A hundred years ago, seeds were pressed in a manual wedge press to extract the precious oil from grape seeds. Today, pharmaceutical-grade extracts often are made by combining high heat and solvents to the method. Small wineries and and other companies apply steam distillation or cold pressing to extract oils from grape seeds before grinding. The process is organic and requires minimal heat and no chemicals. You also can make organic grape seed extract for your personal use. You can benefit from the grape seed oil by-product if you have a lot of grapes or a small vineyard, a cold press and a grinder.
Remove the seeds and skin of the grapes while making your grape juice or other grape product. If you are doing this by hand, use a strainer.
Wash the filtered grape extracts thoroughly.
Set aside the extracted grape seeds and skin to dry for approximately 24 hours. During this time you can cook the seeds at a very low temperature, if desired. Cold pressing is an extraction process using minimal heat to extract oil out of seeds, so it is not an essential step to heat seeds, but it was a method used to extract more oil out of grape seeds when folks manually cold pressed at home. Heating the seeds slowly will also quicken the drying process.
Remove the excess oil and juices from the grape seeds and skin by adding the grape extracts to your cold press. Press the extracts until the oil shows a visible separation from the solids. Set aside, and in time the oil will separate from the extracts even further.
Skim the remaining oil from the solids.
Save the pressed oil and preserve it in bottles for both therapeutic and culinary uses.
Separate the grape seeds from the remaining skin solids.
Dry the separated extracts to make them ready for grinding.
Start grinding. Grind both the dried seeds and skins separately in a grinding appliance. Grind extracts until they form a fine powder. Combine the powdered seed extract with the powdered skin extract unless you prefer separate supplements of both seed and skin extract.
Fill individual empty gelatin capsules with your powdered mixture. Large-size capsules in size 00 are a good size to start with.
Preserve the capsules in a bottle and store in a cool location out of direct sunlight. Store powder in airtight bottles if you do not have gel caps.
Tip
If you do not have access to plenty of grapes but wish to make your own organic extract, consider purchasing bulk grape seeds from wholesale suppliers. The dried grape seeds will be ready for cold pressing and grinding.
Although the skins of fruits, vegetables and berries are valued for their nutrient dense concentration, it is not essential to use grape skins when making grape seed extract.
Gelatin capsules are easy to use, come in varying sizes and can be found at many online health stores at affordable prices.
Warning
Gelatin capsule ingredients consist of beef gelatin, glycerite and water. Suppliers often sell vegetable gel caps as well. Make sure you know which type you are buying if you are vegetarian.
References
Writer Bio
With 10 years of academic writing/editing experience, Rain Morie took the leap into independent writing, editing and photography in 2006. Publications Morie has written for include "AllVoices," Today.Com and Bright Hub. Morie has a fine art education in dance and photography. She returned to university to complete a B.A. and master's in sociology and psychology.