It’s pretty easy to make your own herb infused oils for medicinal purposes. I’d advise first checking out our page ‘Herb infused oils‘ that will help you to work out which oil to use. There are links to other methods of making oils on that page. Here we’ll discuss the basic, folk method.
Folk?
The ‘folk’ method of making remedies refers to the traditional, way of making a remedy, whether it is an oil or other form of healing substance. It refers to the old ways (which are equally relevant today) and old days before clocks, scales and blenders became ubiquitous.
It’s basically the same method you use to make a Folk tincture but ith oil.
A simple folk oil
Here, we’ll make a simple oil using Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) and Grapeseed oil but the technique applies equally well to any herb and any oil.
Equipment
All you need is your herb, a way to chop it finely (we will use a blender) and a jar with a lid. It’s that simple!
Basic Folk Method
- Chop your dried Mugwort as finely as you can. The finer, the better so that the oil has a better chance of soaking in.
- Add your dried Mugwort to your jar and cover it with oil so that there is about 2 cm of oil covering the herb.
- Stir the two together well to make sure all of the herb is wetted with the oil.
- Leave it for 2 hours or overnight ( if you forget) so that the oil can soak into the herb. If, after that time, the oil doesn’t cover the herb by about 2 cm, add more oil until it does. The extra oil is important for keeping air out of the mix and preventing mould during the maceration process.
- Cover the jar with its lid and put it somewhere warm, out of direct sunlight (more on this later) for 2 weeks – 1 month, shaking or stirring it every day or so to keep fresh oil coming in contact with the herb.
- When you think the infused oil is ready, strain, filter and bottle it.
Now to modernise it a bit
Once you have your herb and oil mixed together, put the mix into a blender and blend until the mix is warm.
Repeat this several times over the course of the day and then put the blended mix in your jar and continue on as above.
Blending greatly reduces the size of the herb pieces and very thoroughly mixes the herb and oil together, making the whole process faster,
Here’s a tip! Before filtering your oil, warm it slightly – oil filters faster when it’s a little warm!
Can we use fresh herbs?
Yes, you can. Just remember that there is water in the fresh herb and that water and oil don’t mix. The water is what makes oil go rancid, greatly reducing its potency and storability.
The trick here is to wilt the herb for a while, even overnight to reduce the water content.
Depending on the volumes of infused oils you make, you may see the water settle at the bottom of your container after you filter it. In this case, you can decant it off or do what I do and use a turkey baster to draw off the water from below the oil.
If you’re only making 50 mls or so, of oil , you may not even see the water at the bottom of your container.
You mentioned the Sun earlier…The Solar method.
Most herbs and remedies do best if kept out of direct sunlight because it can break down some of the constituents, leading to a weaker remedy.
You can, however, use the heat of the Sun to improve your infusion of herb into your oil. Simply put your jar somewhere sunny and warm but cover it with a light cloth (a tea towel is enough). The heat of the Sun will help speed the extraction and the cloth will keep the UV and other rays off of your oil and herb.
Of course, there are always exceptions. St. John’s Wort and Calendula absolutely adore the Sun and make potent oils best when they are infused in full sunlight. There’s a whole page here describing making Calendula oil with the solar method.
Increasing potency
Whichever method you use, you can increase the potency of your oil by straining out the herbs and adding a new batch to your infused oil and repeating the process.
Usually, doing this once is enough but you can repeat the process several times if you want.
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 –
