A facebook post generated enough interest in the chaga double extraction I did recently that I decided to post about Double (or Dual) Extraction. This is a technique in working with herbs that I’ve picked up from a few herbalist friends.

When we extract herbal essences from herbs, sometimes making teas works better (if the compounds we want are water soluble), other times making tinctures is better (if the compounds we want are alcohol soluble).

But what if we want different compounds from a substance, some of which are water soluble and some of which are alcohol soluble? This is where dual extraction can be of value, since we use both water and alcohol. I have mostly used this technique with medicinal mushrooms, such as reishi and chaga.

Sorry for the lack of pictures; perhaps the next time I do this I’ll take pictures of the process to document it more fully. This technique takes some time, several weeks for the tincturing process and several days for the decocting process, but it’s not much work, it mostly involves letting the herbs sit in whichever medium they are being extracted in.

Step 1: tincture

• I begin with a large mason jar with a lid. I fill the jar about halfway with the finely-chopped medicinal mushrooms of my choice. The finer the chopping, the more surface area we expose and the easier it will be to extract the alkaloids we are looking for.
• Then, once the mushrooms or herbs are in the jar, I fill the jar completely with 80 (or more) proof alcohol. Vodka usually has the most neutral flavor but you can use whatever you wish.
• Let the tincture sit for a period of time. Chaga can be ready within a week; on the other hand I’ve let Reishi go for more than a year. Harvest when you feel it is ready.
• To harvest, pour the contents of the jar through a strainer, capturing the mark (chunks of mushrooms/herbs) and the menstruum (the now-colored alcohol containing the herbal essences just extracted). Cover the mentruum with a lid and set aside for several days while we further process the mark.

Step 2: decoction

• Next, take the half-spent mark leftover from the tincturing process and put it into a large saucepan. Cover with a gallon of spring water and bring to a boil. I prefer using a crock pot for this step, put everything in, turn the pot onto high, and keep the lid cracked open so steam can escape.
• Simmer and reduce the liquid to half or even one-quarter. Remove from heat, and let cool to blood temperature. Put into an appropriate container — mark and water (menstruum) together — and put the mixture into the freezer for 2-3 days, to allow it to fully freeze. The act of freezing the mark while in water can sometimes help break open the cell (or chitin) walls, allowing us to extract more nutrients.
• Thaw the frozen mixture, and continue cooking down. Once completely thawed, add another gallon of water, return to simmer, and let it reduce to 1/2 quart (reduce by 8). Once reduced, where the liquid is quite dark and thick (chaga is GORGEOUS for instance), strain the mixture. Discard the mark, and keep the menstruum.

Step 3: dual extraction

• Once the reduced tea has cooled to blood temperature, combine it with the tincture done in step 1. Shake/stir well to combine.
• OPTIONAL: at this stage you can also add sweetener (no more than 1:1 honey) or additional flavorings (such as a vanilla bean).
• Store in a bottle that offers some protection against UVs.
• Your dual extraction will be potent! Experiment with just a few drops, or perhaps a dropperful or two.

To reiterate, I’ve had the most luck doing this with medicinal mushrooms, namely reishi and chaga. Have fun making your own medicines!

Quite a harvest after the bottling session today:

Bottled three batches today: Spruce Tip Mead, Raspberry Damiana Mead, and Cherry/Red Ginseng Mead. If I may say so, all three batches are excellent in their own right, and for very different reasons.

For the Spruce Tip Mead, this is not the first time I’ve made an evergreen brew. They do hold a special place in my heart; last year’s spruce mead was surprisingly one of the best ones I did all year. This years is no different, though the flavor is different from last years. It’s still very sweet, but it still tastes like Yule.

When talking about the Raspberry Damiana the first thing I should mention is its incredibly vibrant color. Deep red, one of the most gorgeous batches since the Wild Black Cherry and the Prickly Pear. To be honest, at first I was a bit disappointed with the flavor when I racked it; it had a bit of a “cough syrup” vibe to it with the herbal damiana and the sweet-fruity flavor mixed together. I’m happy to say that the cough-syrupiness has faded significantly since then, and it is delicious! Will be a favorite I think.

Finally, the Cherry Red Ginseng is surprising precisely for its lack of color. I did use fewer cherries than last year, and the cherries I did use were not as ripe — bright red rather than deep black. However the mead turned out… yellow. Go figure. That said, it is beautifully clear and might be the most delicious of these three batches.

