Let's make an Elderberry tincture!!

hey how's it going so i realized something kind of crazy i've never made um an elderberry tincture video i don't know why i don't know how that slipped past i've made just about every other type of tincture video under the sun so i guess we're gonna knock that off the list today so if you haven't guessed i'm here to show you how to make an elderberry tincture um this is so so crazy simple so if you've just gathered elderberries regardless if they're the black variety or the blue variety or whatever you're working with the first thing i want you to do and you're watching this video to learn how is to take your berries that you probably haven't painstakingly picked off yet and i want you to throw them in the freezer just just hear me out here if you throw them in the freezer if you've got a deep freezer in about 24 hours they'll be good to go if you're using like you're above the fridge freezer give it two days because it's not as cold what will happen is see all my berries here i picked this amount i should say i destined this amount in about a minute in about a minute you take out your clusters out of the freezer and i've got a video um on my youtube that shows you how to do it and you just do this like you're tickling it all your berries will just fall off so once they freeze they come right off the stems and it's super easy some people you know they say oh just use a fork or this or this or that i'm like nope just freeze it and i'll talk to you about what's kind of cool about freezing it here while i show you how to make it so basically what you're going to need is your elderberries some hunter-proof vodka a jar and to prevent some frustrations if you happen to have one of these on hand a canning funnel is handy you don't have to go buy one if you don't have one you could just you know be careful about getting them in the jar and i'm just gonna take my funnel my jar and these berries that i just de-stemmed i'm waiting for it all to come out in one clump because you know it's gonna i'm pretty much gonna fill my jar all the way up now um when you're picking a jar to use make sure it's one that you can fill all the way up if you have less berries use a smaller jar if you have more berries and you're like oh just use a bigger jar but whatever it is make sure it's one that you can pretty much fill up right so i put my berries in the jar now i'm using hunter proof vodka and we use hunter proof vodka because hunter proof means it's 50 water 50 alcohol and when you use 100 proof vodka should have had this top popped off already um that means that you're also getting her water-soluble properties alongside of her alcohol soluble properties and that is super important when we're making a tincture and one of the reasons that i only use fresh plant matter for the most part when i'm making tinctures is because i want those water soluble properties it makes for a much more well-rounded balanced tincture versus when you use like 190 proof which is green alcohol doesn't mean it's made with grain it means that it's 95 or above alcohol content you don't get any of the water soluble properties and then you have to do all this math ironically to bring it back to 50 water content which makes it safer well safer for ingestion um i don't personally work with green alcohol at all it's so much easier because my tincture is already done there's no math to after that you literally just watched me make a cord bilderberry tincture in what like a minute and in six to eight weeks after i let it sit it'll be done so one of the cool things that i want to jabber about now that you learned how to make an elderberry tincture why i like to freeze the berries you know how um like imagine this was a jar full of water and berries or just a jar full of water or whatever and you stuck it in the freezer what do you think would happen to this jar the water would expand and it wouldn't have any room so it would break the jar right some of us have gone through that experience before something frozen like uh even a pop like when you put a pop or a soda whatever you call it wherever you're from i'm in northeast oregon um you put it in the freezer and it explodes it explodes because the the can is airtight but what's happening is it's expanding as it freezes the water content is expanding all of that to say when you freeze your elderberries there's a chicken right there i just want you to know that's why i'm slightly distracted i'm like hello chicken um here lady you can have these berries here there you go um when you freeze your berries what happens is they expand right they expand because of that water content and you're like well what's the big deal well the thing is is that's happening on a cellular level so the way a tincture kind of works just to nerd out here for a second is that the alcohol is getting in on the cellular structure and breaking down those cell walls to extract the herbal properties that we're after in a very small nutshell that's how that works so what happens when you freeze these berries is it breaks open that cellular structure from freezing just like how the jar expands the water and the berry expands and bursts open all those cells so when you make a tincture with frozen elderberries which is the preferred way i do it and honestly how i pretty much always do it you really really get a nice potent tincture i mean it's fine if you're using fresh too it does the same thing might take a few weeks longer but i find around four to five weeks out of the eight weeks that i'm letting it set it is remarkably more infused than if i had used fresh berries i mean look at the dark color of it already you know and and so i really like that now another thing i want to touch on is there's some fear going around about elderberry right now there's quite a bit of misinformation that that got put out there during the whole what's going on in the world right now and people you know really worried that if they take elderberry it's going to make them sicker fly just totally nailed me in the head but let me just explain how elderbread works and how that misconception kind of got it was a meme and it went just wrong you know so the way elderberry works is she really really stimulates your immune system by allowing basically your white blood cells and your nk cells which is just a type of white blood cell and nk stands