Perhaps you have a nagging cough or a sore throat is bothering you. When making your own herbal syrups, you will be able to treat these ailments and more. In this article, we will show you the necessary equipment, standard dosage, storage tips, and step-by-step instructions on how to make your own herbal syrup using herbs, such as goldenseal and hyssop.
When making an herbal syrup, you will most likely use the leaves, roots, flowers, and bark of a plant. As you prepare your infusion, it is quite common to blend unrefined sugar or honey with your herbal infusion or decoction, which helps to mask some of the untasty characteristics that some syrups tend to possess. This will especially come in handy when you intend on giving this herbal treatment to a child, who will most certainly appreciate a bit of honey.
The standard quantity involved in making an herbal syrup includes 500 ml of infusion or decoction and 500 grams of honey or unrefined sugar. Usually, a standard dose for this type of remedy is to take 5 to 10 ml, three times per day. When it comes time to store the leftovers, you should use a sterilized, dark glass bottle that has a cork stopper. Don’t forget to label the bottle with the contents and the date it was made because such treatments can be kept for up to three months.
Equipment
To make herbal syrups, the following equipment will be used: saucepan, teapot, jug, wooden spoon, nylon or plastic sieve, and an airtight, sterilized, dark glass bottles with cork stoppers. The use of a funnel is optional during this particular herbal remedy process.
Directions
1) Choose the herbs you’d like to incorporate for your herbal remedy. Keeping an herbal remedy book by your side will come in handy so that you will know which herbs are used for what purpose. First, you will make a standard infusion or decoction of your selected herbs. This part of the process will be shortly discussed shortly in ” How to Make an Herbal Infusion.”
2) Next, strain the infusion or decoction into a jug and then pour the contents into a clean saucepan.
3) For each 500 ml of infusion that you prepare, you will add 500 grams of warm honey or unrefined sugar. The next step is to continuously stir until the sweetener has dissolved. The mixture should then be gently simmered until the mixture creates a syrupy consistency. Next, you should remove the blend from the heat and allow it to cool.
4) After the mixture has cooled, you should pour into bottles and then seal it up with the cork stopper. The reasoning behind a cork stopper is that over time, syrups can ferment and the stopper will simply pop out, where bottles with screw tops actually have the potential to explode.
To learn about some of the different syrups you may make from a wide-range of herbs, check out the article titled “What an Herbal Syrup Can Do For Me?”