On Rosewater

        Sometime after the first frost last year, I pocketed some ripe, bright red rose hips from some of the bushes at work and tried out an online recipe for rose hip tea, which is purported to be quite healthy and moderately tasty.
        It was vile.
        Admittedly, I generally prefer black tea over herbals, but even after adding honey, I had to pour the remains into the sink and didn't bother using the rest to attempt rose hip jam.  Still, the idea of roses as food still interests something in the romantic side of me, especially since our new house came with five rose bushes--two pink, two red, and one yellow.  In my search for a better-tasting recipe for rose hip tea, I discovered rosewater.
        I'd read about rosewater--it was discovered and commonly used in the middle ages and gets references in books set in that era, but I'd never known how to make it, nor what good it might be.  It's not as if it's a common product in modern groceries.
        Rosewater's uses are actually quite varied--applied directly for acne or tired eyes, or as an additive to skin creams, hair rinses, moisturizers, after-sun care, etc.  It's a light, short-lived fragrance, and a tablespoon or two can be added into drinks and foods such as mint tea, lemonade, rice pudding, milk, yogurt, butter cookies, fruit salads, and almond dishes.  (Sources include stylecraze.com and boisdejasmin.com).

        Distilling rosewater is actually quite simple.  I've made two batches so far, a couple weeks apart.  I first gathered as many fresh rose petals as possible, after tearing off parts that were bug-eaten or withered.  (I don't use pesticides other than a couple of ant traps on the ground and, apparently spiders.  I had a bad scare with a dime-sized arachnid hiding in one of my red roses!)  We'd had some frosts that limited the number of eligible blooms, so I couldn't gather quite the 2-3 quarts the recipe called for.  I ended up with four cups of petals, and even that much required between six to ten roses, which I was obliged to take from all five bushes.)

        These went into my largest canning pot, in the middle of which I placed a well-scrubbed stone since I didn't have the recommended brick.

        I added water to almost cover the petals, and placed a heat-safe bowl on top of the brick.  Then, after inverting the lid, I heated it up.

        Once the water boiled, I brought it down to a simmer and covered the lid with ice to create a home still; the steam condenses on the cold lid and slides down to the center where it drops into the bowl.  The petals lose their color after being boiled and turn the water brownish-pink.

        Every 20 minutes, one has to check the potency.  I discovered that it helps to have a large bowl on hand to dump the icewater--being careful not to let it drip into the bowl of rosewater.  Then, one takes a tablespoon or so out to taste.  The recipe says to repeat this until the bowl has between a pint and a quart of strong-smelling and -tasting rosewater.  However, with my limited amount of petals, I found that after the second 20 minutes, it was tasting a little diluted, so I stopped.  The result fit only into one small plastic container.

        I've since learned that other people make rosewater without the distillation process: They wash the petals and use distilled water for boiling, then steep the petals perhaps an hour or overnight. Then they strain the petals out and cool the water in the refrigerator it to make it last longer.
        By the sounds of it, the shelf life is shorter with the non-distilled method.  How much shorter, I've no idea; I have found no information on the shelf life of the method I used, but by smelling and tasting my batches, the older one is clearly less fragrant than the newer, though both taste similar.  My husband actually prefers the delicacy of the older one--however, another point to consider is that my first batch included a couple yellow blooms while I had none available for the second, and I've often felt that the yellow roses have a nicer scent.  Whether either batch will remain potent last long enough for them to make good Christmas gifts remain to be seen.  We'll have to wait and see, and in the meantime, I should have some rosehips to experiment with in a couple weeks!



Update Dec 2014: Our rosehips didn't develop before the first frost hit, so we'll have to try next year.