Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), horehound (Marrubium vulgare), and garden sage (Salvia officinalis) abound in my garden this time of year!
Each one of these medicinal herbs are super easy to grow and they all have some pretty amazing healing properties…making them a great addition to the home pharmacy.
Here’s a quick snapshot of these wonderful plants:
Lemon balm has been used to treat all kinds of nervous system ailments. And due to it’s highly antiseptic properties, lemon balm is known for it’s ability to act synergistically with others herbs in the treatment of the common cold and flu.
Horehound, although it grows well in a variety of climates, is best harvested growing in desert heat — score for me here in Phoenix…hence the massive amounts of horehound I have in my garden (The above picture is a portion of the horehound patch I found when backpacking with the family last weekend in Fossil Springs, AZ.). It is most commonly used as an expectorant, which makes it a great addition in cold, flu, and cough remedies.
Common garden sage may be best known for it’s use as a culinary herb, however it’s healing powers should not be overlooked. Used in this tincture, for fighting cold and flu symptoms, sage holds strong antiseptic and astringent medicinal properties — making it an effective treatment for sore throats and tonsils.
Additionally, although I don’t grow it my herb garden, I am adding dried echinacea root to this recipe. Echinacea root is by far one of the most popular immune-building herbs. It has the ability to fight off infection and disease like no other!
Note: Please see my How to Make a Tincture at Home video for more helpful information regarding making a tincture.
Cold and Flu Tincture ~ A Recipe
Supplies needed
-Solvent (i.e. 100 proof alcohol or vegetable glycerin)
-quart sized glass mason jar
-fresh and dried herbs
Ingredients
-2 ounces dried echinacea root
-1 ounce fresh lemon balm
-1 ounce fresh horehound
-1 ounce fresh sage
-100 proof vodka (or a mixture of 60% vegetable glycerin and 40% water) to fill jar
Method
1. Measure your herbs using a small kitchen scale.
2. Chop fresh herbs, until fine.
3. Add all herbs to glass jar.
4. Pour solvent over herbs to fill the jar. The solvent should rise 1-2 inches above the herbs.
5. Place the lid on the jar and shake until the herbs are well combined.
6. Label jar with contents and date.
7. Set in a warm, sunny window and steep for 2-6 weeks, shaking daily.
8. Strain with a cheesecloth, compost the plant material, and place tincture in dark colored bottles for storage in a cool, dark place. The tincture should keep for up to 5 years.
Adult Dosage
At the sudden onset of cold and flu symptoms, begin taking 1/4-1/2 a teaspoon of the tincture every 30 minutes to an hour until symptoms subside.
Child’s Dosage
I recommend calculating a child’s dose by using “Young’s Rule.” Add 12 to the child’s age then divide his/her age by that number. For example, my daughter is 6 therefore the calculation that I will use is 6/18=0.33 I will give her 33% of an adult dose.
Feel free to print this recipe and add it to your herbal journal: Cold and Flu Tincture Recipe (6kb PDF)
Looking for the raw materials mentioned in this post? Check out the good people over at Mountain Rose Herbs and Bulk Herb Store…they are the go-to for all my dried herb needs!
Click here to see my listing for this handmade tincture.
How to Treat Migraines with an Herbal Tincture at Home
Love your video ! Even though I have made some tinctures, the question I still have is “do you need to wash the fresh picked herbs before making the tincture?”
I never do 🙂
Thank you Andrea for confirming that what I was doing is ok .
Yep…you’re totally fine. I feel like washing them takes away some of the beneficial oils of the plant material. That’s the beauty of growing your own…you know exactly what they are exposed to 🙂
What brand of vodka do you recommend using? Or does it matter?
Doesn’t matter in my book…honestly, I go for whatever is cheapest. That’s often the better stuff, for tincturing anyway 😉
Thanks Andrea
Alcohol is not kind to me. I avoid it at all costs.
Can you recommend a good substitution for the vodka?
You can use apple cider vinegar instead of vodka. The tincture won’t last as long, though. About 6 months. Hope it helps!
This looks like a great recipe! I love sage for colds and coughs, so soothing and a lovely flavour for winter. I have made a horehound tincture before, it works very well on very deep coughs and healed me a couple of times. The only caveat is that it is truly awful tasting! Hopefully the taste sensation is minimised in this combo version : )
Ewww…horehound is awful tasting (forgot to give a warning about that). That is the benefit of the tincture, the lemon balm really helps to bring balance 🙂
I’ll definitly give it a try then as horehound really is second to none when it comes to shifting deep infections, I was just always put off by that terrible taste! If lemon balm makes it bearable that is such a boon, plus both are easy to grow : )
One way to make the tincture more palatable, especially for kids is to add some fresh mint (I use peppermint or garden mint) to the mix. I normally use 1.5 times as much mint to horehound quantity. I made a similar tea/infusion version of this for a friend when she came down with the flu…..I paired it with a cough syrup made from black cherry bark, horehound, mullien and honey….she was cured in 3 days….her 103° fever broke within the first 8 hours too.
Question….what if dried is all I can get for this recipe? We haven’t grown our own yet and I live in an area heavily sprayed for mosquito’s and close to an orange grove that is heavily sprayed, so I don’t really want to pick wild. I assume I can use dried but maybe in different portions? Sorry if that sounds dumb!
Girl please…there are NO dumb questions 🙂
This is totally new for most of us so don’t ever hesitate to ask.
