Tincture Making

It’s was about time.

I had bought the alcohol.

I had read the books.

And to be fair, I had been taught how to do it at Uni.

But out in the community, on my own, I never quite mustered the courage to go out and pick herbs and tranform them into my own tinctures. Instead, I have been buying them in from herbal medicine suppliers, [yes, there are such things…].

A tincture is a form of herbal medicine. You get the herb, put it in a mix of alcohol and water to extract medicinal constituents, leave it for a couple of weeks, then strain and bottle.

I chose dandelion leaf [Taraxacum officinale folia] from my garden lawn. I knew there had been no pesticides sprayed, we have no cats or dogs, and to be fair – it’s just beyond my patio….

I picked 200g of the fresh leaf. This is what it looks like;

You have to pick it over, take out bugs, check for blemishes, and generally ‘garble’, as James Green says in ‘The Herbal Medicine-Maker’s Handbook’ .

So, I sorted it out carefully

and snipped the end stalks off.

And then I weighed it…

 Next step was to snip it up small. This would have taken all morning with a pair of kitchen scissors, so I fed it through my Kitchen Aid blender handful by handful:

This was quicker, but still took a while.

each load of leaves was comminuted

[useful word, look it up]

into a small amount at the bottom.

Until eventually, I had a bowl full of fresh, lush green-ness!

So then, I measured the alcohol. 25% ethanol with 75% water.

Put the mashed  herb in a clean jar,

poured  in the menstruum [that’s the water and alcohol mix]

 shook it about and sealed it up

And there, my friends, you have it.

This jar will sit in a dark place for 2 weeks.

I will give it a little shake every now and then, to mix it up.

And then, I will strain it and bottle it.

If I remember, I will take pics and post them up.

If you want to try using herbs, buy these 3 books!

1. Wild Drugs by Zoe Hawes  [available from Amazon]

2. Practical Herbs by Henriette Kress [available from her website www.henriettesherbal.com]

3.  ‘The Herbal Medicine-Maker’s Handbook’ by James Green [available from Amazon]