As a herbalist I make my own tinctures they can be very simple to make and below you will find possibly the easiest way to make one.

A tincture is a traditional herbal preparation whereby the herb is soaked in alcohol to allow the active constituents to be extracted leaving you with a liquid with the same medicinal properties as the plant. As a qualified herbalist you can acquire a license to order large amounts of ethanol to create a tincture but I prefer to use vodka instead.

If you buy yourself a tincture you will find on it some notations which indicate it’s strength. 1:1 means that there is 1 part plant to 1 part alcohol and it doesn’t get much stronger than that! 2:1 means there is 2 parts plant to 1 part alcohol and so on. It will also tell you the percentage of the alcohol which was used 70%, 80%, 40% etc. When making it yourself it is quite difficult to create 1:1′s as the plant material is usually too bulky to be covered by an equal amount of alcohol. Personally I try to pack as much plant material in as possible and smell and taste the end result to assess whether I think it’s worth giving to a patient.

1. Pick your herb following the Foraging entry on the website
2. Wash it to make sure it’s clean of any mud and what not. Give it a pat down to dry it a bit.
Herbal Tinctures
3. Take a 40% bottle of vodka and pore a little off so you can fit as much plant material as possible into the bottle. You may want to push it down with a long pokey implement such as a wooden spoon but make sure you sterilise it with boiling water first.
Herbal Tinctures
4. Leave this for at least 6 weeks in a relatively cool place. Remember to make sure the plant material is completely covered by alcohol at all times and shake it every now and then as well.
5. After 6 weeks you can strain the herb off either through a cafetiere, tea strainer (not usually very successful) or a piece of clean muslin cloth. Ideally you would use a herb press for this step.
6. Squeeze all the extra bits out and place in dark coloured bottles to prevent sun damage.
7. Make a Label with the Latin name, common name (if you like), percentage of alcohol you used and the date it was bottled. In an ideal world you would also put your contact information on it so someone can contact you should it go horribly wrong for someone (highly unlikely). Moreover, if it was made in an environment with animals which people may have allergies to this should be noted and duly avoided where necessary.
8. Enjoy your tincture. The normal dosage for a tincture is usually 1-5ml three times a day with a little bit of water but experiment and see what works best for you.

More pictures to be added