I’m definitely grateful for a bountiful Yule harvest! Happiness is…. a full mead cabinet.

We are very happy to bring you a brand new product: Herbal Asthma Strategies with Sean Donahue. After the success of the Lore And Craft of Mead book, we wanted to broaden our product range. While herbalism is one of the foundations of our meadmaking method, this new product is a foray into herbalism rather than fermentation.

Herbal Asthma Strategies with Sean Donahue consists of 7 audio lecture recordings in mp3 format (over 100 minutes of audio total), as well as a concise booklet that outline Sean’s approach to dealing with asthma. He developed these strategies with his own life experience. They were effective enough to have a profound effect on Sean’s life, leading him down the path of becoming an herbalist. He no longer considers asthma to be a part of how he defines himself, and has helped many other people with their asthma.

The program begins with teachings about what asthma is, in terms of why the body responds to certain stimuli with the tightness, wheezing, and difficulty breathing associated with asthma. So the first step is to learn which triggers to avoid, in order to prevent the body from responding with breathing trouble. One very important trigger point is diet, which is discussed in detail to help you determine which dietary choices will improve your quality of breath.

In addition, Sean discusses the critical — and often overlooked — emotional component of healing associated with those who no longer have asthma, which may explain why some people “grow out of” asthma and others do not.

Lastly, Sean gives a breakdown of 13 Herbs for Asthma, discussing the virtues of each plant along with where and when it is appropriate to employ each one as part of your asthma strategy.

We’ve made available a short interview with Sean where we discuss this program and his history with asthma, which you can listen to here:

As you can hear, Sean’s teaching style is quite gentle, heart-based, and thorough.

Lastly, we believe healthcare of all kinds are a fundamental right for everyone. We want to support everyone on their healing journeys. As such, we will meet you where you are in your economic journey using a sliding scale on the honor system. If you go out for dinner a couple times per month, or go to concerts or the theater, then you can afford the full price of the program. However, if you are barely scraping by economically, we want to make this knowledge available to you at a lower price.

The regular price of the program is $60. If you can afford $40, then use the coupon code $20OffSlidingScale which brings the price down to $40. If you can afford $20 then use the coupon code $40OffSlidingScale which brings the price down to $20.

We don’t want to keep this information from anyone who needs it. If you, or someone you know or care about, is struggling with breathing issues or asthma, then this information will be very valuable to you.

Add it to your cart:

Sean Donahue is not a medical doctor, and none of the information contained in this booklet or the accompanying recordings is intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, or cure of any medical condition. The term asthma is used here in a general, colloquial sense, not as a term for a medical condition. Readers and listeners are advised to consult a health professional before beginning to use any herb.

I’m very excited for an upcoming product announcement that will be a departure for Bardic Brews. In the past, all of our work has been about fermentation in general, and mead in particular. However, despite my love of mead and fermentation, it was never my intention to keep the focus of this website so narrow.

Herbalism is a big part of my meadmaking strategy; I have incorporated herbs into my concoctions from the very beginning. And indeed, herbalism has been an increasing part of my life since this website began.

This new publication, which will be released in the coming days, is also near and dear to me personally. I’ve had asthma since I was a small child, and have struggled throughout my life to keep it under control so that I can live the life I wish to live with minimal impact from the asthma.

For this new, upcoming product, I am teaming up with Sean Donahue, to bring you a packet of information called Herbal Asthma Strategies. Sean, who deals with asthma himself, has used these strategies to improve his own health, and to help many other people — including me.

I can’t tell you how excited we are to bring this information out to the public. For people like myself who have struggled with asthma their entire lives, being reliant upon the steroid-based products of the pharmaceutical industry, this information is a life-changer, empowering us to increase our health naturally, affordably, and sustainably.

This publication will consist of several high-quality audio recordings (in mp3 format so you can put them on your portable player), where Sean discusses the nuances of his strategies in detail, as well as a more concise booklet summarizing the information in the recordings.

Best of all, this information will be extremely affordable. It will cost less than most other asthma remedies commonly in use, and the information contained within will never run out, it can be used for the rest of your life. And, because we want to make this important information available to everyone, we will be offering it on a sliding scale.

Watch this space for the official announcement and launch coming later this week!

For much of 2011, I’ve been experimenting greatly with herbal meads. Some of them have been fantastic, others powerful brews yet perhaps not the best tasting. There have been quite a few complex brews this year as I experiment and hone my meadmaking craft with the herbal skills I am also gaining.

