LETIME 3L Essential Oil Distiller, Stainless Steel Steam Distillation Kit Making Essential Oil and Hydrosol, Floral Water Machine, LT3000 Distiller Kit

Excellent product and value! I quickly made small batches of rosemary, lemon balm, and lavender hydrosols. The setup, operation, and cleanup are all incredibly easy. For helpful instructional videos and guides, check out the company website. Their customer service is also top-notch—they responded quickly to all of my questions immediately. I did end up getting a small lab jack to help with positioning the collection vessel. I think for larger batches you would want to set up a recirculating bath for cooling and more essential oil could be collected with an essential oil separator. But all of that is optional. Easy to use out of the box. I am really happy with my purchase.

Excellent product!! It operates and performed as described by the manufacturer. I used two batches of Lavender buds and produced a total of about 22ml of Essential Oil and lots of Hydrosol. The quality is better than some of the EOs I purchased earlier. I am looking forward to trying other high yielding plant materials for their EO.

I wanted to leave a detailed review because I specifically purchased the LETIME LT3000 to process lavender from my own garden, and I think prospective buyers should understand the difference between what this unit does very well and what I experienced trying to produce essential oil. First, this machine absolutely produces hydrosol. In fact, it produces beautiful, strongly aromatic lavender hydrosol, and if hydrosol is your primary goal, I’ve been very happy with that part of its performance. Essential oil though, has been a completely different story. I tested multiple batches rather than judging the machine from one attempt. I used both fresh and dried lavender, including Grosso and Provence lavandin, which are varieties commonly used for oil production. On my controlled fresh batch, I used approximately 150 g of predominantly flowering heads, buds and calyxes with very little stem. I also paid careful attention to the setup and process: proper steam distillation, condenser filled and kept cold, steady controlled output, full herb chamber without excessively compressing the material, and extended collection rather than stopping after only a small amount of hydrosol. After initially seeing no essential oil, I went even further and performed another run using freshly harvested lavender cut only minutes before distillation. I removed most of the long stems and loaded the chamber primarily with the flowering material. For that run I collected the distillate in separate fractions specifically to see whether oil was being lost by dilution in a larger collection container. The result was actually interesting: The first ~200 mL was extremely milky/opalescent, while the next ~300 mL became substantially clearer. This suggests that the earliest hydrosol contained a much higher concentration of aromatic/volatile material. However, even after cooling and allowing the fractions to sit undisturbed, I still did not obtain a distinct, recoverable layer of essential oil. I also checked the condenser and equipment for retained oil and sadly did not find an obvious accumulation there. So after multiple runs and considerable troubleshooting, my assessment is: For hydrosol: YES. It works very well, produces plenty of aromatic lavender hydrosol, and is enjoyable to use. For recoverable essential oil: NOT in my experience with this setup. There may very well be microscopic essential oil dispersed within the cloudy hydrosol, particularly in the early fraction, but that is very different from actually collecting a separate quantity of essential oil that can be bottled and used as such. LETIME offers additional oil-separation equipment, and perhaps that changes the experience. But considering the price of the additional separator/stand, I think buyers should know that my standard LT3000 setup did not produce readily recoverable lavender essential oil despite multiple carefully controlled attempts with appropriate lavender varieties. I am keeping the machine because I genuinely like the hydrosol it produces. I have plenty of uses for fresh lavender hydrosol, and for that purpose this is a nice little unit. But if I had purchased it solely because I wanted to turn my lavender harvest into bottles of essential oil, I would have been disappointed. I hope this helps someone understand what to realistically expect before purchasing.

So much easier to make rose hydrosol now that I have this device.

I purchased this home distiller. The machining on the connection port of the condenser was machined incorrectly rendering the entire system unusable. It looks like a great little distiller, and I was excited to start using it to create essential oils. I wanted to like this thing but am entirely frustrated. There is no way to connect with the seller. Very disappointed.