Making tinctures are simple and easy to consume, although most don’t taste the greatest. They also have an indefinite shelf life if stored properly. Alcohol that is eighty to one hundred proof is used as the solvent. You must use dried herbs for tinctures. Always ground the dried herbs right before you get ready to make the tincture. To consume, place a few drops under your tongue and hold 20-30 seconds. If this is intolerable, you can place a few drops in a very small amount of water and drink. There are two methods to make tinctures. They are the folk method and the ratio method. The folk method is how many people make tinctures. They will cover the dried herbs in a jar with alcohol and turn once a day for four to six weeks. While this will work, doing the ratio method gives you more consistency from batch to batch and you will save on the amount of alcohol that you use. The following are steps for the ratio method.
- Powder the herbs finely.
- Using a scale, weigh the amount of herbs you have in grams. Place the herbs into a clean, dry glass jar. This doesn’t need to be a canning jar but it does need to be one with a good fitting lid.
- Next take the amount of grams you had and multiply by five. Example: 20 grams of herbs would need 100 grams of alcohol.
- Pour the correct amount of 80-100 proof alcohol over the herbs.
- Shake the jar to cover all the herbs.
- Seal the jar with a tight-fitting lid. It does sometimes help to place a piece of parchment paper under the lid, as the alcohol may begin rusting your lid without some type of barrier between it and the alcohol.
- Place jar in a cool and dark area for 6-8 weeks.. This could be a cabinet or dark room.
- Every day, turn the jar upside down to mix the herbs and alcohol together.
- Strain herbs from the liquid and pour liquid into an amber bottle. This must be amber. The amber will not allow light to penetrate. Light can denature the tincture.
- Store in a cool, dry, dark area.
NOTE 1: You can put tinctures into amber colored mason jars. They are quite expensive. If you don’t have this option, you can always wrap the jars with a towel to keep sunlight away. I do this simply because if I place them in a dark room, I forget about them and they don’t get mixed once a day. Even with wrapping them with a towel, make sure they stay cool and out of sunlight.
NOTE 2: If using the herb called Lobelia, do a one to ten ratio. Lobelia is very potent so it is best to multiply the amount of herbs by ten instead of five when making this particular tincture.
NOTE 3: Shephard’s Purse herb is the only herb in which you can use fresh when making a tincture. It has an almost nonexistent water content and it seems to work better when not dried.
NOTE 4: Never mix already made tinctures. You can put multiple herbs into one tincture when making, but once it is made, don’t pour one tincture into another.
If you want to purchase herbs, please consider using this affiliate link to purchase them. I highly recommend this link because of how they process and store herbs. You can’t always trust who you purchase from online, but with this company, I truly do feel it is top of the line and high quality. Just go to this link and type in the herb you desire in the search box.
If you would like to find out more about the author or learn about other herbs, please consider visiting this link.
Stay natural!
~Dr. Amanda P. Cartwright