What Is a Tincture?
Tinctures are created by steeping plants in alcohol for 4 to 8 weeks before you filter off the plant material. This solvent leaves you
with a liquid that contains the active ingredients of the plant, which can be used as medicine. It’s a very powerful remedy that you can usually use without worrying about any side effects.

You can also use vinegar or glycerin, but alcohol is best because it acts as a universal solvent, so it’s able to extract essential oils from herbs, roots, and mushrooms, as well as most of the other beneficial compounds.

It also makes the tinctures last virtually forever. The alcohol is fatal to any microorganisms, so there is little possibility for the tincture to decompose. The biggest risk you’ll probably encounter is the alcohol in the tincture evaporating. To avoid that, always keep your tinctures
in well-sealed, amber-colored bottles.

Using tinctures allows easier and faster absorption of healing plant compounds. The fastest one to absorb in your body is an alcohol-based one. This is because it starts absorbing through the stomach wall, or your mouth when taken orally, so rather than being digested, like the rest of the things you drink or eat, the medicinal substances go directly into your bloodstream. Not only that, but the large concentration of medicinal properties you find in a tincture makes them more potent than most remedies.

The second method of making a tincture is by double extraction. That is a combination of a tincture and a decoction, meaning you use both alcohol and water to extract different properties of the plants.

This method is largely used for mushrooms and lichens, because some beneficial properties are water-soluble, while others are alcohol-soluble.