Tincture Making 101: Learn to Make a Fresh Plant Tincture of Comfrey Root Using Ratios!

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If you are new to making herbal extract tinctures, this is a great video to watch! Herb Nerd's founder Colleen has worked in medicinal herb labs for many years and wants to share this process with you in a fun and clear way so that you feel confident making precise and potent herbal extracts. FREE Medicine making content like this is hard to find, so please show your support by LIKING 👍🏾  this video and SUBSCRIBING to our channel.

🎞 IN THIS VIDEO: This 16 minute video will walk you through the process of making a fresh plant tincture step by step. Follow along with Colleen as she harvests, cleans, chops, and makes fresh comfrey leaf and root tincture. Unlike making a FOLK tincture, which involves pouring vodka over herbs, this video takes a deeper dive into using math, specifically RATIOS, to produce your tincture.

🧠 A bit about ratios:
We herbalists use WEIGHT to VOLUME (w : v) ratios in herbal medicine making, meaning that we use a kitchen scale to weigh the total amount of herb we are using for our extract, and then multiply that number by our volume to determine how much menstruum (alcohol solvent) to use. We measure our herb weight in GRAMS (g) and our menstruum/alcohol volume in MILLILITERS (ml). When making FRESH plant tinctures, we herbalists typically use a ratio of 1:2, for DRY plant tinctures, we go for anywhere from 1:3 to 1:5.

👉🏽 Here is an example:
For FRESH Plants, we use a ratio of 🌿 1:2 🌿 thats one part herb weight to two parts menstruum/alcohol. So, if you weighed your herb and it weighed 50 grams you would MULTIPLY that by 2 (50 x 2) to know your menstruum/alcohol volume = 100 milliliters of alcohol. Ta-da!
Still confused? Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

A bit about the menstruum ALCOHOL:
For the most precise tincture making, we herbalists DO NOT USE VODKA. It is preferable to source a high strength alcohol (95% ethanol/190 proof) and dilute it to the % alcohol strength you want.
Here is a great source for organic high proof alcohol, we like to use 190 proof organic cane:
https://organicalcohol.com/organic-ca...

There are a few herb books out there that have helpful charts listing herbs and the best strength alcohol to use to extract their desirable constituents:
📕 The Herbal Medicine Maker’s Handbook by James Green
https://www.botanicalife.com/books-ta...
📘 Herbal Constituents: foundations of phytochemistry by Lisa Ganora
https://herbalconstituents.com/herbal...
📙 Herbal Medicine From the Heart of the Earth by Sharol Tilgner
https://youarethehealer.org/book-stor...

In this video, we keep our alcohol at full strength (we call this 100% alcohol), as the water content in the comfrey root will dilute the alcohol significantly. You could drop the % strength down to 75/80% alcohol and then you'll extract more of the water soluble mucilaginous molecules in your extract. As long as your final alcohol % is above 25% ethanol, you should be golden. You can check your final alcohol strength after pressing your tincture using an alcohol hydrometer.
link: https://www.amazon.com/AYIGU-Hydromet...

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