Coffee Oil

I have been working on a natural coffee lip balm recipe for about a month, and I have yet to achieve the fantastically strong coffee scent that I would like in the balm although the consistency is perfect. I have been using coffee butter for the scent, which is an infusion of coffee beans in hydrolyzed vegetable oil, but it just wasn't strong enough for me, and coffee essential oil is a little expensive for this purpose, so I searched the web for alternative solutions.  I ran across a link awhile back about making your own coffee oil and decided that I had to try it to see if I could boost the coffee scent in my lip balm.  Coffee oil is basically an infusion of coffee beans in olive oil.  I have seen two ways of creating the infusion.  The first way involves adding ground coffee to olive oil and then heating the oil in a crock pot for 10-12 hours.  The second way, which is what I tried, involved adding ground coffee to olive oil and then allowing it to steep for 4-6 weeks.

As you can see by the picture, I started steeping my coffee ground olive oil mixture on January 26th.  I decided to let it infuse for 4 weeks, and ended up straining the oil on the 27th.

Coffee Oil Recipe

1/3 cup ground coffee
1 3/4 cup olive oil

Simply grind your coffee to a medium grind and pour into a clean, dry sealed container, then pour the oil over the coffee and seal.  I gave mine a good shake before putting it back in the pantry to steep. I used a canning jar because I prefer glass for this, and it has a nice tight seal.

After 4 weeks, most of the coffee grounds will have sunk to the bottom of the oil in your container.  To strain out any remaining coffee particles, place a coffee filter in a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl, and pour your oil mixture slowly into the coffee filter. It took about 10 minutes for the oil to drip through the coffee filter completely.

You can then pour the filtered coffee oil into a new clean dry jar or other seal able container, and voila! You have coffee oil.  My oil smelled just like freshly ground coffee beans, which I'm hoping will add that extra punch of coffee aroma to my lip balm recipe.  I can't wait to try it out!