Wade T. Smith, APRN, FNP-BC, walks through making a sage tincture: the one-to-five ratio of herb to menstruum, pre-moistening the herb, using at least 100-proof alcohol, and letting it drip slowly into a flask. He also shows tinctures he has made from calendula, nettle, dandelion and goldenrod.
Video Transcript
Today we’re going to make a sage tincture. Herbs are made into tinctures, and you can use the tincture for making soap. You can use it for making medicine. You can make lotions and salves.
Whenever you’re going to make a tincture, you want one part of your herb to five parts of your menstruum. You want to pre-moisten your herb and let it sit for about an hour. In this particular case, I weighed out 50 grams of herb, and now I’m going to put in 250 grams of the menstruum. You want at least 100-proof alcohol to make any tincture.
We’re going to add the 250 grams to our herb, and then we’re going to let this sit for 24 hours. After 24 hours, we’re going to open this stopcock and allow it to slowly drip into a flask. That will become our tincture.
I have some calendula tincture that I made. Here, I have some nettle tincture I made. These I got out of the yard. I made dandelion tincture, and this one is goldenrod, which is all around West Virginia. Using tinctures is what our ancestors did for medicine when there was no doctor around.