I wanted to make a simpler mead that celebrated the local season. In Maine during autumn, this means cyser. We also had some blackberries floating around from earlier in the  year (love our new freezer), so I thawed a quart of those to put into the batch. Simple: blackberry cyser. Just the ticket.

I started with 3 gallons of fresh, nonpasteurized, non-UV treated cider from the orchard around the corner:

I added 2 cups of organic black tea:

And I whizzed up a quart of thawed blackberries in the blender:

Mixed it with enough honey (about 3/4 gallon) to get to 18% alcohol potential:

And the result is a cloudy but beautifully-colored must:

Definitely a seasonal brew. Can’t wait to try this one in a few months!

I was first introduced to Perry on video, in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall‘s BBC show River Cottage. In one of the episodes, Hugh picks some pears, and is taught how to make Perry, which is basically like apple cider except made with pressed pears rather than apples.

I knew I wanted to make another cyser after last year’s Autumn Berry Cyser turned out so well. It was my first successful dry mead, with a delightful tartness coming from the apples I used (that came from Thompson’s Orchard around the corner). I knew cider season was here and I could get great cider from them. But I wanted to try a different additive than autumn berries, since it’s still a wee bit early for those.

My wife recently found some wild pears and brought home a milk crate full. I decided to juice them (thanks for juicing them LM!), and it produced about a gallon of pear juice.

I began my evening by clearing out some jugs and bottling up 3 gallons of Blueberry Nettle Mead and Treequinox Mead:

Mini-bottling session. 5 bottles of Treequinox and 10 of Blueberry Nettle.

Once I cleared some jugs, I racked the Raspberry Damiana Mead into them to age and clear. This one is another very interesting brew!

Once I had a clean carboy (thanks for the help LM!) it was time to begin making the Perry Cyser by brewing up 2 cups of black tea, and pouring this into my stockpot, followed by the gallon of pear juice, about a gallon of cider, and about 3/4 a gallon of honey. I then added a bit more of honey and cider until I had 3 gallons of must at 15% alcohol potential:

15% initial alcohol potential should give a nice dry cyser with moderate alcohol content.

The must was dark and murky, like the deepest mysteries of autumn distilled:

Perry Cyser Must

When I finished, I had a dark mead the color of leaf piles:

Perry cyser in the carboy on the left. Leftover cider on the right, fated to become apple cider vinegar.

It’s still early, so I think the cider will improve in quality in a few weeks. I’ll likely do another cyser soon….

UPDATE, 7 Jan

This is now very dry, at 1% alcohol potential, which means this is 14% alcohol. It’s still quite tart, and once it has a chance to age and clear this will be delicious!

If we wish to honor our Elders — our ancestors; our blood-roots — then we can do well to learn from their wisdom. Their wisdom honors us, if we are attentive to it. In some way, I regard Elderberries, Reishi Mushrooms, and Rose Hips as Herbal Elders. Our Elders used these plants/fungi considerably. These herbs have been our companions as humans for a very long time.

All three of them have profound healing properties on some level, all working in close harmony with our immune systems, strengthening and regulating them when they are out of balance. All three herbs are abundant this time of year, going into the cooler months where we are more likely to benefit from their properties. And all three have been used to strengthen the immune system, aid in healing sickness, in many traditions and cultures worldwide, all over the planet, for millennia.

I wanted to bring all of these Elders together in a mead. This chronicle will start with the ingredients used first.

Reishi (Ganoderma tsugae)

“Reishi is that age old medicine cited thousands of years ago in several texts and scripts as being a tonic for emperors. At one time this mushroom was specifically used under the prestigious vestiges of the ruling class, but it has since made its way into the pantries of us common folk. Traditional and contemporary Chinese medicine admire it as a tonic benefiting vital energy or “Qi”, and it is popularly prescribed for a multitude of maladies.”

Reishi seems like an elder to me. It has been in use for thousands of years; its Chinese name translates to “mushroom of the spirit” or “supernatural mushroom.” There is a wisdom to this “immortality” fungus that western scientists are just beginning to wonder about.

Much has been written about Reishi; there are plenty of places to learn about it. I won’t repeat any more here, other than to say Reishi is one of my absolute favorite herbs to work with. Its decocted taste is extremely bitter, so I’ve wanted to incorporate it into a brew for a while now. Elder Mead seemed an obvious choice.

