Hi all,
continuity with the Byzantine curio, today it's a brief overview on how to make olive oil in Byzantium.
Liquid Gold That's so typical of our table, and whose export from Andalusia and generating good income at the time of the Romans, had a rather peculiar process.
olive oil was produced in two stages. The first oil of the year (remember that one of the early Byzantine years was 1 September) was performed with immature or green olives omphakinon calls. Was produced in mid-October, and preceded the normal oil, which began to run with the remaining olive harvesting in October-November.
There were two main phases, separating the oil from the meat and remove the bitter fluid or oil amurca. In both processes was vital not to crush the bone, as it worsened the taste of the liquid.
to crush the olives was used trapetum a circular Cuba with an intermediate shaft on which it crossed a wooden beam. A beam that is mated two millstones that turned on the interior of Cuba. The wheels were off the bottom and sides of the Cuba a finger, so that was avoided and crush the bones.
Once crushed, the bone was separated from the pulp and the resulting paste was extracted oil. The pulp was pressed several times, so that with each pressing, oil was extracted. However, product quality was worse as the paste was pressed.
To perform this pressing was put the olive paste in a sort of stone basin on one side of which provided an opening allowed the oil to a deposit slip as they squeezed the pulp. After filling the container with the slurry was dropped on it a heavy stone cylinder hanging from a wooden beam. This beam was one of its sides encased in a gear on the wall, so that was fixed but allowed to move its beam up and down the other end, making the sum of the weight on the dough or pressed successive pressure.
The liquid extracted from the olive paste (about 60% by weight of the olives) was not directly oil. About two thirds of the liquid was water and impurities washed away. Only one-third extracted juice was actually oil. Finally, the liquid is left to rest in a large tank dug in the ground, where the impurities fall to the bottom, and the oil would begin to clean itself. Once considered fairly clean water is carefully poured into the tank, so that the oil floating on her back without mixing impurities in the background and went to a second tank settled for an opening at the top of the tank . Was an effective way of extracting oil and transferred to a second tank where the calm ending. There was poured into jars for sale and consumption.
And as the Byzantines had already invented it recycling, the remains of the paste is used as animal feed (usually it was a donkey pulling the press circular) while olive pits were used as fuel for the fire, as well as such modern boilers we want to sell now as the height of innovation ...
And that's it for today
Greetings
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