There is a story of a family that used to always cut the ends off off their hams before cooking them. Once, at a family gathering, a daughter asked her mother why they always did that. The mother said, “I don’t know. That’s just how my mom taught me.” They went and found Grandma and asked her why she always cut the ends off the ham before putting it in the pot. “Well” she replied “My pot wasn’t very big and I always had to cut some off to make the ham fit.”

In the old days, people didn’t have high powered blender to pulverize dried herbs into dust. As a result, the material they were tincturing was much denser and it took longer for the alcohol to extract the chemicals. The same was true of teas. Anything that was a root or a bark was done as a “decoction” rather than a tea. In other words it was simmered on the stove for hours so that the water could get the chemicals out of the root or bark. If the old timers had had a decent blender, decoction would never have been invented and tinctures would only have macerated for a week or two. It takes alcohol very little time to extract everything from a particle of dust.

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Susan Bryg, Lisa Bateman, Diane Juranko, Tracy O’Meara, Elizabeth Prackert

I have wondered why there are differing lengths of time for making tinctures myself.  Thanks!