I am sure that over the years we have all struggled to figure a way to squeeze every last drop of tincture out of our plant material. I have heard several alternative ideas and known people that spent hours attempting to build their own tincture press. A tincture press can run you several hundred dollars and for most of us lay herbalists it is just too much to justify spending for the pint of tincture we have made. And so most of us just forgo the whole thing and lament at how much medicine we are loosing when we lay the spent plant material in the compost. Until now!
I wish I could take credit for this, but I can’t, a friend of mine named Jodi who I met in a wildcrafting class gifted us with this idea that she came up with on the spur of the moment. It does require a piece of equipment, but its a kitchen item many of us already have or can purchase for under 40 dollars.
What is it? A wheat grass juicer!!!
Let me share with you Jodi’s experiement;
I took 4 cups of drained St John’s Wort plant material (I drained and pushed on it with a spoon to get as much out as is possible)
The material was still wet and glossy.
The ran it through the wheat grass juicer and the results were…… Ta Da…. drum roll please!!!!!
1 whole more cup of tincture
2 cups of bone dry plant material…. Impressive!!
Here are her pictures to prove it.
And so our trials are over, we can all now have ensure that we are getting every bit of medicine from the plants that we so dearly love.
If any of you would like to send lavish gifts of thanks to Jodi to thank her for her brilliance, let me know 🙂
Green Blessings.
Kate
Jodi is a blessing to our group, that is a fact! For everyone out there, this will work smashingly for tinctures and herbal vinegars, but do not do this with medicinal oils. You wouldn’t want to squeeze any excess water into your oil, which could cause the oil to mold. Gold star to Jodi!
although if you are using dried plants for the oil
then i would think it would be fine.
i do prefer fresh plants for oils
yet sometimes dried has to do. .
Great idea! Can I ask which model of wheat grass juicer you ended up with?
Im glad you liked it H.C., It was just a simple plastic model she used. Hope this helped.
Hi h.c.,
I’ll take a picture of mine and post it…..
Brilliant! I am going to try this technique asap. Woody herbs/roots are so hard to squeeze every last drop from and I am curious if a regular juicer would also add to the process for these types of herbs in particular. Thanks for the idea!
Awesome! let us know how it goes!
xox Kiki
Brilliant idea !
thank you thank you thank you
i wonder why i keep facebooking sometimes
and then something like this pops up
and i am so very grateful!
luckily i have a wheat grass juicer
and will try this ASAP!
muchas gracias
did you guys ever get a picture? i found a $20 one on amazon but it is cast iron. would love to try this out….