Making Tinctures – What I Made

The tinctures have been sitting in the cupboard for a few days to three weeks now, this has been a fun project. I going to show you how to finish the process, then in some future blogs I will be taking the tinctures and using them in recipes.

After putting the dried herbs or botanical mixtures into the cupboard every day I would pull them out and shake the jar a bit. This would help stir the product and allow for maximum extraction. This was a very interesting and exciting process to see how long it took to complete the extractions.

Some of the botanicals, like Rose Buds, only took about three days, I could tell because the dried rose buds faded to a pale pink color and the liquid portion turned a really pretty red color. The ground vanilla beans were left for the full three weeks and the liquid turned a beautiful brownish color.

When I felt that the extraction process was completed I took the jar and strained it into another clean jar. I used a couple of different strainers: one for the bigger pieces and then a really fine strainer to make sure I got all the solid plant material out of the finished tinctures. It is important to filter well. Use colanders, stainless steel mesh strainers and even stainless steel coffee filters. There are some fabric strainers for tea that have a 100 mesh screen, these will remove the really fine particulate.

I have added a few photos of the finishing process so check back soon and I will show you how to use these in some recipes.