How to make Herbal Tincture

[dcraver877]

I am planning on making tinctures as a new hobby and eventually set up an online business in the future. The thing is, I know relatively little about making proper ethanol-based extracts. I have a few questions.

1. Is everclear the standard for making the strongest possible extract? Is there anything else I should add to the jar to extract more alkaloids? The first thing I plan on working with is kratom.

2. Filtering. What is the easiest way to filter liters of alcohol with powdered herbs in it? I can't see a plain coffee filter working to well. In the past, even for a small cwe, it has taken almost an hour for only 8 oz's of water to go through. I can't imagine how long it would take for say 4 cups of alcohol with over 30 grams of powdered herb.

3. Also, particularly for kratom, would it be best to not filter too much? Like maybe just run it through a doubled over cheese cloth to get the big clumps out since the kratom powder will probably still have some alkaloids in it.

I would appreciate any advice from anyone who has made tinctures in the past so I can avoid as many mistakes as possible. Also, if anyone has seen a step-by-step guide out there on the internet, please do post it.

Thanks.

 

[PoppyLlama]

You would probably be better off with pure ethyl alcohol instead.

I'm not sure about filtering the substances but what you said sounds like it would work, you could also try a double stage filter like something with bigger holes in the top filter that drops down into a filter with smaller holes, the top one could even be made of metal with a nail/dremel/drill, or ceramic would work too, then the bottom one could be cheesecloth or something similar.

Not sure about the kratom thing.

I just wanted to say I have not made tinctures in the past (other than a cannabis tincture once)

 

[atara]

Depending on your region, Everclear is either 75% or 90% alcohol. The 90% will work fine for the majority of purposes; the 75% will probably prove inadequate quite often.

Cannabinoids and other terpenoids may not dissolve well in everclear. Ethyl lactate or ethyl benzoate may work better.

 

[hobhead]

oregon 95% everclear or clear springs . getting ethyl over that % involves benzine or other toxic chemicals . alcohol drags water out of the atmosphere or what ever it touches .

straight alcohol is quite impossible to drink but makes fine cocktails and is the thrifty lushe's choice . half gallon = $37.50 . with it being 190 proof it is the equivalent of 2 and a third half gallons of 86 proof . like i say thrifty.

and it will clean bongs like no tomorrow . i leave in them so the hits are something else . others claim it's harsh .

 

[mgrady3]

It would involve a bit more than household equipment but you could try something like this:

have your beaker of ethanol + herb mixture.
place beaker on top of one of those magnetic stirring stations with the magnetic bar in the solution (the alcohol will sterilize it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stirrer

this will act as a rudimentary centrifuge, ie. bringing the solid material to the center and will also expose more surface area of the herbs.

Now leave this to stir and spin for some time for extraction to happen

Next, while the set up is spinning, as fast as possible for best effect, you can start a siphon.
This will begin to drain out the alcohol solution.

You'd want to employ some kind of filter at the end of the siphon as well, but something that won't kill the siphon by clogging to easily.

Now once you've got your (partially) filtered solution, lather rinse and repeat until you are at the desired level of filtration.

Note you don't want the set up (like featured on the wiki link) to be heating your solution very much. You are dealing with nearly pure alcohol here high temperature is extremely dangerous.

2nd Note This method I've cooked up in my head wouldn't work so well for finely powdered herbs. I'm not sure the magnetic stirring would give you enough centrifuge action to have fine powder collect to the center of your beaker; also as for what you filter your siphon with, outside of coffee filters or multiple cheese clothes I'm not sure, perhaps someone else could give an idea there.