It's amazing what you can find at the Asian grocery store. On my last trip, I found a slew of dried things to tincture. When I got home, I filled empty jam jars with dried honeysuckle, white chrysanthemum, green tea, and my favorite, cardamon (ground to a powder). Then I filled each jar to the top with organic ethanol.
My sisters and I used to pull off pinkish feathery honeysuckle blossoms off the bush and sip at the ends for the sweet nectar. Dried honeysuckle is missing the sugary sweetness of the fresh flowers. The dried blossoms are used in tea for cooling the body of too much yang heat. The aroma is haylike, grassy.
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| Tinctured honeysuckle buds. |
Chinese people use the flowers of chrysantheum to treat a variety of health conditions, including blood pressure, heart problems, headaches, colds, and dizziness. It’s high in beta carotene and vitamin B. Whenever my kids have nose bleeds, my mother in law brews them a cup of chrysanthemum tea to cool the body of excess heat. The taste and smell are lightly floral, and remind me of chamomile and calendula.
Green tea and cardamon are more well recognized aromatics. Green tea's antioxidant properties are legendary; I drink a cup every day. The tea has a fresh, grassy, and bitter scent. Cardamon is used to flavor food and is a popular ingredient for chai tea. It’s hard to describe the scent/taste of cardamon, but it’s a cross between nutmeg, mace, oranges, cinnamon, and pepper.
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| Honeysuckle tincture takes on an emerald green hue. |
I let the honeysuckle and chrysanthemum tinctures sit for four days. Their respective plant material is somewhat delicate and tend to disintegrate if left too long. The honeysuckle developed a beautiful green tint while the chrysanthemum had a golden hue. I could recharge the tinctures with new plant material, but I’m happy with their faint odors.
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| White chrysanthemum buds after tincturing and straining through a filter leave a golden hued liquid. |
I could see these two blending well with florals, serving to dry out sweeter aromas or mellowing more pungent aromatics like kewda.
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| White chrysanthemum buds are used in tea. |
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| Bottled tinctures! |
Have you found a way to extract the scent from the honeysuckle? Of course enfleurage works, but perhaps if you used very fresh honeysuckle, and let them wilt a little for the day, then add it to your menstrum/ethanol, you could capture the scent well? I have a true honeysuckle absolute,but it was extracted in Italy, and I guess their honeysuckle has more magnolia/jasmine notes, its glorious but does not smell anything like the honeysuckle I know from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Good luck from Haus of Waft!!!
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