Re: Good show Willow! Re: Eyebright Formula

I will order the herbs from Mountain Rose.

Please give your experienced advice regarding three aspects of this operation:

1.)
MR's Eyebright is from Hungary.
MR's Red Raspberry is from Poland
Both are OG (organic), but are these irradiated do you suppose? Do you recommend a locally grown source?
Use Golden Seal Root Powder? Or dried root pieces, which I assume will have similar size/texture to Echinacea root. and see point three, below.  I checked on Pacific Botanicals and their Eyebright comes from Hungary and their Red Raspberry comes from Poland.  Uny says that MR and PB are both pretty tight on their policies on importing organic herbs from other countries so both are good sources.  I would trust that they aren't irradiated.  I ordered most of mine from MR because they are cheaper but I did have to order a few things from PB.  The country to watch out for is China.  You want to use Goldenseal Root cut and sifted or CS.  You don't want to mix them or use some herbs in the formula that are powder and some that are CS.

2.)
I already have lots of Cayenne tincture, including some that's still soaking, unpressed, after more than one year.

So I will take the four other herbs and make the eye tincture from equal parts by volume of each.

Then I will remove 1/8 (or maybe 1/4 or whatever) of one part from that and add in the strained, pressed cayenne tincture.

This seems the best technique, being the most simple. Do you agree? That seems the easiest to me. 


3.) Goldenseal is rather expensive. . .
Normally, I make tinctures by filling about 3/4 of the container with the herbs, and then adding 90 proof Vodka to the top.
But I don't want to waste much Golden Seal, and I also don't want to buy powdered golden seal root and not use it all because the stored powder will deteriorate over time.

What I'm getting at is I that the other herbs are inexpensive, so I don't want to use more than necessary if that ups the amount of the expensive Golden Seal needed and it will just be wasted or overkill. So do you think 3/4 full is too full? Especially because I generally let stuff sit for months and months and go by the Moon, usually.

So using Quart Ball Jars, how much Golden Seal (root or powder) do you suppose I should buy to make a quart of this. I will probably make at least two Quarts, but prefer to make  Yup, I couldn't believe how expensive the Goldenseal is!  I made all of my tinctures in 1/2 gallon Ball jars, I used 3/4 cup for my part so that is a total of 3 cups of herbs into the 1/2 gallon jar.  By the third day once all the herbs were finished swelling I had to split the jars because I had less than an inch of alcohol float on the top after I macerated it.  Maybe that will give you some idea of what size part to use for a quart jar. I'd probably start with a 1/4 cup part then if I thought it would fit maybe add another 1/8 cup part after the swelling had finished but you'd have to have enough Goldenseal on hand to do that.  If you've got any kind of a root herb that you've got dry, you could measure out what you thought your part might be then see how many ounces that is and order the Goldenseal by the ounce. I've always used 100 proof vodka for the tinctures.  None of my tincture jars were 3/4 full of dried herbs before I put the vodka in, some were about 1/2 but some were less than half, remember the root herbs swell much more than the others.  I think Uny posted once that what you're shooting for once its all said and done is 2/3 herb and 1/3 float but more herb will make it stronger but like you I don't press any of my tinctures until I need them and then I only press a 4oz. bottle at a time so all of my tinctures have been tincturing since October of 09 so they're getting pretty strong I think.  I wouldn't make less than a quart for sure, I'd probably make more, well I did make more lol, I ended up with almost a gallon.