Make a thyme tincture - PEP BB medicine.sand.thymetincture

Good evening!

This is my first go for a submission post, so be kind if I'm missing things or mess up the format, please!

First up is the thyme itself:
I made this tincture before I was acquainted with this programme, so I'm afraid I don't have a picture of the physical stems of thyme that went into it.  This is the same, somewhat unkempt, plant, however, that lives in my front window from which I took the thyme.


Next up, the making of the tincture:
I used plain, Sobieski vodka (the finest vodka available, in my opinion, now that Russian Standard is unavailable due to, well, obvious reasons), poured over the thyme, having been washed, until the vodka covered it.  It then sat in my linen closet for, according to the notes I made on my calendar, close to two months, having been placed there in the first week of February and retrieved the second week of April.  I regularly, meaning almost daily, gave the jar a little swoosh around to make sure the contents were well mixed.


Finally, the end product:
Having waited an appropriate amount of time, I took the jar with all inside and strained out the thyme, leaving behind the finished tincture.  I then bottled this in the amber vials shown below.  A picture of the contents of the vials within one of the droppers is shown against a white plate so you can see the coloration of the final result.


N.b. because I am a weirdo, the vials are labelled in Latin, bearing the text: Tinctura thymi ij.MMXXIII meaning "Tincture of Thyme 02/23"

Our thyme is just coming into bloom, so it is the perfect time to make thyme tincture! (Bet you can't say that ten times fast).

For this BB I created a tincture out of thyme.
To show you've completed this BB you must post pictures of the following:

- picture of the thyme, freshly harvested
- picture of the tincture being made
- picture of the finished tincture in its labeled jar.

I used 100-proof locally distilled vodka. Its just my opinion that the 50/50 ABV makes for a well balanced resulting tincture with all those lovely water and alcohol-solubles.
I will post back here once I decant this in August!

This is how I made my first Thyme Tincture

Harvesting the Thyme


Washed it until the rinsed water turned mostly clear


Leave it to dry and once dry start separating leaves from stem which is quite some work. Also the fingers start turning black after a while (maybe that's why witches often are depicted having black fingers?) so you probably want to wear gloves the next time.
I fill the jar up to 2/3.



After that, I labeled the jar with the latin name and the common name as well as the dated of bottling and the alcohol type and content


I fill so much to cover the leaves by a couple centimeters. After that putting the jar in a dry and cool place to let the alcohol extract the compounds.



I'll be shaking it twice a day for the next 8 weeks. Always making sure that all leaves stay submerged in alcohol to prevent molding.
The date to bottle tincture is January 5th 2024.


## Bottling
Now that 8 weeks have passed, it's time to bottle it up.

I'm using a simple cheese cloth here to squeeze out as many drops as I can. The strained tincture has a strong tint and it smells a lot like thyme, reminding me of when I was a kind, taking cough syrup.

Thyme tincture sat for 2 weeks in vodka before straining

Logan Byrd wrote:
To show you've completed this BB you must post pictures of the following:

- picture of the thyme, freshly harvested
- picture of the tincture being made
- picture of the finished tincture in its labeled jar.

Thyme tincture complete!