How to Distill Clove Oil at Home: The Highest-Yield Spice
Updated Aug 27, 2026 The CopperHolic Team
Clove is the highest-yielding thing you can put in a copper still. Dried clove buds give 10 to 20 percent of their weight as essential oil, which is ten times what lavender gives and a hundred times what rose gives. From 250 grams of whole cloves off a grocery shelf, a home still can produce a genuinely usable amount of clove oil, plus a spiced water that smells like winter baking.
No garden, no harvest window, no drying rack. You buy the raw material in a bag, any month of the year. That's why we call clove the kitchen-spice gateway into distilling.
TL;DR
- Quick answer: hydro-distill 250g of whole dried cloves in 3 litres of water for 2 to 3 hours.
- Yield: 10 to 20% of dry weight, the highest in the craft.
- The quirk: clove oil sinks. Look for it under the water, not on top.
- Best still size: any. Even the 5 Litre produces meaningful oil from clove.
Why clove oil sinks
Almost every essential oil floats. Clove doesn't. Its main constituent, eugenol, is denser than water, so the oil collects at the bottom of your receiver. First-timers regularly pour their clove oil down the drain while saving the water. Use a narrow glass separator or a tall thin jar, let it settle a full hour, and draw the water off the top instead.
Hydro-distillation, not steam
Cloves go straight into the water, not on a basket above it. Dried buds are dense and woody, and they need full contact with simmering water to give up their oil. This is the traditional method for spices, resins, and barks, and a pot still does it natively: charge the pot, no trivet, simmer low and long.
What you'll need
- 250g whole dried clove buds. Whole, not ground; powder scorches and clogs.
- 3 litres of distilled or filtered water
- A tall, narrow glass jar for separation
- A copper alembic still, browse essential oil distillers
Step by step
- Crush the buds coarsely with a rolling pin. Cracked, not powdered. You're opening the oil glands, not making spice mix.
- Soak them in the still water for 2 hours, or overnight for a fuller yield.
- Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. Spice runs are marathons, not sprints; the oil comes over steadily the whole time.
- Collect in the tall jar. You'll see droplets sink and pool at the bottom.
- Settle for an hour, draw the spiced water off the top, and bottle the heavy oil below in amber glass.
What people do with it
Clove oil is a workhorse: a drop on a cotton ball is grandma's toothache standby, it anchors homemade chai and mulling blends, it scents winter candles and soaps, and diluted in a carrier it warms sore-muscle rubs. The clove hydrosol, the byproduct water, deodorizes kitchens and makes a spiced simmer-pot base. A word of respect: eugenol is strong. Never use clove oil neat on skin, and keep it well diluted, around 0.5 percent, in anything that touches the body.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use ground cloves from the spice aisle?
No. Ground clove turns to sludge, scorches on the pot floor, and can block the swan neck. Whole buds only, coarsely cracked.
How much oil will 250g of cloves give?
At 10 to 20% of dry weight, the theoretical ceiling is high, and even a modest home run recovers a visible, pourable quantity. It's the one material where a first-timer ends the day with real oil in a bottle. Check the math in the yield calculator.
What else from the spice rack distills well?
Cardamom, fennel seed, star anise, cinnamon bark, and ginger all run beautifully in a pot still. Clove is the best first one because the yield makes success obvious.
Start with a bag of cloves
Every still we make handles spice runs, and the 5 Litre is the right size for grocery-store quantities. Scaling up to gift sets and market bottles, look at the 5 Gallon. New to all of this? Start with everything a copper still can make.