I began by chopping up my reishi into tiny pieces, to increase their surface area which will allow more medicine to be in the tea:

Reishi can be tough to cut, but the newly-sharpened Becker BK-2 makes short work of it.

I put the reishi into 2 gallons of spring water, brought it to a simmer, and let it decoct for about 10 hours.

Rose Hips (Rosa canina)

Rose Hips to me embody the wisdom of the divine feminine, our Mother-Elders have an unbroken, living lineage back to the dawn of time. Their scent conjures springtime, and they look over us, nourishing us with vitamin C and their other, many nutrients. Bringing this mother-herb into this mead was a no-brainer.

Right at the end of the Reishi decoction, I put the (frozen, then thawed, to soften their skins) rose hips into the tea and let everything (hot water, reishi bits, rose hips) infuse and cool overnight. The next morning, I strained the tea, which was a gorgeous, clear color tasting both bitter and tart:

Reishi (decoction) Rose Hip (infusion) tea.

Once the tea cooled to blood temperature, I was ready to put everything else together.

Elderberry (Sambucus Nigra)

Elderberry is one of my favorite berries to brew with. 2010′s Elderberry Mead was one of my favorites of the year, both in terms of taste and in terms of its effects on the body. Elderberries are extremely medicinal, with a long history of medicinal lore not only from the past, but also right up through the present, where its “H1N1 inhibition activities… compare favorably” to other known flu medications. Elderberry syrup is one common way to get this fantastic medicine into our bodies, but mead works just as well, and might last longer.

I got some gorgeous, purple elderberries:

Elderberries!

I did the usual; I whizzed these up in the VitaMix and then strained it into the must. This time, however, I did something different with the mark; after I strained it I saved the pulp and the seeds, put the mark into a small (leftover Rite Chocolate) jar and then covered it all up with vodka. I’ll let this tincture for a few weeks, strain it, then mix it with honey to make an Elderberry Cordial:

Making an elderberry tincture with the leftover pulp and a bit of vodka.

I’ll report back as to how the tincture goes.

Then, I mixed in enough honey to get up to a 17% initial alcohol potential:

Transfer everything to the carboy, give a good shake, label it, and clean up the bit of mess, and we’re good to go:

Elder Mead, with Reishi, Rose Hips, and Elderberries

Here’s one for the Elders. Tonight I raise my horn to you. Hail to the Blood Roots! Hail to the Mud Roots! May your wisdom bestow us with health in the coming cold months….

UPDATE, 7 Jan

This is quite dry, and very bitter from the reishi! Nice! 1% remaining alcohol potential, which means this is quite strong at 16% alcohol. This one is very complex and very nice…. should just get better as it ages.

I’ve wanted to make a pyment for a while now. Pyment is simply one of the fancy names for mead variants (such as melomel, metheglin, cyser, etc) that refers to mead made with grape juice. I was going to do a pyment last season, but never did — apparently I was distracted by the plethora of choice ingredients available for mead at this time of year when grapes are ripe in this climate. However this year, after a phone call from a friend alerting me to a patch of wild Concord Grapes, I finally had a good chance to do so.

Concord Grapes (Vitis labrusca) were developed nearby (in Concord, MA) in the mid-19th century:

Experimenting with seeds from some of the native species, Boston-born Ephraim Wales Bull developed the Concord grape in 1849. On his farm outside Concord, down the road from the Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott homesteads, he planted some 22,000 seedlings in all, before he had produced the ideal grape. Early ripening, to escape the killing northern frosts, but with a rich, full-bodied flavor, the hardy Concord grape thrives where European cuttings had failed to survive. In 1853, Mr. Bull felt ready to put the first bunches of his Concord grapes before the public — and won first prize at the Boston horticultural Society exhibition. From these early arbors, fame of Mr. Bull’s (“the father of the Concord grape”) Concord grape spread world-wide, bringing him up to $1,000 a cutting, but he died a relatively poor man. The inscription on his tombstone states, “He sowed–others reaped.”

