives, increasing the kneading time, and the result was similar. In both days, with 50 kilograms I only got 3 litres of olive oil (I should have obtained 9 litres, because analyzing the mass was obtained  a yield of 18.5% of oil).

But at least, I got a remarkable olive oil, very fruity and aromatic.