Olive Oil Master Class at the JMM!

A blog post by Carolyn Bevans, Museum Educator and Programs Associate. To read more posts from Carolyn, click HERE. 

Last Thursday evening was Olive fun at the JMM. We hosted a DIY Olive Oil workshop led by Pearlstone Center farms. The night started off with light refreshments. We then had a rather theatrical explanation of the life of an olive tree – their resilience and strength in the face of harsh weather conditions.  We also learned that Israel is home to some of the oldest olive trees in the world, dating back several hundreds of years.

We then moved into the messy and fun process of pitting the olives, which involved rolling them with highly technical equipment – a wooden stick – until the flesh separated from the pit. During this process, many participants discovered that un-cured olives are rather bitter and taste awful. After the pitting process, the flesh was collected and dumped into a large press in the middle of the room. Did you know that 5 lbs of olives only yields approximately .75 oz of oil? That means an average 51 oz bottle of oil requires 340 lbs of olives!

We also learned about a more modern method of exacting the oil via a centrifuge. We explored the physics of this method by grabbing a partner and spinning quickly in a circle together to mimic how a centrifuge spins the olive liquid swiftly until the oil separates from the pulp. We then moved into making our own herb infused olive oils using fresh sage and rosemary from Pearlstone’s farm. As museumgoers were crafting, Laura retold the story of Hanukah and reiterated the importance of oil during the season. All and all, the evening was a blast!