Homegrown STEVIA made into Liquid Stevia DROPS!

hi everybody Welcome Back To Living Traditions Homestead well it is a wonderfully rainy day today outside and it doesn't seem like we've had very many of those uh all summer long so it is a wonderful treat and it's actually supposed to rain most of the day today and most of the day tomorrow that is great everything is dry outside so a rain is perfect and it is also a perfect time for me to be working on projects inside the house and today I'm so excited to start a project with you that I know you guys have been looking forward to all summer several months ago I started sharing with you that I was growing Stevia this summer and that my plans have been to use that Stevia that I've grown myself to make Stevia drops that we can use in our coffee while me specifically use in my coffee um in our yogurt that we make makeup because we use unsweetened yogurt uh smoothies all kinds of things that you could add liquid Stevia drops to and I've been wanting to make them on my own this year my stevia plant did amazingly I think I did two separate harvests and one Harvest was quite large actually both of those harvests I picked off all of the leaves from the stems and I freeze dried them in our Harvest R freeze dryer so that I would have them preserved for up to 20 to 25 years if I wanted them to be good for that long but I do have plans to use at least some of that this year to make Stevia drops now when I first mentioned that I was going to make Stevia drops so many of you responded that you wanted me to bring you along and show you the process so that is what we are going to start today through my two large harv vests I was able to preserve um almost two full quart sized jars of freeze-dried Stevia and I've had them vacuum sealed inside these jars just waiting for me to do this project with okay let me back up a little bit last January Kevin and I decided to stop consuming sugar and carbohydrates and really eat a keto diet or kind of maintain a a low carb high fat diet uh and we follow generally the keto diet principles so that was really hard for me initially because I love my coffee and I love coffee with cream in it which follows the keto diet cream is good but sugar was not good so I wanted to find a substitute that was still sweet but was not some of the the yucky chemical artificial sweeteners so I've always known known about Stevia and I know that Stevia is a plant so I started looking into Stevia extracts and um Stevia liquid drops that I could use in my coffee now there aren't many Stevia out there on the market that are liquid and only Stevia a lot of them are mixed with other artificial sweeteners I did find this brand of stevia drops on Azure standard and it's very good it's only Stevia and the preservative that they use is a natural preservative it's grapefruit seed extract so I felt very confident using this organic Stevia drops from Azure standard the brand is stevita and it's very good but I like to grow things in the garden and I knew that it was possible for me to grow Stevia and make my own drops so that is the process that we are going to go through today it's actually a two-day process we're going to use the Homegrown Stevia that I grew and we're going to turn that into a stevia extract and extract is also the same thing as a tincture but then after that we're going to remove the alcohol from that it will sweeten it up even more make it a little bit more condensed and that will turn into Stevia drops like you can get from the store so let's get started on that process it's not very hard it doesn't require many ingredients at all just a little bit of time and a little bit of effort okay I have everything that we need to make these Stevia drops right here in front of me I'm going to be making a one pint jar of stevia and we're going to start off by filling this jar uh about 3/4 of the way full of the freeze dried Stevia that I have here now you don't need to use freeze-dried Stevia you can use uh just dehydrated Stevia this actually works with fresh Stevia as well but I just wanted to preserve it freeze dried so that if I didn't get around to it for a while um it would remain good for a long time now these are in here just really kind of loosely and that is about 3/4 of the way full now the other part that we're going to do here you guys this is so easy I I can't even believe it we're going to fill this jar up to this ring here we're going to fill it up with vodka and I did not get any fancy vodka you don't need to get any kind of fancy vodka this is actually the cheapest vodka I could find and so I'm just going to fill it up this is about two cups of vodka that I'm going to be putting in here so we just put a canning lid on top just like this this is another uh way to use your used canning lids and a ring on there and we're just going to shake that up now we are going to let this sit for no more than 36 hours this is a big difference between making stevia extract and making a tincture tinctures you normally let sit for I mean a long time but with stevia you don't want to let it uh sit in here for longer than 36 hours because it will start turning bitter we want the sweet part of the the leaves to be extracted from the leaves and put into this alcohol um not the bitter components of it so every time I come into the kitchen for the next 24 to 36 hours I'm just going to pick this up and shake it around so that it mixes up really nicely and then we will come back tomorrow and we're going to strain it out and finish the process for making the most amazing Stevia drops that I can use for