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How Many Olives Needed To Make Olive Oil
When olive oil is made, it is made from the pulp of the olives, just like any other fruit-based oil like coconut or almond. So, if we make 1 litre of extra virgin olive oil, we need 5 to 6 kgs of whole olives. Or 6000 to 8000 olives to make 1 litre olive oil.
Here, I’ll share the step-by-step process of making olive oil using kitchen utensils and give you helpful tips on making your own olive oil, one of the best in the world.
You can make your own olive oil at home using fresh raw olive fruit, preferably from the olive tree. If you don’t have your own olive grove, you’ll need to find a farm and buy freshly picked raw olives.
First, you must source fresh or purchased olives from your olive trees. So, if you don’t have a crusher (a little expensive equipment, but worth it if you intend to make olive oil extraction permanent), you need to peel olives with a cherry pit/olives, which is labour-intensive. If removing the olives seems too laborious, you can use hammers to grind the olives into a coarse paste.
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How to harvest olives?
Depending on the size of your trees, you can hand-pick them into a bucket by gently pulling the olive branches down without lifting the leaves or branches from your trees to remove the olives. This system is suitable for any variety; olives can be harvested by hand or with a shaker.
The maturity of olives at harvest can range from completely green to completely black (all olives eventually turn black), depending on the type of oil desired. When making oil from olives, the fruits can be ripe or unripe, green or black, although this changes the flavour profile.
It is not necessary that the olives be completely dry, as we are going to crush the olives, and any water will eventually separate from the oil during processing.
Although table olives in California are heavily irrigated (the size of the fruit increases with the addition of water), the quality of the olive oil improves with a small amount of water added.
On the other hand, we have high-yielding late-harvest varieties that can produce 1 litre of oil from just 4 kg of olives. For example, in Jaén, with higher yields, it only takes about 4 kg of olives to produce 1 litre of oil.
How many olives do olive trees yield?
For example, low-yielding and early-harvest varieties may require over 10 pounds of olives to produce one litre of olive oil. Some mature trees that have not been pruned can be 40 to 60 feet tall and produce up to 800 pounds of olives, while others only produce 50.
Ultra-high-density olive trees can produce over 5 kg of olives in good years. As for traditional olive groves, in good years, the yield of olive trees can exceed 100 kg and 5000 kg of olives per hectare.
With well-maintained olive trees, yields of over 80,000 kg/ha and 12 to 15% on dry soil can be obtained in stress years. I will give examples of how many kilograms of olives an olive tree produces in my growing area.
It takes 4 to 5 kg of olives to produce 1 litre of olive oil.
The age of the trees affects only the quantity produced, not the quality. Kilograms of olives and litres of oil produced by an olive tree depend on climate, soil quality, presence of parasites, treatments carried out, olive tree variety, plant density, etc.
| Olives | Olive Oil |
| 4 kg | 1 liter oil |
| 10 kg | Between 1 to 2 liter of oil |
| 20 kg | Between 3 to 4 liter of oil |
What quantities of olives are required to produce olive oil?
Since it takes about five kilograms of olives to produce a litre of oil, the tree can only produce three to four litres per year, which is a small production. By reducing it to a smaller ratio, you can end up with 0.5 to 2 gallons of 100 lb olive oil.
Many varieties make excellent oil and table olives, so you can have your own oil and eat olives. You can use canola or vegetable oil with a fairly high smoke point and a neutral flavour that doesn’t overpower the flavour of any other ingredient.
When oil is extracted from high-quality olives, its raw material is rich in polyphenols, organic nutrients and natural flavours. The smoothie is also cheaper for olive growers, and while it’s much less bitter, you end up with oil with fewer polyphenols.
Processing and packaging procedure
Lesser quality olives or olives harvested later in the season go through the same extraction steps:
- Once harvested, the oil goes through a refining process, including thermal or chemical refining, to remove any unwanted flavours that may remain after pressing or residual solids
- After harvesting freshly pressed olive oil, manufacturers can package it in its natural, unrefined form or subject it to additional refining processes.
Stir the soft paste vigorously with a spoon for a few minutes to extract the oil from the pomace or pulp. Since olives contain about 60% oil, the pulp obtained by crushing traditionally has a thick consistency similar to that of oats.
We harvest mid-season unripe Mission olives, which produce a strong oil with a grassy, pungent, slightly bitter taste. The most common olive varieties in California, Manzanillo and Mission, contain 15 to 30% oil by volume. The olive chopping process requires enough olives (1,000 pounds minimum) to work effectively, so even small olive growers can make their lives work by combining olives.
Although their placement can be carefully improved, olive trees produce less fruit in poor, shallow, and rocky soils.
Deep, rich soils are unsuitable for olive cultivation, as deep soils tend to grow too strong trees. Soils where tobacco, cotton, sunflowers… have been previously grown may contain Verticillium wilt or nematodes harmful to olive trees.
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The highest cost of olive oil production has always been manual harvesting (variable, but between $300 and $400 per ton). If you buy extra virgin olive oil already branded and bottled by the respective manufacturer, you can get it for 20 euros (~$23).
It’s a good way to get pure, unfiltered olive oil at home, as long as you can easily get fresh, raw olives freshly picked from olive trees.
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A special day when you can participate in something similar to a small Mediterranean country where everyone brings their olives to the country’s centre, and the mill processes all the olives for the villagers. They all crushed the villagers.
How Many Olives Does it Take to Make a Litter of Olive Oil?
Olive oil can be utilized in various ways, like coating salads or cooking your food in it. The point of surprise and appreciation is that for every litre of olive oil, almost 1375 olives are utilized, which takes about 47 minutes to select.
Are green olives healthier than black olives?
Green and black olives are the same in nutritional content. They are both blessed with an elevated quantity of copper and iron, and they also contain a good supply of healthy monosaturated fat. Additionally, there is an elevated quantity of polyphenols, flavinoids and vitamin E. These are antioxidants that prevent any inflammatory conditions.
Can olives make you sick?
If the olives have gone stale, they can be the cause of vomiting and diarrhoea as well. These are signs of food poisoning. With a good intake of water, activated charcoal and the removal of the stomach contents, the situation can be solved rapidly. However, an awful condition needs to be treated at a hospital.