Kaffir Lime Essential Oil is the only essential oil that we make at our farm. It is considered one of our all-time. best-sellers especially at different market events we go to. When used for aromatherapy, this spiritually detoxifying citrus essence can help relieve migraine headache and nasal congestion, repel insects, promote concentration, and mental clarity. In Thai medicine, it is also used to treat fungal infection, reduce dandruff and scalp itchiness.

When we first decided to make the Kaffir Lime Essential Oil, we wanted to try it out as an experiment to see what else we can make from the Kaffir Lime trees that we grow. We were thinking of something that can really benefit people by using what we already have. Then, we realized that the one special thing about our Kaffir Lime is that its smell is really strong. This can only mean one thing: its medicinal properties must be highly potent as well.

Why does our Kaffir Lime contain such a strong smell?

Due to the dry and arid land that is also plagued with many pests, our beautiful Kaffir Lime orchard faces a lot of environmental challenges in order to survive the heat and bugs.

The lack of water supply forces the fruits and leaves to reserve water by creating a glossy film on its peel to prevent water from evaporating too quickly. This glossy film is made of essential oils. Meanwhile, with limited water, these essential oils become highly concentrated. This potency acts as a natural insect repellent. Even before you reach our orchard, you can smell the tangy Kaffir Lime scent right away even without cracking open the limes or leaves. This natural self-defense mechanism of the trees creates very high-quality essential oils on the peel of our limes.

At the same time, the premium-quality raw ingredient is only part of the reason why it is so good. Extraction technique is another crucial factor.

The best quality ingredient deserves the best extraction process.

Essential oils are highly potent and sensitive ingredients. They are sensitive to heat, air, and even light. So the extraction technique used is as important as the quality of the raw ingredient.

Normally, essential oil extraction involves chemical alteration like hydrolysis, isomerization, and oxidation which require high temperature. This directly degrades the quality of essential oils. Knowing this, we decided to extract our Kaffir Lime essential oil differently, using the same technique we extract our sesame oil: cold-pressing by hand.

As its name suggests, cold-pressing means pressing with no heat involved at all. On one hand, this extraction technique helps preserve the oil quality because it prevents the oil from oxidation. On the other hand, it is quite labor-intensive and time-consuming. For us, it requires at least 3 hours to get 100ml of the oil. Meanwhile, 10 kg of the dry lime peels (100 kg of fresh limes) only yields 500 ml of this precious plant essence. It might be the slowest process to production, but it is important to us that people get the product closest to their natural state, and that they are grown and processed to what feels right.

You don’t have to believe what we say right away. Not until you get to see how we make it from scratch!

Please check out this video below so you know how much time and effort it takes to make one small bottle of this fantastic botanical essence. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you’d like us to show you how we make other things at our farm. If you liked this video, click here to learn more about us.