Once you’ve learned how to make a basic tincture from your herbs, sooner or later you’re going to want to start mixing them together. The process is a little bit more complicated than it seems, but all it takes is a little bit of knowledge and practice. If you’re interested in customizing your own tinctures in order to get the desired results, keep reading.
Solubility and You
The first thing that you really need to keep in mind is the solubility of the active ingredients that you’re mixing. For the most part, ethanol tinctures are all compatible. It’s when you start mixing tinctures with two different base solvents that things can get out of hand. After you mix your tinctures together, look for any precipitation — that is particles falling out of solution — which could mean that you have an incompatible mix.
Mixing Tinctures to Increase Effects
There are really two good reasons to mix tinctures together, and the first is to increase their combined effects. This process, called synergy, is the reason that most tinctures get mixed together.
You’ll find that herbs from similar families give the most synergy. For instance, the wormwoods — mugwort and sweet wormwood — mix well together because they all have similar active ingredients.
Another popular reason to seek out synergy is to add effects to your favorite herbs. A good example of this would be marijuana and damiana. Marijuana, which can already be stimulating in the bedroom, especially for women — gets sexually supercharged with the addition of a damiana tincture.
Mixing Tinctures to Decrease Side-Effects
The other good reason to mix two or more tinctures together is to decrease side-effects. For instance, if you love the energy that a tincture brings to the table, but you can’t live with the jittery feeling that it can sometimes cause, try adding a half-part of Passion Flower tincture to the mix.
Decreasing side-effects becomes more important as dosage increases, because the potential for side-effects also increases with the dosage. If you find yourself having issues with high-dose tinctures, and decreasing the dosage isn’t an option for you, then seek out other herbs that will combat these side-effects and consider adding them to the mix.
Tried and True Recipes
Here are a few recipes to get you started.
Lucid Dreaming Tincture
Try mixing up a tincture that consists of 2 parts , 1 part Passion Flower, 1 part Mugwort, and 1 part chamomile. This blend will ease you to sleep and then fire up your mind for lucid dreaming.
Amp-Up Blend
A tincture made with 3 parts calamus root, 1 part kanna, and 1 part kratom will get you fired up and ready to dance all night.
Sleepytime Tincture
1 part chamomile, 1 part blue lotus, and 1 part Passion Flower will relax your mind and help ease you off to sleep.
Sex Panther
Rev up your motor with a tincture made of 2 parts damiana and 1 part kanna. This mixture will get you in the mood and increase tactile sensations for a night you won’t forget.
Party Time
Mix up a tincture with 2 parts marijuana, 1 partcalamus root, and 1 part Kava Kava in order to highlight the psychedelic effects of weed and fight off couch lock.
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