How to Make Echinacea Tincture ~ DIY Recipe (2024)

Tinctures are a convenient way to take your herbal medicines. They’re ready to use,just pop a few drops into your mouth or a glass of water and you’re done. The problem is…tinctures are expensive.

A simple echinacea tincture sells for $8 to $12 an ounce. If you plan ahead a few months before for flu season, you can make your own echinacea tincture for as little as $1 an ounce.

How to Make Echinacea Tincture ~ DIY Recipe (1)

Benefits of Echinacea Tincture

Echinacea Angustifolia tincture is widely known for promoting a healthy immune response. There are dozens if not hundreds of studies to back this up, bosting some pretty impressive stats.

Researchers are the University of Connecticut found that taking echinacea cuts the chances of catching a cold by 58%, and if you do get sick, echinacea can reduce the average duration of sickness by almost a day and a half.

Its general purpose infection-fighting powers are showing promise in the treatment of a number of infectious diseases, including herpes, malaria, syphilis and urinary tract infections.

Echinacea was used by Native Americans as a natural all-purpose pain reliever, to treat everything from headaches to snake bites.

Other studies show that echinacea is a potent anti-inflammatory, which may contribute to the treatment of numerous condition

Echinacea Tincture Dosage

How much echinacea tincture do you take? Recommendationsvary widely. Most herbalists recommendtaking a dropper full, which is 25 to 30 drops of tincture, three times per day.

Herbalist Susan Weed, the Author of the best-selling Wise Woman Herbal, recommends a more specific dosage based on weight. She prescribes1 drop for every 2 pounds of body weight.

For most children, that amounts to no more than a dropper full, and she admits that she often rounds to a full dropper fullfor children 25 to 50 pounds.

For adults and older children, she suggests anechinacea tincture dosage as follows:

50 to 100 pounds: 2 droppers full
100 to 150 pounds: 3 droppers full
150 to 200 pounds: 4 droppers full
200 to 250 pounds: 5 droppers full

When sick or experiencing acute symptoms, the full dosage can be administered every 1 to 2 hours. If you catch it before you’re really sick, every 3 to 4 hours should be sufficient.

Nonetheless, for an average 150-pound adult, that’s a lot of echinacea tincture over the course of 2 to 3 days. After that, she suggests tapering off to more occasional doses for a week or two to strengthen your immune system and prevent a relapse.

With those tincturedosage recommendations, how much echinacea tincture do you need to fight off a cold?

A dropper full is roughly 25 to 30 drops, and there are just under 100 drops to a teaspoon or around 600 drops to an ounce.

If you’re taking 3 to 4 droppers full, or roughly a teaspoon, every one to two hours, that’s a full one-ounce bottle in 6 to 12 hours.

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Growing Echinacea for market on a local Vermont farm near our home. Once it gets going, echinacea is prolific and will produce huge crops year after year.

Echinacea Tincture Blends

One of the benefits of making your own echinacea tincture is that you can create your own customblend. We tend to make an echinacea and elderberry tincture blend, because they have complementary effects, but also because elderberries help mask the harsh flavor of echinacea.

That means the medicine goes down easier, so we’re more likely to actually take it.

Other common echinacea tincture blends include:

  • Goldenseal
  • Yarrow
  • Linden
  • Chamomile
  • Elderflower
  • Elderberry
  • Rose Hips
  • Oregon Grape
  • Ginger
  • Cayenne

Echinacea Tincture Side Effects

WebMD rates echinacea as “likely safe” for most applications. With any medicine, there’s always the potential for an allergic reaction, but such reactions are rare.

The main caution is for persons with autoimmune issues. Since echinacea interacts with the immune system and can stimulate a response, it could cause issues if you already have an abnormally functioning immune system. Specifically, if you have an overactive immune system this could make things worse.

How to Make an Echinacea Tincture

The most simple way to make an echinacea tincture is to use the folk herbalist method. Start with a clean mason jar, and fill it about halfway with dried echinacea. If you have fresh plant material, fill the jar 2/3 of the way full.

Echinacea is easy to grow from seed (seeds available here), but it shouldn’t be harvested for the first 3 years as it establishes. We often buy bulk echinacea online. A pound of dried herb sells for about $20 and is enough to make about a gallon of tincture. We tend to make part of it into a tincture and save the rest for tea.

Once you’ve added the herb to a mason jar, simply cover it with alcohol.

Add a neutral spirit with around 40% alcohol (80 proof). Vodka is a good choice, but really any alcohol will work. Some people suggest using straight grain alcohol that’s near 100%, but that’s actually not a good idea.

The super high alcohol content isn’t actually the best way to extract herbal medicines unless you’re dealing with a particularly resilient resin.

For simple herbal leaves, flowers and roots stick to around 40% alcohol for best results.

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I like to use a mid-shelf vodka because it makes the resulting tincture more palatable. If you choose the cheapest liquor money can buy, remember that you’re going to have to drink it. A better suggestion is to choose the cheapest liquor you’d actually voluntarily drink.

Fill the jar to within a half-inch of the top, making sure that you completely submerge all the herbal material.

Put a lid on the jar and give it a quick shake. Store the jar in a cool dark place for at least a month, shaking anytime you remember.

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Echinacea tincture after 3 months of storage.

After 1 to 3 months of infusing, it’s time to filter the echinacea tincture.

Use a fine-mesh strainer or cheesecloth to filter the herbal material from the alcohol. You should be left with a dark amber-colored liquid with a strong earthy smell.

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Echinacea tincture has a bit of harshness to it, so it’s best to take it mixed with water or juice.