maybe the entire winter well it has been just over 24 hours and over the the past day every time I walk into the kitchen and I see this jar I've been shaking it up to make sure that it mixes up really well and that all of that sweetness from the stevia is extracted uh from the leaves and put into the Vodka that's in here now the next step in the process is to separate the leaves from the alcohol that are in here and we're going to do that by uh pouring it through a strainer and I'm in the strainer I'm going to also put a coffee filter here and we're going to be straining it into a little pot because we are going to be putting the strained out liquid onto the stove top and we're going to warm it up now there are a couple reasons why we're going to warm this up the first one is that uh the stevia extract or tincture whichever you want to call it this is either one a tincture or an extract it can be a little bitter just like this so by warming it up on the stove top and kind of cooking it down a little bit it will bring out the sweetness and take out a lot of the bitterness also by doing that about 40% of the alcohol is going to be um evaporated out of this and that process is also going to thicken it up a little bit so it's a little bit more the consistency of the syrup than just a really thin liquid so I'm going to go ahead and uh pour this through the coffee filter and let it start draining it's going to take a little bit of time but it is important to strain it through something as fine as a coffee filter so that none of the bits of the plant material is left in your extract which will then become your Stevia drops so we're just going to give it some time here to drain through I am going to put the rest of the leaf bits down in there so that we can get every little bit of the liquid out once it's almost entirely drained through here then I'm going to pick up this coffee filter kind of like um a tea bag and squeeze all the rest of the liquid out of there so right now we're just going to let it do its thing drip out there and then we'll come back now that we've straightened out all of the stevia leaves that are just left with the extract we're going to set this on the stove top and I'm going to use a burner that is considered like a a simmer burner because I really don't want this to be very hot at all so like I said we're going to be warming this up I'm going to stir it constantly and you just want this to simmer on here for about 20 minutes you definitely don't want it to come to a boil because if it boils it will become bitter as well so we're just going to stand here and babysit this for about 20 minutes making sure that it's heating up to a simmer but not coming to a boil I've taken the stevia off of the stove top and I've actually let it cool down here for about 10 or 15 minutes now we are ready to store for the new Stevia drops that we have made and I have found some 4 oz dropper bottles these are glass on Amazon um and I purchased a few of them for this very reason and this box of them came with these little funnels which will help us get the stevia into the dropper bottles now I'm not really sure how much this is going to end up being um it might be 8 oz or so we'll have to uh see we'll see if I can pour this in here without spilling and making a giant mess everywhere well that ended up producing almost exactly 8 oz of stevia drops now this is going to last me a while but I am so excited to have homemade Stevia back in the house house again now with the stevia drops that we have just made uh these need to be stored in the refrigerator because a lot of the alcohol has been evaporated or kind of cooked out of this so it's not going to stay good just on the counter now if I would have made a very large batch and then only cooked down you know some of it the extract or the tincture could stay out on the counter because the full alcohol would preserve that it's once you cook it down and remove a lot of that alcohol that uh it needs to go into the refrigerator to be kept now this will stay good in the refrigerator for several months so I am set I can't wait to get going with this in fact before we go I'm actually going to make a fresh cup of coffee even though it's kind of getting late in the afternoon put a couple drops of the new Stevia in there and make sure it's going to taste wonderful I like two or three drops of stevia in my coffee okay let's give it a try it is wonderful you guys I'm so excited to have homemade Stevia back in the house it really is wonderful to be able to grow something yourself and turn it into a food or a food product that you are going to use in your home you know the ingredients you know how the plant was raised and grown it's really a wonderful thing it's great for your health and it's great for the budget Stevia is expensive at the grocery store to get the stevia that doesn't have any of the additives and by planting it and doing this to yourself it is just very affordable you guys I hope you enjoyed coming along as I made homemade stevia from homegrown Stevia plants you guys if you're enjoying videos like this I would love for you to hit the Subscribe button and remember that the best way that you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our Homestead take care and God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 51,372

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing, stevia, homegrown stevia, making stevia drops, homemade stevia drops, homemade liquid stevia, making liquid stevia, using homegrown stevia

Id: fR_AaJQwa_w

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 07 2023