Do you know what types of olives they are? Some are better suited than others to make olive oil.

Pressing oil is quite laborious and yield can be pretty low. It would be best to have an olive press. Even if it's a basic one. Or is somebody nearby with an olive press? Or can you rig up a really basic one?

If feasible, ask the owner of the original grove what variety they are, Amanda. That will determine what you can do with them. If asking isn't feasible, you could always taste one. If too bitter to eat, it's probably suitable for oil. They harvest in autumn in Italy, so that's probably when they're ripe. You'd need an awful lot of olives to produce even a bottle of oil. I once saw a small-scale oil operation in Italy. They ground the olives to paste with huge stone wheels, then pressed the paste to extract the oil. Got any huge stone wheels? :)

Finbar, I thought all fresh olives were too bitter to eat. Don't they have to be marinated in brine for days to make them palatable?

That's what I thought, too. You can't eat olives fresh off the tree. They have to be soaked and rinsed in water first for a considerable length of time.

Mmmmm. I was given one to nibble in Italy. It was palatable. Maybe some varieties are a bit less pungent.

Olives are actually disgusting to the point of being toxic straight off the tree. The pickling process is months before they are edible. We pickle our own olives some years, when we have time. It's something my parents always did and I learnt it from them.

Amanda you could press them for oil but as spatzbear said the yield will be very low. You need BUCKETS of olives to get much oil. Why don't you learn to love olives and EAT them! :P

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Maybe I only thought it was straight from the tree. Maybe I'd had a couple of glasses of something. Which is a vague possibility.

I have researched the process for treating them as I have two trees, and one approach is to actually soak the olives in caustic soda for one day, rinse well, and then into the brine. This is to make the skin penetrable for the salt.
I had a few olives on my trees last year but none at all this year, bloody things are more tempramental than tomatoes.
Finbar, try to remember what you were drinking that day, I want some :-)

Simple, Richard. If red - Chianti; if white - Pino Grigio.

If I remember correctly, liver goes well with a nice Chianti.

Mantis * ducks for cover*

Amanda, It's probably not going to be practical to extract the oil, as mentioned. I can send you some links with pics of simple olive presses which give you an idea of what's involved.
Pickling them in brine would be the easiest thing to do, you could give them away if you don't like them yourself, but it's still quite a long process.

Here is a link that might be useful: Olive press

Finbar there are some varieties that are left on the tree until they are very soft & over ripe, then they're just salted, but I doubt even you would eat them directly off the tree.

Here is a link that might be useful: pickling olives

here is a link that I have used for olives.
http://www.emeraldworld.net/olive.html
I dont like the lyme method but I have use the brine and the salt cured method. I can send you recipies if needed. Jan

Richard
I would keep caustic soda away from anything I had to eat. I don't know the exact way to process them but you don't need caustic soda and it can be done over a few weeks and even less depending on a few variables. From memory to ensure the salt etc penetrates you can pierce each one. I know it sounds like a big job but far safer than using caustic soda.

I will see what info I can get on how some relatives make theirs as it is getting close to the time.

Pickling Olives: I pickle olives with the method my Maltese grandmother uses. 1. soak the olives in water for 5 - 7 days in water, changing the water every day. After that I preserve them in olive oil with herbs, garlic and chilli.

Amanda, I cant remember where you live in WA, but there is an Italian guy in Wanneroo that crush your olives for you.
However, you might like to look at the following url which has a list of olive oil processors in Australia...Good luck

Here is a link that might be useful: olive oil processors in australia

well you guys all seem to know a lot about raw black olives....as the question has been on my mind for some time! The black olive is one of the world's highest calcium containing fruits, they are alkalizing and a number one health rejuvenator, but i cant eat them sun-dried, i have to find some fresh that are palatable to me, i like bitter, even very bitter, i flew all the way across the state of california to get some but to my loss they were a variety that did not taste well...i want fresh black olive like the kind i have bought from peru that is sun-dried...and solid...these ones i tried were mostly purple juice in the inside..and very small..i had no idea i was blind to the variety they were before i left...if anyone can help me find a variety of fresh black olive that at least may have some claims of palatability id be thankful..if not just any old plain fresh uncured off the tree olives...i dont want cured..I DONT WANT CURED i want straight from mother nature's olive tree...and i heard from one farmer that theres this variety in italy that is called dolce de andrea that you can eat off the tree, dont give up this post....and please talk more about off the tree types of olives...if you want to sen me some of these olives that are said to be too bitter or not palatable ill eat them and tell you how i like them, ferom someone who likes bitter, i want them for my health, that bitterness i heard is from something called oleuropin...bitter foods heal...alkalinityh heals, i have a body to heal...form junk food diet in the past, ive been sick...olive is a "god" food you know everyone talks about how its the fruit that symbolizes peace and all that, well duh, its full of calcium, that calcium, if you ever had a glass of green leaf juice and felt alkalinization, not that i suggest eating leaves, no no more, i suggest olives, but i need ot get some that are fresh and not sun-dried...ive ben looking for years and wont stop until im in "heaven" so let me know, email me at easy@rawfoods.com or post here

Thanks for bumping this thread up, rawblackolive. Hope you find a good raw olive.

