Saturday, January 18, 2020

Fast Tincture Making Using 98% Alcohol



How to make a tincture in a day.

Its is always best to make your tinctures by letting the herbs sit in the alcohol for at least a week, but what to do when you need to make a tincture now, like today. 

I have been making a winter cold syrup for many years now using a great formula that really works well. It is a really simple one also. I know that Ihave written about it in the past but I'll write it out here as well. 

It is made by adding equal parts of the six plants listed below.

  • Elder flowers
  • Elderberries
  • Chamomile
  • Linden
  • Yarrow
  • Catnip

About a year ago I started to offer it in tincture form as well. 

The problem is the time it takes to make and well I guess that is also my problem of not preparing enough in advance.

So at the beginning of the winter when someone asked for the tincture form and I had not been prepared I used 98% alcohol mixed with a high concentrated water base extract to make a quick fix tincture that worked out pretty well. 

This is how I did it and the out come worked well.

But still I would suggest being better prepared and not having to go this route. 

I blended 25 grams of the mixed dry herbs until it was a fine powder.

Then I added 200 ml of boiling water and left it to steep for about an hour. 

After pressing and filtering I had about 100 ml of a very dark water based extract that I added an equivalent amount of the 98% alcohol to. 

There was some sort of congeling that happened as a reaction to the alcohol so I needed to run it through a cheesecloth again, but still the resulting 49% alcohol herbal extract that I had as a finished product was perfect for what I needed. 

I had a bottle for myself that I used and it worked great.