You may have heard of tinctures but wondered what they are. Tinctures are at the heart of many Herbalists dispensaries and I am no exception. A tincture is a concentrated liquid extract of a medicinal plant. Because the tincture is concentrated you only need to take a small amount such as 3 teaspoons a day, diluted in water, usually over a period of weeks or months. Many people enjoy how simple and convenient this is and herbalists love them because they are potent, easy to blend together and have a long shelf life. Tinctures can be made from all the parts of a plant including the leaf, flower, seed, root, bark and resin; tinctures are also made from medicinal mushrooms (though this has a more complicated manufacturing process). HOW ARE TINCTURES MADE? The plant or mushroom material is usually dried, ground up and then soaked or ‘macerated’ in grain alcohol and water for anywhere between 2 and 8 weeks in a cool dark place. This allows time for the medicinal plant chemicals to be liberated and dissolved from the plant fibres and move into the liquid in solution. The alcohol strength can be anywhere between 20% and 90% depending on the herb or mushroom. The mixture is then strained and bottled and -voila-. There are many different strengths of tincture, some are made with dried plant material, some are made with freshly picked plants (like many of my own wild crafted tinctures).Tinctures can be blended together easily, which is what I spend lots of time doing, and that’s where the beautiful ‘art’ of herbalism comes in. Every tincture blend I create for a client is unique, designed specifically for that client’s individual health picture and constitution I tend to blend between 4 and 7 different tinctures together for my clients for a typical tincture blend, however, single plant tinctures or ‘simples’ as they’re known, can also be very effective, such as Echinacea for a virus or Valerian for sleep.
I probably keep over 120 different tinctures in my dispensary, some which I make myself, from fresh foraged ingredients such as Elderberry or Yarrow and others I buy in from trusted suppliers.
If you’d like to learn how to make tinctures look out for my Herbal medicine-making course, coming up in the spring.
Tinctures are just one of the forms of herbal medicine that I keep, I also keep dried herbs for teas, capsules, creams and oils.