Amanda, any updates on your oil production venture?

One would think that after watchin their Missus cure green Olives for years that one would know as much of the process as she did lol...
But!!! i shall endevour to pass on a wee bit and sus the Missus out for further info if the interst is required:)...
Make a brine as follows:)...
(a) Measure out how many jars you will need to to fill or take the amount of Olives you wish to cure..
(b)measure the water one jar holds by the amount of jars you will need ie;4x2litre jars = 8 litres water:)..
(c)Place water in large pot , add a bit of heat and add salt, stir and how does the egg trick go??, brine is salty enough once n egg floats to the surface:)..
Now to make the Olives peneatrable , we are talking about green Olives i presume??, cause i am as its the only Olive worth curing :)....
One must break the skin of the Olive and two ways of doing this ..
grab each Olive and with a small knife cut two to three slices around the Olive lengthwise...Or....lay a small slab of timber on the deck, halfe a brick or comfy stone to fit in hand , hold Olive in one hand whilst hitting with brick or stone breaking the skin...trouble is ya end up with sore fingers each time ya miss the Olive and after ten or fifteen kilos of Olives the fingers come up black n blue in places ey:)..
Give your Olives a good wash, some peoples even leave em in fresh water for a day get rid of the first lot of bitterness, have heard others leave em up to three days..
Missus goes straight for the throat n dont leave em at all in the fresh...
place enough olives in each jar to not quite fill it and top up with cold brine,place a few grapeleaves ontop, coupla slices of lemon just ta hold down all the olives below the surface otherwise you'll get a few of the top ones go black n spoil...
Open your first jar after a week, grab an Olive out and give it the chew test make sure you dont spit it out in disgust lol, now it mightnt be what your quite used to as far as green Olives go but as long as it aint real bitter is the main thing as you still have a little to do with em ey:)..
Now if the taste is about there proceed to next step, if not , do not pass go, do not collect $100(bit of joke there joyce:)...
If still quite bitter leave em be a bit longer in the brine, if theyve lost their bitterness, wash well in fresh water, crush up some cloves of garlic(more the merrier) Corriander, mix it all through the Olives, drop the Olives back in a jar n top up with Olive Olive Oil , bit of an upside down jiggle n a shake n let sit there for few days:)..
After that ?? Bon Apetite me hopes..
That one method:), want me to sus out how ta pickle em???..
Cheers

Geeez, Peter, now I want to go out there and plant a few olive trees. But Kalamata Olives, they are my favourites!
Thanks for sharing this with us. :)

Yes please Volvo, I would appreciate instructions on how to pickle the olives too. At the moment the olives are still hanging on the tree...

Amanda

I have about now let me count hmmm five olive trees in my front garden. We bought them for there shape and because they are evergreen. Having the fruit is an extra bonus. They are ideal for here by the bay. some are kalamata olives some are another name but I cant think of it at the moment. I dont know how someone would try and eat them straight of the tree. They are very bitter and need to be processed before eating. We have some great olive groves around our way too. Jan

had lunch at a friend's place on the weekend who cures his own olives. The method he uses is almost exactly as described above.
Slit olives, soak in water for 5 - 7 days to remove bitter components. Change this daily.
Soak in brine solution for 2 to 3 months. He adds various things to the brine (chillies, garlic and so on), and seals by gently pouring olive oil on top. He was shown this by an old Greek guy, who used the egg method to determine the right brine concentration. But my friend looked up a more technical method and does his brine accordingly. He didn't want to rely on eggs. I forgot to ask him how to calculate it but I'm sure a search on Google will reveal all.
And rawblackolive, sorry, can't help you with an appropriate variety for raw eating. I've only ever tried raw olives once and they were revoltingly bitter. My interest in eating them raw is now less than zero! Good luck with your search though.