Store your echinacea tincture out of direct sunlight, preferably in amber-colored glass bottles. Amber-colored tincture bottles are reusable and convenient for dosing. You can buy a dozen 2-ounce amber bottles for less than the cost of a single 1 ounce prepared echinacea tincture.

They’re also small enough that they can be taken on a trip and even in carry-on plane baggage. I tend to get sick most when I’m traveling, so having a portable immune booster is a big plus.

What do you think? Are you ready to try making your own echinacea tincture?

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How to Make Echinacea Tincture ~ DIY Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to make your own echinacea tincture? ›

Pour the vodka over the Echinacea root. Cover the jar with a lid and shake well. Continue to shake the jar everyday for 1 week and then every few days while its macerating (extracting) over the next 6 weeks. You'll notice that the Echinacea root will expand as it soaks up the alcohol.

How do you prepare echinacea for medicinal use? ›

Dry your plants by either hanging the whole plant, OR removing the petals and leaves and then laying them flat to dry in a cool dark place. Once dry, gather the petals and leaves and gently cut or crush into minced-size pieces. Assemble in a tea infuser and then add hot water when ready.

Can you use echinacea stems in tincture? ›

Make the tincture

Chop the roots, stalks, leaves and flowers as finely as possible into a bowl. The finer they are the more potent the brew. Discard any brown or damaged foliage/ flowers into the compost. Label your jar and date it, then spoon the chopped herb in and pour the alcohol over.

How to harvest echinacea root for tincture? ›

You will need to dig up the plants to remove the entire root system. You can then cut the root back by about half and replant it. Clean the cut roots very well and cut them into smaller pieces. Let them dry completely, which can take a few weeks, and then store in an airtight container.

How much echinacea tincture per day? ›

Dry powdered extract: 300–500 mg of Echinacea purpurea, three times daily. Liquid extract tinctures: 2.5 milliliters (mL), three times daily, or up to 10 mL daily.

What is echinacea tincture good for? ›

For this reason, professional herbalists may recommend echinacea to treat urinary tract infections, vaginal yeast (candida) infections, ear infections (also known as otitis media), athlete's foot, sinusitis, hay fever (also called allergic rhinitis), as well as slow-healing wounds.

What parts of echinacea are edible? ›

Echinacea flowers are traditionally dried as an herbal supplement. The petals, roots, and leaves are edible and are commonly dried and steeped into teas, or they are infused into juices, tinctures, and salves.

How much echinacea per day when sick? ›

New studies have tested dosages of up to 6 grams daily for up to 4 months. In order to boost your immune system when you have a cold, flu, or upper respiratory or bladder infections, you can try taking echinacea three times a day until your symptoms improve, for a maximum of 10 days.

Can you gargle echinacea tincture in water? ›

Echinacea and Water

Add 2 teaspoons tincture of Echinacea to 1 cup water and gargle this home remedy three times daily. In addition to easing sore throat pain, an Echinacea gargle will give your immune system the boost it needs to fight the infection.

Which part of echinacea is not used? ›

Harvesting Stems, Leaves, and Flowers

Every part of the echinacea plant is edible and dried echinacea is useful for many home remedies. However, you may choose to only harvest parts of the plant, leaving the rest undisturbed. Follow these steps if you are harvesting the plant without digging up the roots.

Do you make tinctures from fresh or dried herbs? ›

Dried herbs make better extracts as controlling alcohol strength in final product is easy than tinctures from fresh herbs. Literature and our own research suggest that tinctures made from fresh herbs are generally weaker in terms of dissolved phytochemicals.

How long can you leave herbs in a tincture? ›

Properly stored tinctures—prepared with high-percentage alcohol (50% or higher)—can last for years, even decades.

How to make an echinacea tincture? ›

Directions
  1. Rinse the echinacea plant.
  2. Roughly chop the entire echinacea plant (roots, stems, flower buds).
  3. Place chopped echinacea into your glass container and cover with vodka. ...
  4. Let tincture sit in a cool dark place out of reach of kids!
Aug 30, 2019

What alcohol is best for echinacea tincture? ›

Then you pour alcohol over top. Vodka is a good choice because it has a neutral flavor and is easy to find. Most people use 80-100 proof vodka for their folk tinctures. Next, you cap the jar, put it in a cupboard, and shake it daily.

Which part of echinacea is medicinal? ›

Though all Echinacea have some medicinal qualities, the roots, leaves, and flowering tops of three of the nine Echinacea species are important in the modern herbal medicine market: E. purpurea, E. pallida, and E. angustifolia.

How do you make your own tincture? ›

Recipe
  1. Gather the useful parts of the herb(s), possibly the berries, leaves, roots, bark, or all of these, and remove any unwanted parts.
  2. Wash and coarsely chop the herbs.
  3. Place them into an airtight jar.
  4. Pour alcohol or vinegar into the jar and seal it. For fresh herbs, use a 1-1 plant-to-alcohol ratio.

What is the ratio for homemade tincture? ›

If you use fresh herbs to prepare a tincture, double the quantity of dried herbs so you are using 2 ounces for every 1 ounces of dried herb called for in your recipe. An alternative formula is to add one part herb to five parts of alcohol.

Does echinacea tincture help wound healing? ›

It's also said to aid in wound healing. Echinacea has also been used as an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial agent. This means it helps the body destroy or resist germs that cause illness. It's also been used to treat fever, colic, coughs, and bronchitis.

How to infuse echinacea? ›

Crumble up the leaves and flowers with your fingers, then pour the oil over the herbs, adding more oil if needed, to make sure the plant matter is completely covered. Cover the jar with a lid, then set the oil aside for 4 to 6 weeks to infuse, then strain.

References

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