Chapter 197： Beeswax and cork

After dozens of perfumers arrived in East Friesland, Marin immediately arranged them and began to develop good perfumes. As for the variety, Marin first ordered the rose fragrance.

Rose is a common flower in Europe, common in Britain and Germany. Although the flowering period has now passed, there are still many farmers who took the rose petals early and sold them.

What these perfumers need to do is to soak and steam the purchased rose petals to purify the essential oil. Then, mix it with alcohol to make perfume. Of course, there are other things to be mixed. For example, add musk, **** or ambergris as a deodorant to ensure that the fragrance does not disperse for a long time.

If you don't add a fragrance fixer, the perfume smell will quickly dissipate, which is the level of toilet water.

Three kinds of fragrance fixatives, ambergris works best, but it is too expensive. Therefore, in consideration of cost, Marin directly excluded the formulation of adding ambergris as a deodorant. Even if such a formula is used, it can only be used as an ingredient for the top perfume.

Musk and **** incense are much cheaper. However, there is a big problem with musk, that is, pregnant women cannot smell it, otherwise it will easily lead to miscarriage. Therefore, Marin finally decided to use **** incense as a deodorant.

After all, the perfume is made for female users. Even if it is used by men, it is still in contact with women. If a pregnant woman is miscarried, it will be infamous and even enemies. Therefore, although Beaver Incense is more expensive than Musk, Marin chose Beaver Incense. Big deal, organize fishermen to catch beavers. Even, **** farming can be considered on a large scale to extract **** incense. It seems that there are more beavers in Canada, and it is also suitable for large-scale breeding there ...

When blending perfume, the alcohol given by Marin is medical alcohol with a concentration of more than 70%, which is much better than the spirits used by perfumers who have an alcohol level of about 50%. After all, Marina used multi-stage distillation to obtain such a high concentration of alcohol. Moreover, quicklime is used to absorb water.

After the successful deployment of perfume, the effect is quite good, Angela and Felice both like it very much. In fact, the reason why Marin opposed musk use was because she was afraid that Felice would smell miscarriage.

After getting the perfume, naturally consider the packaging. There is no problem with glass bottles. Before, Marin brought a group of artisans who could blow glass bottles from Venice and let them blow small glass bottles filled with perfume. That was no problem at all. The only trouble is sealing.

In this era, European bottles were sealed by corks and beeswax. First, choose the appropriate cork stopper and close the bottle tightly. Then, apply beeswax to the circle where the cork is in contact with the bottle to completely isolate the air.

The first batch of canned food in the world was sealed in this way. However, the cans were really heated before they were corked and sealed with beeswax.

Beeswax is okay, there are many in Europe. As long as sugar cane was introduced to Europe, Europeans wanted to eat sweet, and they could only choose honey. Therefore, Europeans started to keep bees very early. Beekeeping can not only produce honey, but also produce beeswax, propolis and royal jelly.

Because of its bitter taste, royal jelly has not attracted the attention of Europeans for a long time. Propolis is just a seal used to fix the nest, but it has not attracted the attention of Europeans. However, beeswax has attracted the attention of Europeans for a long time and is widely used.

Moreover, beeswax is a prop for consecration, which is placed directly on the altar. Therefore, most monasteries in Europe are beekeepers.

In the early Middle Ages, honey was precious. Some songs forced the nobility, and even started a war for a few boxes of bees. Of course, they are all village chief battle level, generally dozens of knights with a group of farmers and crowds holding a pitchfork. If aristocrats with financial strength reach the rank of mayor, how many boxes of bees would care? The same is the nobility, the gap is also very large. Rich aristocrats naturally don't have to grab beehives to get honey, they just spend money to buy it. Only the kind of poor nobles who have no money to buy honey will take the thugs to grab the bee box ...

In the trade between the Hanseatic League and Eastern Europe, one of the important commodities imported from Eastern Europe is beeswax. Looks like Eastern Europe, the labor price is cheaper. The thing of beekeeping depends on labor cost. Moreover, there are more forests and grasslands in Eastern Europe, more flowers naturally, and better beekeeping conditions.

Therefore, Marin wants to obtain beeswax from a wide range of sources. Moreover, the amount of beeswax is much less than that of cork when sealing. After all, cork requires a stopper, and the amount of beeswax only needs to cover the peripheral part of the cork stopper.

Uh ...

As for the cork stopper, Marin sadly found that there are only three countries producing cork in Europe-Portugal, Spain and France ...

Cork is cut from the bark of a cork tree, and it is only the layer in the bark close to the inside, only two or three centimeters thick. Then, the craftsmen carefully removed this layer of cork skin, stacked it with other cork skins, dried them after bonding, and then after cooking, softening, drying, directly cutting and punching, made cork stoppers and other supplies .

The reason why only Portugal, Spain and France produce cork stoppers is mainly because the cork tree is so coquettish ...

Cork trees are not adapted to hot climates or cold climates, only to warm climates throughout the year. That is to say, where it grows, it needs to be warm in winter and cool in summer ... A detailed count of Europe, and only Portugal on the edge of the Atlantic, is the most suitable for this requirement. The latitude of Portugal is low enough and it is certainly not cold. Coupled with the influence of the Atlantic ocean climate, it can't heat up. In this way, Portugal has become the most suitable place for cork trees in Europe. Later, Portugal was also known as the "Cork Kingdom".

Spain at the same latitude as Portugal also has some areas suitable for the growth of cork. This part of the area is mainly the part close to the Atlantic Ocean. The part near the Mediterranean Sea is very hot in summer and belongs to the Mediterranean climate, which is not suitable for the growth of cork. Therefore, only parts of Spain are suitable for the growth of cork.

Similarly, France has only some mountains in the southwest, suitable for the growth of cork, but it is not comparable to Portugal.

Right now, the amount of cork in Europe is not small, but not large. But Marin knew that he would definitely need a lot of cork in the future ~ www.novelhall.com ~ and not to mention that all these perfume bottles need cork stoppers, and those glass bottles for beer also need a lot of cork stoppers. Even the wine barrels and the oak barrels used by the sailors for fresh water also require cork stoppers.

This is still the current situation, in the future, Marin may need to take out the killer-the Mini Rifle. And the mini bullets of the Mini rifle also need cork ... Those canned bottles also need cork ...

Even, the flowering shells with wooden ammo support also require cork as ammo support, and the ammo support is so large, and it consumes a lot of cork.

Therefore, in the future, Marin's demand for cork is great.

However, the Portuguese have not realized that the demand for cork will increase in the future, and they are not very concerned about the development and utilization of cork trees. Many cork trees are still idle in the mountains ...

Marin did not think about transplanting cork trees to other areas, but the cork trees have been planted to be able to peel for 10 years ... Marin obviously ca n’t wait that long ... And, looking for a winter with a climate similar to Portugal It's not easy to find places that are warm in summer and cool ...

Therefore, Marin can only look at Portugal ...

However, because of the problem of large navigation, Marin and Portugal have a hatred. If Marin ’s men used Marin ’s name to buy cork in Portugal, the Portuguese might have broken their legs and sent it back. Not to mention letting Marin ’s men touch the cork trees in the Portuguese mountains ...

For this reason, after thinking about it, Marin had to entrust businessmen from other countries to let them go to Portugal to run the cork industry and find more cork trees. Then, take the goods from them again ...