I went up to my friends farm last weekend & came back with a few kilos of olives to cure. They're mostly Verdales & some Hardy Mammoth.
The method I was told to use it pretty similiar to Peter's.
Don't wash the olives (unless they're very dirty) There are bacteria on the skin that are needed to start the fermentation.
I divided mine into 3, one lot were 'cracked' (whacked with a pestle), another slit with a knife on 2 sides, the last lot left whole.
They were placed into a 10% brine solution -100g cooking salt in 1 litre water. I like the idea of grape leaves & lemon to keep the olives under water, I cut up bits of plastic!
Every day for the next month - remove some of the solution & replace with fresh brine. The amount to remove seems to be a bit vague, I took about 50 - 250ml depending on size of jar & how much I spilt.
Taste the olives, if they're almost edible replace solution with fresh & leave for another month then pickle in 40% wine vinegar & 60%brine plus whatever herbs & spices you fancy.
The cracked olives should be ready to eat after 2 - 3 months, the slit olives after 6 & the whole after a year.
As usual I asked the tomato model to demonstrate, she is wearing traditional Australian olive processing wear - bikini & thongs & listening to Abba! (the beer is mine!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Olives

Great way to work, though I don't think the outfit is really me!

Amanda , get them Olives offa that tree and into them jars :)..Quicker you do it the quicker you get to eat them..
Sarah, i hope that stubby in that Pic didnt end up in the brine lol..I'll keep yez posted how long before they can be eaten as quite sure its much sooner than the three months ey..
Missus batched a lot yesterday and hopefully will end up with one or two five kilo cartons of fresh green Olives within the next three days fill up the empty jars out in the shed:)..
My favourite black Olive would have to be the Black(large) dried Date Olives...ABSOLUTELY LUV EM!!!!..
Never ever spend an overnighter out on the water without a share of these Olives for a quick snack if the fish are on the chew n the bellies on the growl at the same time lol..
Slice or two of freshly baked bread, some Olives , Piece or two of Fetta Cheese coupla home grown Tomato's n ya wander what the poor folks back home are eating lol..
Try chase up that Pickling recipe for yez..Have a cooking recipe programme on a floppy disk somewhere's at home whith more recipes on cooking Octopus that woulda made my Dad Busy for the next year or so if he was still around:)...
It should have curing Olives in it??..
can open the programme up, tell it what ya have in the vittles cupboard and it'll spit out a host of recipes for ya that you can make with said vittles...
Jotted in three potatoes , coupla carrots n sumthin else once and it came up with three different recipies lol..
Cheers

Hokeydokey's :), here's how ya do it..Crack or cut two ta three slices along your Olive as previous stated...
place Olives in jars n fill with water with wee little salt(pre brine your water)..
Empty water each day for three to five days and top up again..This gets rid of the bitterness in the Olive and the brine is supposed to stop the Olive from going too dark...(personally doesnt make all that much diference ey)..
After the five days or whatever, give the Olives a good wash, let strain, cut yourself some lemons and extract the juice...
We used seven lemons for six kilos of Olives...
Mix the juice along with halfe a cup of crushed Oregano through the Olives, place back in jars and seal tight for the time being...
One third of a cup of salt to every four cups of water you must make as a brine, this Juuuuust makes your egg sit upright :)...
When the brine is cold, fill up the jars to just wee way from the top..
Fill the rest of the top up with some Olive Oil and let sit till your Olives are ready for chewing into..
When they have lost all their bitternes and ready for the table, mix the garlic and coriander as ive previousely stated, grapeleave n slices of lemon and in ye ole ferfrigerator:)..
We just put all of ours on brine this morning so willkeep yez tuned..
Cheers

Sounds good Pete, I reckon my olives are pretty close to stage 2 so I'll have ago with your recipe this weekend.
I may try some with lime juice instead of lemon as I have some on my tree.
I'll let you know how they go!
Sarah

So, how did everybody's olives turn out? Have you had a taste test yet?

I'm only asking, cause I bought 1 big handful of fresh olives today and will try your recipe(s). :)

We have an olive tree in our front courtyard! And, naturally, everywhere we look in the countryside around us there are vast orchards of them. And grape vines!

But, finbar, is it flowering? Bearing fruit? What type is it?

How's the vino?

It's very cold here, icy wind, but glorious rain. Winter. Hope you are having a typical Italian summer. :)

How are the 2 monsters? Do they like Italy?

Dunno what type, Spatz. It's a bit cramped in the corner, overrun by - of all things - a massive loquat tree.

The vino? Very nice pino griggio is on the shelves in the local supermarket for about $6 a bottle, around a third of what it costs in a liquor outlet in Oz. The same thing with some very nice reds.

Typical late spring, early summer here. Some days in the high 20s, others in the high teens. It rains quite heavily about once a week. And there have been a couple of massive electrical storms very early - six-ish - in the morning.

The monsters arrived here at home last Friday night. Midnight. They landed - courtesy of Thai Airlines - in Milan at 7am on Friday, took a long time to get through customs, et al, and didn't leave the airport till 6pm. Then, a six hour drive from Milan down to here with a very nice Italian delivery driver who didn't speak a word of English but shared his foccacia dinner with them on the way! They're settling in nicely, eating well, and the local stray cat population has, for some unknown reason, absented itself.

