This is a post in the 6 Categories of Herbal Remedies series. To read the previous post, go here.
To start from the beginning of the series, go here.
Alcohol preparations are some of the most common herbal remedies to find in stores, second only to capsules. For tinctures, they’re easy to carry, quick to take, require only small amounts to be effective, and the effects can be pretty immediate depending on the herb. Alcohol preparations are also shelf stable and can last five years or longer if stored correctly (out of direct sunlight.)
Of course, alcohol is not an option for everyone–for people who can’t have alcohol, glycerites make a good substitute.
Buying tinctures can be a little pricey, which puts them out of reach for many people. Thankfully they’re easy to make at home for a fraction the cost. The downside is that they take several weeks to be ready, so if you need a particular herbal tincture now, you can either opt for store-bought or the percolation method (which we’ll cover below.)
Tinctures
The method of tincture making discussed here is sometimes call the folk method or the simple maceration method. It’ll work for most herbs, and I’ll note the exceptions.
To make tincture: take a jar and fill it between a 1/4 to 3/4 of the way with your chosen herb, then add alcohol until you have about an inch of alcohol covering over the herbs. (You might need to wait for the herbs to settle to make sure there’s enough alcohol.) Then cap and wait 4 to 6 weeks, depending on how strong you want the tincture, and strain, keeping the liquid and discarding (or composting!) the herbs.
(You might’ve noticed that this is almost identical to the method of preparing vinegars–and you’re right!)
But what kind of alcohol to use?
For most herbs, vodka or brandy works just fine, any 80 to 100 proof alcohol. I like to tincture rose in brandy, and vodka for basically everything else. You can get creative too–if you’re tincturing herbs to help with urinary issues, try tincturing them in gin, which already contains juniper (urinary antiseptic). There are a few practical considerations too:
- If you want to extract resins, use grain alcohol (95%). Woody medicinal mushrooms like reishi or chaga also extract better in grain alcohol
- If you want to extract mucilagens (viscous polysaccharides like one finds in cinnamon or marshmallow root), use water with just enough alcohol to stop it from molding (20%)
- You can tincture in wines! Keep in mind that 20% alcohol is the minimum needed to preserve the remedy and make it shelf stable
I make tinctures via the folk method described here, but if you want to get more technical with it using weight measurements and ratios, I recommend Richo Cech’s book, Making Plant Medicine. He has ratios specific to individual herbs, but that level of granularity isn’t necessary if you don’t want to go there. The folk method will give you effective tinctures too.
Math will be needed if you don’t want to wait 4 weeks for your tincture though, because you can use the percolation method.
Percolation
Percolation is a way of preparing tinctures quickly that trades time for simplicity. In other words, you can make a tincture fast, but it’s more complicated than the folk method, both in the steps and in the equipment required.
First you will need a percolation funnel, which can be made at home using a glass bottle and a glass cutter (here’s a picture of a homemade percolation funnel), and a coffee filter. Percolation also requires powdered herbs–while it’s possible to powder dried herbs at home, you need a heavy-duty blender for it. (Your Vitamix is not enough!)
Now we do the math. Decide how strong you want the final tincture to be (1:2 and 1:4 ratios are common). If you want 1:4, you will need four times the amount of vodka as you have powdered herbs. So, for 4oz of powdered herb, you’ll need 16oz of vodka. You will also need around half that much additional vodka for the premoistening step.
On to the making (this one gets a bullet list for being complicated):
- Mix the powdered herb with the vodka set aside for premoistening, you want a consistency like crumbly sand. Let that sit over night–this prevents your ratio from getting thrown off, since the powder will absorb this initial vodka.
- Take your coffee filter, fold it in half and in half again so it looks like a quarter of a circle (or a slice of pie), then peel one layer away from the others so it makes a cone-shaped filter. Put the filter into the funnel, wet it with a bit of vodka so it sticks to the sides.
- Pack the filter with powdered herb, loosely towards the bottom and more firmly as you fill it. Don’t fill above the filter, and try to level out the packed surface as much as possible
- Put the funnel into the percolation collection jar, and slowly pour the vodka in. You might need to pour it in batches, waiting for the vodka to seep in.
- Vodka will start dripping through the funnel! Great, this is as planned–you can tighten or loosen the cap to adjust the flow of the dip. You want about one drip per second.
- When all the vodka has drained through (several hours later), you can bottle and label it with the ratio (otherwise you will forget. Anyways it’s just good practice.)
Of course, these all presume that alcohol is an option. For many people it’s not, for a variety of reasons. This is where glycerites come in!
Glycerites
Glycerites are tinctures made from glycerine, a sweet, clear, flavorless liquid extracted from vegetable oils. They are not quite as potent as alcohol tinctures, but are still effective. Many are also delicious!
Making a glycerite is functionally the same as making an alcohol tincture, but there’s a small difference between working with fresh vs dried herbs.
To make a glycerite: if using fresh herbs, simply fill a jar with the herbs and add enough glycerine to cover them. If using dried herbs, fill a jar half way with herbs, then dilute the glycerine 3:1 with water (three parts glycerine, one part water), and cover the herbs to within one inch of the top of the jar (the dried herbs will expand as they steep). In both cases, then cap the jar and let it sit for 4 to 6 weeks; then strain out the herbs, keeping the liquid.
So that's the how and why of alcohol-based herbal preparations, and an alcohol-free option! Tinctures will show up again as an ingredient in other preparations, so I hope this helps you learn this widely-familiar preparation style!
What are your go-to tinctures? Have you made glycerites before?
This is the third post in the 6 Categories of Herbal Remedies series. To read the next post, go here.