What does "cold-pressed" mean for us?

The generally-accepted standard for "cold-pressed" oil is that it doesn't exceed a temperature of 50 degrees Centigrade. At Liven, we strive to keep the temperature of the oil during pressing at no more than 40 degrees Centigrade, sometimes lower. The goal being that the oil temperature doesn't exceed that of the human body.

The reason that the oil heats up during the pressing process has to do with the friction created by the seeds when they are subjected to pressure, which extracts the oil from the seed or nut. The harder the seed and lower the oil content, generally the higher tendency of the raw material to heat up during production. So, nuts like almonds and peanuts generally don't generate a lot of heat, while grapeseed, or seeds that retain their shell coating can reach a very high temperature. 

We have several tools and techniques to control the temperature of the oil during the production process. First, we can slow down the rpm of the machine. This reduces the speed of the intake, and minimizes the friction, but it also slows down the production, meaning we make less oil in a defined period of time. Sometimes we use a fan to cool the press, but mostly we use a specialized cooling sleeve that wraps around the barrel, and is fed constantly by a pump with cold water, to reduce the temperature of the pressing process by up to 20-30 degrees. While maintaining the quality of the oil, these techniques impact the time and productivity of our work, and also the yield. So, as you might know from making peanut butter for example, if you use less heat, it's hard to extract the oil from a seed or nut. So while at 50 or 60 degrees we might extract 2 liters of a given seed or nut, at 35 or 40 we only extract 1.5 liters or less.

There are many dishonest tricks in the industry, for example, perhaps the manufacturers roasts the raw material before pressing the oil, but then "cold-presses" it at a certain temperature. Understandably, their goal is to produce the maximum amount oil in a given time or from a given quantity of raw material. Our goal is to produce the highest quality oil at a constant temperature, and as such we sacrifice the yield from the raw material and also the time it takes to produce it.

We will leave for another post an explanation of the difference between refined oil and cold-pressed, and the other techniques of mass production (including dilution and adulteration) versus how we produce our seed and nut oils. Luckily there are many new sources of information on the internet and exposes of bad industry actions and dishonest labeling and marketing behaviors. The best gauge of quality is your own sense and intuition - does the oil resemble the raw material it comes from or not?

We are happy to show our techniques and equipment, and we are always making small changes to our production and filtering, when we learn about a new piece of equipment, or when we discover a new technique. We hope it becomes the norm to ask not why our oils are so different from what's on the market, but why many of the commercial oils bear no resemblance to the raw material they supposedly are produced from!