for natural killer it's literally what it is called they communicate better right so like if a virus or a bacteria mainly a virus gets into your nose or your mouth or any you know orifice that's trying to come through basically elderberry has the ability to keep these little soldier type blood cells by your nose they can radio imagine there's little radios inside of you they can radio that there's an invader faster it basically ramps up your immune system's ability to communicate and that's amazing unless you're already really sick and you haven't been taking elderberry because do you know that nobody dies from a virus nobody has ever died from a virus what you actually die from is your immune system's own response to the virus in an effort to try to kill the virus and or a secondary infection but the virus itself doesn't kill you so when you get the flu or something and you're puking or you're shivering or you're fevering your body is actually causing that to happen so with elderberry's ability to ramp up our immune system's ability to communicate it's like giving your immune system a semi are fully automatic weapon right it's like ah now we can really attack so if you haven't been taking elderberry preemptively or you wait until you're really really sick to start taking it what can happen is you can have like a cytotoxic storm basically where your own immune system is going to make you really sick because you just gave it the power to be stronger when it's already kind of killing you so people panic about it but elderberry has been used for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and the trick to not having elderberry make you get sicker is to use her as preventative use her before you get sick use her during cold and flu season i take her year round personally because she's also really good for anti-inflammatory and just a worn down stressed out body and allergies and all kinds of stuff she goes so much more beyond immune system support but if you start getting a cold don't be afraid that if you drink a cup of elderberry tea or use some tincture that it's going to just kill you dead when it really hurts just let's say you've got like the swine flu or something like that something really nasty right and you've been sick for like three or four days and you're so sick that you're like i really want to go to the hospital or something like that or you're just like suffering don't start taking elderberry then you can take it when you first start getting sick or before you get sick but don't wait until you're already really sick and then taking her because what happens again is she ramps up your immune system's response and that can make you dangerously ill because again i can't stress this enough it's your immune system that is making you feel like you want to die not the virus itself it's the reaction to the virus within your body okay um so the next thing which has kind of been buried under a lot of people's current fear um but used to be the thing that people freak out about is they're like she's got um precursors to cyanide in her ah kinda they think that you can get like she's poisonous she's poisonous and for a long time i didn't correct people because nobody ever harvests the elderberry so i didn't have to like have com competition with other humans and the wildlife but this year i'm watching people go in places that i would never gather from and just like ripping them before they're even ripe and you know they're afraid and they're trying to get this this plant ally in there with them but a lot of people freak out that she's got glycosides in her okay well glycosides are in almost every plant including almost every fruit especially every stone fruit and that means like peaches nectarines cherry anything that has a pit in it even has a seed and it has glycoside in it glycoside has the potential to turn into cyanide if you are literally trying to kill yourself with it and you somehow have access to like pounds and pounds and pounds and if the violent of seeds and if the violent diarrhea and vomiting somehow didn't prevent you from eating more sure then you could hurt yourself with elderberry so or if you decided to eat a bunch of our leaves or our bark or her roots there's a lot in her roots but basically glycoside is harmless it passes through your body every time you've ever eaten drink apple juice it's a thing okay but it is killed off by any type of cooking and you actually have to ingest the seed that has it so like when you make a tincture which counts as cooking it basically neutralizes the glycoside but even if it didn't as long as you're not ingesting the seed within the elderberry and even if you did as long as you're not consistently eating it on an everyday every hour basis it's not going to be able to build up high enough levels in your body to turn into cyanide because your body processes it out so that's why you have to be eating it just constantly to get sick from these berries so if you don't get every little piece of stem off of your berries when you're making a tincture don't freak out and if you're going to make like a tea don't worry about it the drying process that you did to use the berries in a tea killed off the glycoside if you're just going to make a jam uh well actually it would be a jelly you don't want to really make a jam because you don't want to be ingesting the seeds necessarily but then even again if you're cooking it down it's going to kill off all the glycoside in the seeds anyways it neutralizes it and i know that i'm just doing a brain dump right now so let me take a breath and make sure that i'm not just overwhelming anybody but you don't need to fear elderberry you just have to understand how she works and most the time when you see people that are like oh she's dangerous oh she's just this or that really it's a symptom of them not understanding who she is or how she works in the body and there's nothing wrong with that but it's important that we're open to learning about what's going on and where is this fear coming from you know i see that a lot in western herbalism people like oh that plant is dangerous because of this i'm like well why like i know why a lot of plants are dangerous but you have to make sure that when you are deciding something as benign as elderberry which is a food is dangerous to ask yourself where did i get that fear from is it