Cheap Vodka Tinctures

[sharxx101]

Hey all I am gonna make some cheap Vodka tinctures to use just wondering what herbs are best extracted with cheap vodka? I know some plants actives bind well with alchol. Any advice appericated

Edited October 4, 2009 by sharxx101

[nabraxas]

Blackcurrant

[sharxx101]

Valerian, Calea, and Lactuca are good I have heard.

[kadakuda]

i like lemon mint in vodka. ginseng as well.

[FancyPants]

blue lotus flowers are great for mixing with alcohol, tastes kind of sweet too. Tastes like sheizer in brandy with coffee though LOL.

[tryptamine]

Damiana is traditionally used to make a liquor.

I have heard of people making Morning glory wine.

Wormwood and other Absinthe ingredients may be worth looking into.

Hops, Mugwort and others have been used in beer.

Opium poppy has been used to make a traditional tincture.

I have experimented with tinctures of Valerian, Gotu Kola, Ginkgo, Passion flower, Wild Lettuce - Not sure of the strength of the alcohol used to do the extraction however.

[Fenris]

I heard that if you use a water filter (jug type) and filter your cheap vodka through it 4 times, it cleans up the taste to make it almost indistinguishable from expensive vodka.

My scientific curiosity is worth the price of a bottle of red label

I have been drinking Belvedere vodka so there was never any need to try to clean it up as it tastes fantastic.

[gromit]

I heard that if you use a water filter (jug type) and filter your cheap vodka through it 4 times, it cleans up the taste to make it almost indistinguishable from expensive vodka.

yeah i saw that on mythbusters. they had cheap-arse vodka and filtered it up to eight times from memory.

they had an expert who, in a blind test, was able to put all the samples in order of un-filtered, filtered once, filtered twice etc. he could still pick which one was the top-shelf vodka, but it must make a difference. so why don't the people who make the vodka filter it more

some sativa vodka would be nice

Edited October 6, 2009 by gromit

[C_T]

I heard that if you use a water filter (jug type) and filter your cheap vodka through it 4 times, it cleans up the taste to make it almost indistinguishable from expensive vodka.

My scientific curiosity is worth the price of a bottle of red label

I have been drinking Belvedere vodka so there was never any need to try to clean it up as it tastes fantastic.

You can buy the charcoal from a brew shop, make your own filters. Can even boil the charcoal to re-use it.

[Neoshaman]

Heard turkistan mint makes a nice tincture

Edited October 8, 2009 by neoshaman

[herbal_hindsight]

i've been toying around a lot with tinctures myself but i'm much more fortunate than some and have access to a still owned by swim and as a result have access to lots of ethanol but never as much as i'd like it seems!

regardless the stuff swim gives me is 90% abv which i then water down to 30% which i have been advised [by a natural healer i did some work for and various books i've read] is the best percentage to store tinctures in... higher percentages can sometimes extract a higher yield of compounds but don't store as long!

anyway... i have recently made tinctures from the following herbs:

st johns wort

mugwort

damiana [as well as making a liquor @ 20% abv with honey]

star anise [mmm the smell alone is awesome]

tribulus terrestris

calea zacatechichi

vanilla beans [mmm now for anyone who likes vanilla this is highly recommended]

saffron

cloves

chilli

lions tail

wormwood

muira puama

do a bit of research on herbal tinctures and checkout this piece of software... it's pretty neat and where i got a lot of my ideas from

http://www.mininova.org/tor/619599

i'm not sure if that torrent still works but if it doesn't and anyone would like a copy pm me and i can arrange a copy for you!

i will eventually have my own herbal pharmacy at this rate... shelf storage of a lot of these tinctures is several years stored correctly and their applications goes way past just altering one's state of consciousness.... although that can be fun too ;-)

the beauty of a lot of tinctures is the get the desired effect your after from that particular herb a lot of the time you only require a drop or two

as an example the cloves tincture i made... WOW! Only a couple drops mixed in a glass of water within a few minutes my entire mouth had gone numb...

I made this just in time for a friend having a lot of pain from his wisdom teeth coming through... i gave him a small vial of about 15ml and the first time he tried it 1 drop mixed with water gargled and washed around his mouth numbed his gums and eased his pain for nearly 24 hours!!! Impressive stuff!

Better still though is tootheache plant which I have just sown seed for amongst various other herbs....

tinctures are great for topical applications aswell... i recently mixed a concoction of chilli, juniper berries, cloves & garlic mixed with a sorbolene base applied topically to a strained lower back and it didn't completely remove the pain but took the edge right off it enough for me to get to sleep!

and for anyone considering making sativa tincture realise you need to heat it [can't think of temp to active it atm off the top of my head] to active the thc otherwise it won't really do much other than taste a bit weedy... a good example of a simple lesson to thc needing heat to activate it for oral consumption is the famous leary biscuit [cracker with cheese and a bud put in the microwave to melt the cheese which is full of fat which the thc will happily bind to once activated] and it's delicious and very effective and very simple... no messy butter recipes and it doesn't stink the house out too much!

Edited October 8, 2009 by herbal_hindsight

[Monk]

and for anyone considering making sativa tincture realise you need to heat it [can't think of temp to active it atm off the top of my head] to active the thc otherwise it won't really do much other than taste a bit weedy...

For the record, this information is urban legend. THC does not need heat to 'activate.' This was a myth promulgated by those cooking weed into brownies etc. The heat is needed to effectively solubilize THC into fats like butter etc. For alcohols, though, it's completely unnecessary. In the past, I've dissolved pure honey oil (very high thc conc.) into 75% ethanol quite effectively at room temp, yielding a very active product.

Regardless of temperature, however, tinctures of THC need to be have an ethanol concentration that is quite high to keep the goodies dissolved. 30 or 40% will NOT cut it for THC. You need something around 70% or more to keep it in solution.

[sharxx101]

Thanks for the info everyone

[devance]

Black pepper vodka is very good.

I think tequila has some and hot peppers before distillation.

[friendly]

FM is absolutely correct. I've had people who wouldn't even try my 'tinctures' because of that myth, despite my insistence that they would see if they tried.

It's amazing how many people 'know' that something won't work without bothering to try it for themselves. I've had many such arguements over the years from those who should know better.

Almost every time I introduce something, I get that response from someone.

Here's a condensed version of a simple extraction method I had publlshed in ER some time ago:

Prepare a tincture to a standardized strength. Evaporate off all the alcohol, obtaining a resin. You can use a fan and a pyrex baking dish for the evaporation.

Reconstitute with, say, 2 fl oz of alcohol if you started with a pint of tincture. You now have an 8x liquid extract. Scale up or down as needed.

Resin strength in x value can be determined by weighing the resin and dividing that weight into the original weight of the herb used to make the tincture.

[Teljkon]

sdtsd

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Teljkon