Hawthorn tincture completed!

Last week I completed the final stage of producing my own hawthorn tincture. Having made a tincture from hawthorn berries last autumn (by steeping them in vodka) I then used this as the liquid (or menstruum in herbalist-speak) to soak fresh hawthorn flowers and leaves that I picked in May. I have written about both of these processes in previous posts. All that remained to do was to strain off the tincture from the plant material, and having done that I now have a complete hawthorn tincture which I am storing in a brown glass bottle in a cupboard to prevent any damage that exposure to light may do over time. I used a sieve to strain off the tincture, giving the soaked flowers a good squeeze by hand to get as much liquid out as possible, but a tincture press would be the best way to extract the maximum liquid content from the plant material.

The resulting tincture is dark, rusty-red in colour, with some floating sediment (probably due to my rudimentary straining method) and smells distinctly autumnal, rich, rounded and fruity. It tastes surprisingly sweet with a hint of astringency at the back of the tongue.

I decided to make a hawthorn tincture because it seemed like a straightforward choice for a first tincture. I knew I could identify the plant and would have easy access to the plant parts I needed to collect for use, as hawthorn trees are found in almost every native hedgerow here. In terms of its medicinal qualities, hawthorn is a heart and circulatory system tonic which is reputed to improve the circulation of blood through the heart and is beneficial to the action of the heart muscle. I tend to assume that my heart is fairly healthy due to my age and my active job, but it will be interesting to see whether I can feel any benefit from taking the hawthorn tincture daily.