Here's a link to some of Mrs finbar's pics.

Here is a link that might be useful: Life in Italy

Great pics Finbar. It looks like Dr Evil and Mini-me have settled in well. Nice old house you're in. Looks like it's hundreds of years old. Some beautiful scenery too.

Gees those presses are expensive... all up it would cost me about $6,000.00 just to press a bit of olive oil. Hmm, I might have to have a chat with my engineering mate up on the hill. Maybe there are other people around here who would press their own olives for oil but don't want to pay that much for equipment. The smallest amount that commercial places press is 50kg. I don't think the average back-yard olive grower would get that many.

Oh yeah - the 'raw' olives, like the tiny black ones, are dry salted.

Robyn

All this chatter about olives fetched me out of hibernation. Maybe.

We had our first frost last night and here's Finbah managing to boast about it being summer. Typical...

You're right about the olive presses Robyn, when I was asking this question earlier in the year, I really thought there would be a hand-driven, small something or other that we'd be able to buy or make. The idea was that we could produce enough oil from our olives just to keep us supplied. In my ignorance I really didn't think there was that much to it. I still don't see what's so difficult about it!

Amanda

Yes, Amanda, you should be able to make one using perhaps one of those kitchen waste disposal units that gring up everything. (Should be tough enough to grind olive seeds - some waste disposal units can grind up chop bones.) Combine that with a mixer thingy which is needed to make the oil separate from the mush, then a simple press. See, I have been thinking about this... ;-)

I've been thinking about it too Robyn, & have been considering setting up a small scale commercial press here on the edge of Sydney. The idea being that people could bring there olives to me & I could press it for them. I could either combine fruit from different gardens or mix it with my own.
Spatz my olives have turned out well, but it was a lot more time consuming & messy than I had anticipated. The first stage invoves a lactic acid fermentation & that meant when I took the lids off the brine fizzed out & left a horrible stain on my work tops! Good job I'm not house proud!

I've been looking at methods of pressing oil at home and it will require some sort of machinery. As stated above the olives need to be crushed/pulped then pressed to extract the oil. The waste disposal unit is a great idea for this and one I hadn't considered. I thought that one of those old 'manglers' (I think that's what they're called) they had on top of old washing machines might aid to do the pressing.

I also found out it takes 50kgs of olives to produce 1lt of oil. mmmm sounds like a lot of work just to make a litre, but don't let me discourage you as I also prefer things home-made, sometimes disregarding the cost or effort.

Though this is no use to you pepino, I write in case there are any south aussies reading - about 3 minutes drive from me is a place that will press olives for you, provided you have at least fifty kilos - I didn't realise that this would only yield about 1 litre of oil.
My views on olives are pretty well known - no produce that requires that amount of effort warrants that amount of space in my back yard!! My Mum pickled olives off some feral trees, and though the tree will survive and fruit in a very arid environment, the processing takes quite alot of water, not to mention time and energy. In South Oz, olives are a proclaimed weed, so if you plant one you are obliged to do something with the fruit, or you might get a dirty letter from the plant control people! I have however heard that modern cultivars aren't weedy - I hope that is true. In California, I am told the plantations produce sterile fruit, this is great, feral olives are a threat to biodiversity in my region, and are quite difficult to kill, requiring large amounts of herbicide.

regards. mudlark

Most varieties should give you 13 - 20% oil so that's a bit better, but yes it's a lot of work.
I spoke to someone a couple of weeks ago who had seen an old home press in a friends garage, he didn't know much about it though. I'll try & get some more details.

Graeme, loved the Pics:)..Now yourve inspired me to plan a trip to Greece where the bloodline hails from:)...
As for the Olives everyone:)..They have turned out perfecto and make fetta Cheese a wee more pleasant chewin on:)..
Who else tried the recipe for curing green Olives??..
wanna knwo how theirs turned out??..
Peter

My olives were green Pete & they've turned out great. My friends were too intent on getting as much oil as possible to let me have any black ones!

Good to see you here again, Amanda. Do stay! :)

Peter, the first olive I tried (after a few days in brine) was spit-out-yuk. But they are getting better and better. It's quite exciting stuff.

Now I need a good olive tree.

Spatz, should stay in the brine for awhile a previous mentioned ey and dont forget to give them a good wash, and let sit in Olive Oil n lemon crushed garlic , oregano n corianda fer a wee while ey :)..
Our Green olives are top company out in the Boat on a days outing lol, some fresh bread, fetta Cheese, freshly picked Tomato's n eatin like a King:)..
Cheers

I have just been tasteing my olives which have been sitting in this batch of brine, lemon, chilly and garlic for a while. The taste scrumdilliumtuose. And I havent even got to the olive oil stage yet. LOL. Jan