Make Your Own Tinctures

Have your herbs and take them too - Make your own tinctures

by Paul Fassa

The effort to restrict supplements has begun in a failing economy. One has to be creative to offset or avoid these increasing efforts to deprive us of supplements and natural medicines. One solution is to make and store our own herbal tinctures and extracts. It's actually quite easy.

If herbs become too difficult to purchase, it doesn't take much soil to grow your own.

Tincture Extract Advantages

The initial investment involves buying one or more large jars and one or two ounce dropper bottles. Then you can buy a pound of herbs on line for the same price as a one ounce tincture off the shelf. Just make sure you select herbs that are organic and not irradiated.

Preparing teas and decoctions are daily or almost daily enterprises. A tincture will last for a much, much longer time. Once the tincture is ready, you can tap into it daily with a dropper full or two. Enjoying the herbal wonders daily for a year or so after a twenty to thirty dollar investment means you can enjoy the benefits of herbal extracts for pennies a day.

A Basic Formula

One recipe uses vodka, which is a combination of pure water (hopefully) and ethyl alcohol (aka, ethanol and grain alcohol, the type that is drinkable). The alcohol that can kill with a couple of sips is isopropyl or rubbing alcohol.

If you want to ensure purity, you can buy grain alcohol and distilled water separately then mix them. The word "proof" alongside a number indicates twice the percentage of alcohol. In other words, 80 proof vodka is 40% alcohol with 60% water, which many consider the ideal ratio for tinctures.

Others prefer 50/50, which means the vodka needs to be 100 proof. Pure grain alcohol is 200 proof. A little of that in a punch bowl goes a long way! So you can use the most common ratio of 60% water by volume with 40% ethanol (ethyl or grain alcohol), or simply go 50/50 with the two liquids.

Use a large glass jar with a screw on cap, like a mason jar. Pour in the dried herbs up to one-third or almost half the container. The bulkier the herbs, the more should go into the jar. Then take your vodka or alcohol/water solution and pour it to almost the top, allowing some space to swoosh the solution by gently shaking the capped jar.

Though many say two weeks seasoning is sufficient, this author was instructed by a naturopath/herbalist to season for 30 days. Either way, the jar should season in a cool, dark space and be shaken gently each day during its seasoning cycle. After seasoning, you can filter out the herbs and put the liquid into another glass container, or simply leave it and siphon off a bit at a time.

You can use one or two ounce glass bottles with glass eyedroppers for taking the tincture. This way the mother jar can be kept off to the side in a dark space, with or without the herbs. One or two full droppers full daily are recommended for most. It usually takes two dropper squeezes to make one full dropper since it's impossible to get a full dropper full in one draw. You can simply squirt it directly into your mouth or under your tongue, or mix it with water or tea.

Those, who need to avoid alcohol completely, should place the tincture into a cup of hot water and let is sit until cool enough to drink. This helps evaporate some of the alcohol content away.