Making stevia sweetener

The mission: making my own liquid stevia sweetener.

The result: Promising, but I am not totally satisfied, so I am still working on it.

Even though I know that my stevia plants will still be there next year and will continue to grow in the herb garden, but the plants will die down when the weather gets cold enough. When that happens I won't be able to pluck the leaves to steep with my tea. I have been trying to decide how to preserve my stevia plants to use as a sweetener during the winter.

Drying the leaves works. I think the only thing I don't like about the dried leaves is that they do have a taste. I would prefer to taste the flavor of what I want sweetened rather than the taste of the sweetener.

I tried boiling some stevia, as you can see in the photo above. I then poured off the liquid and stored the stevia extract in the refrigerator. This was better, but I think it still had more flavor than I want in a sweetener.

Now I am thinking a distillation process is what I need, to get the sweetness, but not the flavor. I don't know how to do it and I am thinking it might be more trouble than it is worth. I am willing to find out more to see if I can do it.