These grapes are hardy, and can be found in abundance in New England, having been cultivated here for many decades. Indeed, it sometimes seems that the grapes outlast the abandoned human settlements where they were first planted. I found a patch in an urban setting, and harvested about 2 quarts:

about 2 quarts of wild grapes

The grapes have seeds in them of course, and while there is a bit of sweetness to them, the overwhelming flavor is tartness/sourness. It will be a nice counterbalance to the sweet honey. After harvesting, I blended the grapes in the blender, and then strained them into the 2 gallon chaga decoction I had made previously:

straining the grape juice into the must

I then added about 14 cups of honey, enough to get me up to a 17% alcohol potential:

under all the foam, the hydrometer reads 17%

Normally with meads, one must add various acids (citric and tannic), but grapes contain both of these, so I just went simple: chaga decoction, spring water, honey, and grapes. The result is a beautifully rich colored brew:

Beautiful chaga pyment

I look forward to this one! I have only tried a few pyments, and really want to explore this further. Now I’ll have a chance!

UPDATE 7 Jan

This one is fruity and beautiful. It is sweet at 4% remaining alcohol potential, and is 13% alcohol.

Yep, it’s bottling time again. This time it’s the Treequinox Mead, Dandelion Sumac Mead, and Whole Strawberry Mead. And a bountiful harvest it was:

25 bottles of Treequinox, Dandelion Sumac, and Whole Strawberry Mead

The colors this time are all somewhat similar, but there are subtle differences; the Strawberry has a deeper reddish hue, the Dandelion is yellowish, closest to a traditional, plain mead, and the Treequinox has a greenish tint to it. The differences are more visible in this closeup:

The three batches up close. I particularly like the Treequinox label, it came out great!

Now that I have empty jugs, it’s racking time of course. Next to be racked are the Spruce Tip Mead, which has been in primary fermentation since the end of May, and the Blueberry Nettle Mead that I did at the Mead Workshop in Auburn at the end of July. Then of course I will have empty carboys, so I’m already planning the next batches….

One of the most abundant wild foods in my ecosystem is the chokecherry. Prunus virginiana is indigenous to North America, and was “the most important fruit” in many Native cultures. My friend Arthur Haines recently produced a video showing how he likes to use the choke cherry:

Many people believe chokecherries to be poisonous, which is a bit of an oversimplification. The seeds do contain an element called prunasin which can adversely affect our respiratory system when taken in quantity, though like all poisons it depends on the dosage. Smaller doses can have a medicinal effect for lung disorders, this is one reason cherry cough drops have become so popular.

Regardless, there are a few ways to deal with the prunasin. You can either take the seeds out entirely, or heat-treat the seeds either via drying as Arthur does in his video or via cooking to deactivate the prunasin, rendering the seeds edible without harm to the human body. For this batch of mead, I used the former strategy, juicing the chokecherries and discarding the seeds.

My wife knew of a patch growing nearby and was kind enough to harvest more than half gallon of the cherries:

Wild-harvested chokecherries, including a sample of the leaves for identification. Thanks LM!

I couldn’t wait to use these in a mead! I wanted to combine it with an herb, since I’m trying to expand my use of herbs in my meads. After a lot of thought, I decided to use Red Ginseng Root as the herb. Traditionally in Chinese herbalism, Ginseng is only given to the very old and convalescent. It is respected as a powerful stimulant for those who need it in the short term, and not as a “caffeine substitute” in the west. Regardless, this herb has a long and rich history:

In Asia, wars have been fought over possession of fields where ginseng grew abundant and wild. Ginseng is a known adaptogen, which helps the body adapt to stress, and to help balance itself. A vast amount of research has been done over the last 20 years that has gone a long way in proving that ginseng does have properties that improve memory, mental acumen, and in relieving stress and fatigue. The German E Commission has noted that used as a tonic, it may help fortify and invigorate in times of fatigue, or in times when great concentration may be needed.

I made a decoction using both Chaga and the diced root of Red Gingseng. The scent of the tea was wild, almost exotic! I can’t describe it, it smells like nothing else. After I reduced the heat, I added some Staghorn Sumac powder in a teabag to infuse for about an hour. I then strained the tea, and let it cool to blood temperature.

I then juiced the cherries, to yield about a quart of gorgeous red cherry juice:

A bit over a half gallon of chokecherries yields about a quart of juice.

I then added enough of Tony’s Raspberry Honey to get to an 18% alcohol potential:

18% alcohol potential, though it's a bit hard to see with the foam

The result is a very nice red colored must:

Cherry Red Ginseng Mead! Or at least it will be in several weeks....

I think this will be a good one!

UPDATE: 11/18

This one came out a very brilliant yellow color! Surprising but very cool. This is also the best tasting mead I’ve done in a while. It’s about 4.5% alcohol potential, which means this is 13.5% alcohol.