How to store the olives

To get an oil of best quality it is advisable to grind the olives within brief time, maximum 1- 2 days from the harvest. This is a very delicate moment, because it is necessary to prevent the natural chemical modifications that bring to an increase of the degrees of acidity and oxidation of the oil. The best conditions for the maintenance of the olives are the followings:

• Low temperature, 10 – 15 centigrade degrees;
• Low relative damp, not superior at 50 – 60%;
• Storage in thin layers with good circulation of air between the different layers.

However, remember that less time you have to storage the olives, the better it is for the quality of your oil.
Sometimes the storage from harvesting to pressing takes few hours and sometimes takes 12 – 24 hours. During the storage, the internal temperature of the olives is increasing by themselves and this will make the acidity of the olive oil to be higher. To prevent the increasing of temperature, we must always keep the olives cool by using special plastic boxes to store the olives until pressing. These boxes are designed to have holes from all sides of the boxes and there are 5 cm high on the top of each side of the box to allow the air to cool the olives inside these boxes, we also store our olives Boxes in cold area to be sure that the temperature of the olives did not increase