You can absolutely use dried herbs very successfully in tinctures, in fact I do quite often (just so happens I have these fresh right now). Anyhow…use dried herbs and fill your jar 1/2 full with them then pour in your solvent (i.e. alcohol or vegetable glycerin) to fill the jar.
Awesome! Thank you Andrea! 🙂
Anytime friend!
Do you know a good place to get the herbs needed for this recipe dried from? I live in minnesota and am a cancer survivor and have a low immune system so I am constantly getting sick. I want to try more natural things to treat instead of all those pills the keep throwing at me, but here in our stores…even our “natural/whole food/health” stores, we can’t find these herbs and it being minnesota, I don’t think I will have a lot of luck growing the horehound if I could ever find it, as you say it grows best in desert like climates. Any help you could give me, even if I have to order online, would be helpful! Thank you!
Mountain Rose Herbs are a great source for organic herbs. Starwest Botanicals is also a good source. You can order online and it is mailed USPS Ground. Their prices are great and the quality is also.
Thank you! I need to grow these, I have been trying to figure out what herbs to start growing and can’t quite wrap my head around it all lol! So this recipe gives me a few to try out for a specific recipe (that sounds quite useful!). Thanks for the video too, always great to “see” how things work =)
Would this (and the migraine tincture) work as well using a vinegar base? Something I have a lot of is Kombucha, which I use as a substitute for vinegar in numerous recipes (when I let it “brew” too long.) Kombucha is very healthy as a drink. Would it function as an extra health booster in these tinctures or would the probiotics in Kombucha do some funky things with all those herbs and make an unsafe product? Any info would be appreciated.
Beth, how do you make ‘Kombucha’??
Looks remarkably like snake oil.
You know I hear that snake oil is indeed very good for negative people … It might do you good.
@ELB. Why did you bother to read the article. Move along. If it is not to your taste, or able to be included in your personal belief system, move along…why bother to comment if there is no convincing you that it is any thing more than ‘snake oil.’
Thanx Andrea, I’ll have to try this one, my hubby suffers from lung problem, and I use all kinds of snakes oils they really do him good.
What if the fresh herbs are not available? Can you substitute dried for this tincture?
Oooops sorry, should have read all the comments before I asked that, I see you already addressed it. Thanks 🙂
I would like to say I love this article. Always interested in helpful home remedies. My questions would be,since I am new to this. How long will this keep? Do tinctures need refrigeration? If not would refrigeration help it keep longer? Thank you for your wonderful information.
I wonder if adding oregano to this would make it even better I took oil of oregano for a bad sore throat andit worked magically
I am wondering if you could (maybe even with better results) Put the tincure in an emulsifier (like the vitamix ) instead of just steeping and straining? Maybe you would get more of the benefits of the herbs, and do you know if you would have to adjust the dose?
I have black horehound growing in my back yard. Can it be used in the same way as regular horehound?
Thanks for sharing this !!!! I too, live where we just recently were aerial sprayed for Mosquitoes, West Nile ones in fact 🙁 I have used dried herbs before and they seemed to work just fine. I have also used Brandy instead of Vodka…I have also added Oregano, as I take the OregaResp products. I am soooo glad I found this site and thanks for sharing this !!!!
Jules from outside Houston, TX
I wanted to follow this recipe and bought all of the ingredients and then realized that it was fresh ingredients 🙁 OOPS! How would you change the measurements if it was all dried ingredients?
Thank you so much! I love growing my own herbs~I must try this
Hi Andrea which 100 proof vodka do you used?
Can I add raw honey to tinctures to make it taste better especially for my little kids?
@tammy, I like to add 1 part honey to 4 parts strained tincture to make an elixir or cordial, if you will. You can also go dose by dose and just add a teaspoon or more of honey to a small cup of water to the 1/4 tsp of tincture to make it more palatable. I have to do this for my boyfriend!
I finished making the tincture and poured it into individual amber bottles to give to family. But, I tasted it after I bottled the tincture individually and it tastes horrible!!! I was wondering about adding raw honey but I’m not sure how to do that now. Should I pour everything back into one bowl and add the honey and then pour it out individually again?
Which variety of echinacea do you use, please? Thanks
What I meant to say was, do you grow echinacea augustifolia, purpurea, or pallida to use for this tincture?
How do you measure 40 percent and 60 percent from a container, and put it in tinture,
thank you
Elsie reid
Including the print out was nice. Thanks!
Hi!
i collected all the ingredients and i will prepare it today…i have one question… i breastfeed my toddler… so if these herbs affects the lactation? thanks!
Sage will definitely reduce your milk supply. It’s what I give to mothers who are trying to dry off their milk. Lemon balm and echinacea are fine, though.
Horehound. Can you describe it. Or where to find
I am curious if anyone could help me out with ratios. I’ve read that dried herbs should be measured out to a third of fresh herbs instead. I want to make this tincture and I’m wondering if anyone has done this with all dried herbs.
Is it ok to use 80 proof vodka instead of 100 proof? The 100 proof is way too expensive for me but I can afford the 80 proof bottle.
I have TONS of horehound growing on my property pesticide free. Maybe I should be packaging and selling! LOL! I made some horehound lozenges and they turned out good. Now I want to try tinctures. I have Horehound and Mullein growing and I grow my own Sage. My friend is giving me some of her Lemon Balm today so that I can make this.
Thank you!
Does this still work if all you can use is dried herbs?