founded in misunderstanding is it founded and just passed on hearsay because elderberry really wants to be in your life she is a fantastic ally for so many things now um if you haven't harvested your elderberries yet i want to give you a little bit of a tip if you live somewhere that it gets kind of cold or you get frost wait until it gets nice and cold wait until those berries look boozy and that bird hopping around on the ground might be kind of drunk from eating the berries because that's when they're really potent that's when they're really medicinal the tree is gearing up for winter and she is pumping all the nutrients and everything she can into these berries because they are her children the berries purpose the fruit the fruits purpose is to feed the seed to turn into another tree right so it's kind of like a little womb if you think about it and so when you pick them when they're really nice and firm still regardless of the variety and they're they're not it hasn't been cold at all it's like august or whatever um they just really aren't quite ready um these are actually um some from last year that we had in the freezer because we harvest a lot and we freeze them and that way we always have them on hand but we here in northeast oregon there are people gathering elevators all over i'm not going out to get them until the end of september which we're about to now but probably even into the first second week of october when up on the mountain when i can go up higher in elevation there's been a good amount of cold nights in the 40 and 30 degree range and the you know the birds have had their fill at that point in time i'm not having to fight the wildlife or worry about taking too much which is unethical because it is an important food source for a lot of birds throughout the winter but yeah and plus nobody really goes up to the colder areas right you don't a lot of people don't think about gathering when it's getting cold out and it's not as fun to be out and about right but like if you wait until then she's way more medicinal now if you are wanting to make jams or jellies or something like that i always say that wrong it should just be jelly jelly yeah rt you can get her sooner than that if you're using it for cooking um she's a little bit sweeter a little less boozy but again i just like to wait for as long as i can before i get her i've even found like early november i've even found clusters that are still good people get really freaked out when they see that a berry is wrinkled they're like oh you know but it's just like rose hips they're actually better once the frost is hitting hit them for a little bit or at least cooler temperatures so that's my rant about elderberry tincture um basically now um after you spew all the information out you're gonna put a label on there so you know who she is and this one isn't going to stick no i lied she's on there nope looks it's slippery because my jar is cold so you might have to wipe the condensation off here let me use my skirt and then i can nope i'm just slapping the jar um so put a label on it put it in a cool dark place for six to eight weeks um when it's done sitting you strain the berries out and then use as needed i get questions about dosages pretty often this isn't pharmaceutical medicine every body is different go check out my let's talk all about tinctures video i talk about how you figure out what works best for your body it's not complicated it's just easier for me to direct you to one video than talk about it every time and then you know straining it is as easy as putting it through like a mesh sieve or one of those nut milk bags or anything like that and this tincture is not going to go bad if you forget about it if you forget to strain it if it's been a year and a half 3 5 10 you're fine as long as this lid is tight you're good to go now once you put them in the dropper bottles you've got about five years because a little bit of evaporation can happen through those like dropper tops um but when they're in a jar like this they last forever and just like vodka doesn't go rotten on yourself this tincture isn't gonna go rotten on yourself either so i think i covered everything probably forgot at least one thing oh the most important thing for you to remember is that you are absolutely smart enough to do this no matter what you believe no matter what society has told you no matter what western herbalism has made you feel like you are smart enough to do this and you do not in any way shape or form need to pay somebody thousands of dollars to learn safe simple herbalism you just have to be curious trust in yourself get out on the land be like oh who are you oh it's teasel you know learn these plants get to know them one at a time what's in your area and within a matter of few years you will be absolutely blown away by all the things you know about all the plant allies around you just by simply doing the work you don't need to take years and years and years and years before you even get out on the land like a lot of herbalism courses like to tell people get out there and start making and learn by doing you learn by doing it's amazing people it's just how your brain is wired most of us anyhow so if you like my videos where i give all kinds of information do brain dumps bounce all over the place you know we'll probably get told that i'm either you know way out of this or that or definitely on caffeine i always get accused of it when i get going and it's fine it's just who i am if you like me being a human make sure to like subscribe comment turn on notifications if you're watching me on youtube come find me on instagram if you're watching me on instagram come find me on youtube i share all kinds of information um on both platforms and make sure to share it really helps get this information out there all these things i'm really grateful for thanks for watching and i'll see you next time okay bye

Channel: She Is Of The Woods

Views: 41,657

Keywords: she is of the woods, @she_is_of_the_woods, April Graham, April Graham herbalist, wild wood apothecary, dinner still needs cooking farm, herbalism, herbalist, herbal, Oregon, eastern Oregon, free, course, diy, remedies, blue elderberry, black elderberry, tincture, how to make, elderberry tincture, elder tincture, how do I make a tincture

Id: 5nGb6pjUCrk

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020