A friend found a recipe for rose water, rose water is hard to find and expensive so I thought I would give it a go. I picked an assortment of my roses as you can see I lean heavily to the pinks. It was hard to tear the petals off of these beautiful things, but in the interest of science (smile) I did. Oh one thing I have learned since then was to cut the base off of the petals as they make the water bitter, it was a bit bitter so if I do it again I will pull off the petals and trim the base of them before using them.
The instructions called for a bowl raised out of the water that the petals were in, so I put the small bowl on another one that I turned upside down. I added about 3 cups of water and all the petals, it was a close fit and I had to smoosh some of the petals into the water so they didn't cover the empty bowl.
Next you put the lid to the pot on UPSIDE down so that it forms a concave lid, this is to allow the water that has evaporated ( or distilled) to run into the bowl, that is your rose water.
Below is how it looks as it is working, you can see the big water bubbles they will drip into the bowl and when you are finished you have a small amount of rose water.
I just simmered the petals until they looked like mush, and then let it cool and extracted the bowl, the yield was small and not to fragrent, but after all it was just a home made still and an experiment. After it all cooled down I squeezed the petals and got a lot more liquid. It was a brown color but there was probably 3or 4 cups of it.