Hey everyone, it's Mary Blue, herbalist in Rhode Island, and I wanted to share with you my hot tincture method, which has been revolutionary for me in my tincture making. Uh for the last almost 30 years, I made cold extraction tinctures just the way I was taught, which is not wrong, by the way. Uh I'd take some vodka or some alcohol, let it sit on the shelf for a month, shaking it every day, and then you'd strain it out and you have your tincture. And as I came to understand solvency, I noticed that a lot of my cold extraction tinctures, I wasn't getting the result I want. I wasn't sure if the ratios were right. Are they strong enough? They weren't strong enough. They didn't have a lot of taste or color. And then I started making mushroom tinctures where all of the mushroom tinctures are double extraction. That means you separated out the water part from the alcohol part and you're simmering and decocting and infusing those mushrooms. And I said, "Well, why don't I just try this on every other tincture? Why aren't we heating the water part of all of our tinctures? We're cold extracting everything." And I started to say like, we use heat for infusions. We use heat for decoctions. We use heat for soups. Like can you imagine a soup without simmering? It wouldn't work. The vegetables would just sit in the water. Right? Eventually, you might get some vitamins and minerals out of there, but not much. So, I started doing this twopart double extraction for every tincture. And it is revolutionary. It has saved me so much space because these tinctures are ready in 24 hours. I have never seen the colors that I am getting with these double extraction tinctures. And I've been making tinctures for 25 years. So, I really see the difference in the color, the smell, the taste, and so do my customers and clients. So, I'm saving space, saving money. Honestly, I don't need as much plant material when I'm doing these hot extractions. And I really want to show you how to make these hot hot extractions. So you can make these hot extractions, like I said, within 24 hours, but you can also let them sit a month, the traditional method, but I find this hot tincture method revolutionary, and I hope you do, too. So, let's make a hot tinure. >> We are going to be working with Hawthorne today. We have Hawthorne leaf, which is dried, and Hawthorne berry, which is also dried. Uh, I just want to go over some of the tools you're going to need. You're going to need a stainless steel pot. You are going to need some sort of mixer. So, I really love these immersion blenders uh for tincture making. I also use a Vitamix sometimes, but these immersion blenders are great because you can stick them right inside of the hot merating tincture without having to uh move really really hot liquids. I like to have a stainless steel funnel on hand, a fine mesh strainer, cheesecloth, and I really like working with stainless steel. So, I have a stainless steel spoon, and then of course, I have my measuring uh instruments, which usually I use mason jars. Uh glass, Pyrex works as well, any kind of measuring. So, I have all sorts of sizes of jars around because sometimes I want to have extra jars to move things in. I just like having extra jars around. So, I usually have at least one half gallon mason jar, at least one wide mouth quart, and pint. So, that's what we're starting with. So, let's get going. We're going to start with our water part, and then we're going to move on to our alcohol part. So, the water part involves figuring out how much tincture you want to make and what ratio you're going to use. Now, this is not a video on ratios. I'm going to go over very basic plant to menstrm ratios. Uh that is a whole another class and you can check that out in my herbal foundations online program. So let's start. We know we want to end up with a quart of tincture total when we're done. Half of that tincture is going to be 50% water. This is often represented as 50% W and 50% alcohol. That's usually 50% A. So, we need to start with a little bit more of those liquids so that uh we can accommodate for uh losing some of the liquids as the herbs soak up the liquids. We're going to be simmering some of the liquids off. So, we're starting with a little bit more. So, depending how much space the particular herb takes up in the jar, that's going to change uh the amount the weight of the herb you're going to put in. For something really light like a powder, uh you're going to put a little more herb. So maybe three ounces for 2 and 1/2 cups of water. Uh for something really fluffy like mother wart, you would put start with 1 oz of mother wart in the 2 and 1/2 cups of water to start. And we added 2 oz of Hawthorne berry. So you can see when we're looking at the space that this takes up in the jar, it looks like it's almost halfway. So once we add our water and blend it, this is going to reduce. So we're going to see it less. So this ratio with 3 oz ounces of plant matter and we're going to be putting about 24 ounces of water that is a 1 to8 ratio. So, our water part just started simmering. So, I'm going to turn off the heat and I'm going to blend with my immersion blender. And the reason I turn off the heat is because I do not want my immersion blender cord accidentally going into the heat and causing an electrical fire. So, it's really important just to turn the heat off when you're blending. The other thing about blending, it's so important to break down those cell walls and disperse all of the constituents into the water. The water catches it right up. So, let's turn off the heat and start blending. >> Okay. So, now that I've blended once, I'm going to turn the heat back on and put a lid on. Uh the heat is on very low. It's just at a mild simmer. Okay, let's start with our alcohol part. First things first, there are no flames in the room. Pilot lights, flames on the stove, wood stove, cigarettes, candles, put out all flames. We are going to be using 190 proof grain alcohol. So, this is from cane sugar. It's organic. It's GMO free. And it is a great solvent. It breaks down certain constituents and it also preserves the tincture. It makes it so nothing can grow in it. No bacteria, no mold, and preserves tinctures for years, really. So, let's get going on our alcohol part. So, one tip with this part is always to use a larger jar than you want to end up with. So, I know we want one quarter tincture. And when we add our water part to this, we're going to have a little bit more than one quart cuz there's going to be herbs in it. So, I'm starting larger. And I'm going to weigh out my herbs again. >> Okay. So, we have our 3 oz of leaf and berry hawthorne, the same as the first part. And we have our organic ethanol, which we need about 24 oz, three cups in. Uh we're going to start with that again. >> So now we have our alcohol part all prepared and it is ready for our infusion. So, if our infusion has been sitting for two hours with a lid on, uh, we're going to strain it and then reheat it to add it to this part of the tincture. Heating it will allow those water soluble constituents that are in this alcohol part to be released into that water. So, let's go ahead and do that. And looking at this water part, we got a lot of constituents. Now, here we have our water part all extracted and strained and our alcohol part that still has the herbs in it. You can see the water part is steaming and I'm adding that hot into the alcohol part. And as I add it in, that heat is extracting more constituents out of that alcohol part. Now, at this point, I'm going to grab my immersion blender and start blending. >> So, here we have it, our completed hot tincture. So, we are going to let this sit overnight uh and then strain it. Uh you can also let it sit the traditional 30 days and strain it. But you can already see how dark this is and how many constituents we've already gotten to our tincture. Let's see what it looks like strain tomorrow. >> So, here we are. Our completed hot tincture. This is about 24 hours later. We are going to be able to use this immediately. Uh but if we wanted to, we could have let the herbs sit in there for uh another 30 days. But as you can see, this is a very concentrated uh high constituent tincture. So, thank you so much for joining me and I hope you try out this hot tincture method and I hope you make wonderful potent medicine that helps your community. So, check out my herbal programs, herbal foundations online. I've got a sixmonth program uh learning solvency, herbal actions, medicine making, plant walks, and more. Uh that's pharmacy herbs.com. Happy medicine making everybody. Bye.