I’m a fan of the percolation method of extracting herbal constituents, so thought about sharing my journey in making my own percolation cone.
I thought it would be cheaper than buying one and in one sense, it is. Now I’m equipped for cutting glass it’ll be cheaper in the long run but this first one was a bit steep.
The bottle
I’ve got to give a nod to the folks at Cafe Nova who let me raid their bottle bin for wine bottles so that I could practice.
First of all, I tried the string and metho method to cut the bottom off of the bottles. That was very inconsistent. I invested in a glass cutter from eBay. It only cost me $16 and was adequate, though still, the results were not perfect.
I decided to bite the bullet and bu a diamond cutting disc for my Dremal. It was $20 on sale at the big green shed around the corner. This cut beautifully but it was tricky to get a straight and even cut. If only I had something with rollers…?
Then it hit me…why don’t I mount the Dremel on the rollers of the cutter that I’d purchased from eBay? A bit of fiddling to get the height right and I was away. I could roll the bottle against the rapidly rotating disc foir some decent cuts! It works nicely but there’s still a bit of wet and dry polishing to do after and doesn’t the cutter make a noise?!
If you ever do glass cutting, make sure you wear glasses, a mask and gloves. Glass is unforgiving, even as dust.
The total cost was $36 plus some bits and pieces I had around.
The stand was modelled on a test tube rack and made of offcuts of wood plus some short lengths cut from a 25mm broomstick (cost $7) and some paint that I had laying around. I thought I’d try enamel paint because it may get splashed with alcohol and I thought it may last longer than an acrylic based paint.
There’s a ring of stick-on rubber sheet around the inside of the hole to help secure and protect the bottle (cone).
The tap
Percolation is a slow method and we need a way to slow down the flow of the tincture. You can go the quick and easy way and make a small hole in the cap of the bottle. Once the filter is in, adjusting the tightness of the cap will adjust the rate of flow.
But where’s the fun in that?
I went all out for a flashy, adjustable tap that’ll dazzle onlookers and make me look like I know what I’m doing. Yeah… hmmm….
I needed a bung to close the bottle and hold the tap.
I tried several bungs and drilled a couple of different types. The easiest to drill were the rubber boat bungs that were (fortunately) on sake at Mitre 10 for $2 for a pack of two. The best I found were the pre-drilled silcon stoppers from Brewcraft (about $5 each). They gave me a bit more confidence too, being made for alcohol which, at high strength, may damage other materials and leach yucky stuff into the tinctures.
The tap I chose is 1/4 inch valve from an air compressor setup and a barbed whatever-they’re- called that goes through the bung and that the tap screws into. Even these have Teflon in them to allow the valve to rotate. Later, I’ll try needle valves that don’t.
I needed to trim the bung a little so the whole assembly fitted neatly into the bottle because the initial try was too flexible and moved a lot.
A bit of thread tape to stop leaks and away we went. Then I found that the whole thing was longer than I’d estimated, so I cut and drilled a block of wood to add to the top so that the bottle was raised a little higher. The rubber insert helps raise it a little too. I’ve seen a few other stand designs which I’ll be making as time goes on.
It works nicely. Soon, I’ll be adding a link to our Tincturing page so that you can find out how to percolate your herbs and we’ll be covering percolation in the advanced herbalism 2 session course in October or November.
Other herb pages on Ligaya Garden
We cover a lot of ground on many herb related topics here on our website. There are whole pages devoted to different topics as well as frequent posts. Some of the links are –
