First I would suggest reviewing this post –

Tea or Tincture? – Simple Thrift and Herbs

Once you’ve decided on the herb you want to tincture, you need to do a little work before you start just throwing stuff together. I would suggest this pamphlet from Michael Moore at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine

Michael did a lot of research using the old eclectic manuals and found the best percentage of alcohol to use for particular herbs and the ratio of herb (marc) to alcohol (menstrum). For some of the plants, there is only an option for ‘fresh plant’. This is because the latex or resins in the plant do not extract well in the dried form [plants like wild lettuce (Lactuca villosa), marijuana, or gumweed (Grindelia squarrosa)]. These plants are tinctured by the maceration method.

Maceration requires less equipment and less math than tincturing by percolation, and in some cases (like those above and really bad experience I had with Rosa canina!) the only way to tincture certain herbs.

All herbs can be tinctured via maceration; not all herbs can be tinctured by percolation. If you decide you want to tincture mint – you can easily tincture it by maceration (very little math, easy to do, takes a little more time, pretty much no equipment) or percolation (more math, more equipment needed, a little more challenging). I prefer to do percolation if possible, but that is just my preference. I don’t know – maybe it seems more exact or professional. But the truth is that every single tincture, even if you use the same technique, will vary – because the individual plants vary according to how they grow and are harvested. Herbal therapy is science, yes – but it also is art and creativity and intuition.

Next week, my plan is to walk you thru doing a maceration. We will be using wild lettuce as I have that handy (growing right outside my apothecary) and yeah, less math!