I was wondering if you would be willing to share how you used oatstraw to help with bed wetting.

That’s basically what I’m doing, but I wouldn’t recommend using straight PGA because many herbs have constituents that are only extracted with water. Making a 40% or 50% alcohol gives you both the water extraction and the alcohol extraction. Pure alcohol is only recommended for resins.

Thank you!!!!

Struggling with sleep for a while now (makes for not very good days), I want to start taking a tincture again. 1-1 1/2 droppers helps so much. It’s ridiculously expensive when I realized how easy it would be to make my own!
Thank you!

Are there any herbs that I can omit?

It acts as a preservative.

Yes.

WARNING: Sciency answer… but may be of interest if you’re curious and frugal. Go to the bottom if you don’t care about the science/process.

Typically when people say “grain alcohol”, they’re referring to “pure grain alcohol” (e.g., “PGA” or brand name Everclear). For tinctures, there isn’t any difference between vodka and PGA other than the amount you use. Vodka is made by making “pure” alcohol (~95% by volume after triple distillation, limited to 95.6%ABV no matter how many times its distilled due to the chemistry of ethanol/water solution) and then diluting it back down to 40%ABV (80 proof) by adding water. PGA is just undiluted vodka with a sugar source that is from a grain (barley, wheat, rye, etc).

Whiskey/bourbon, rum, tequila are also all the same from a tincture perspective (the alcohol is the key because it draws out chemicals that water doesn’t). The flavor will be different and it doesn’t make economic sense to use something that was aged in a barrel (which you pay for) when you could use something cheaper for the same (better flavor) effect.

Some folks will shy away from “PGA” because it’s made with grains that have gluten. No worries here either. Gluten is not volatile (won’t boil) at distillation temperatures and cannot physically go up the column into the distillate. So even PGA/vodka made from superglutenized wheat with a gluten kicker in the beer/mash will have 0 gluten. Gluten issues with PGA/vodka are psychosomatic.

BOTTOM LINE: To use PGA instead of vodka, you have to do some simple math. For this recipe with 2 cups of 80 proof (40%ABV) vodka, you have 0.8 cups of actual ethanol (2 * 0.4 = 0.8 cups ethanol). If you substituted 190 proof PGA (95%ABV), you would need ~5/6 of a cup of PGA:
0.8 cups ethanol = 0.95 * x
x = 0.8/0.95 = 0.842 which is a hint more than 0.833 or 5/6 cups
In my kitchen, that’s going to be rounded to a cup and I’ll just pour a little lighter. To end with the same concentration, you make up the another cup with plain water. The MONEY SAVING point is that Everclear is almost the same price per 750ml bottle as any decent vodka (~$20 or $100/gallon). So use Everclear and dilute it down with your tap water that you pay $0.002/gallon. For this recipe, the difference is more than $50/gallon, which adds up if you make a lot of tinctures. The alcohol is what is making the tincture anyway, so you could just skip the water altogether and half the dosage (since the same amount of alcohol-soluble active chemicals will dilute into approximately half the volume of Everclear as water). Try both ways… there may be some water-soluble components to this particular recipe that are important for the effect.

Here’s the math: 2 cups * 40% alcohol (e.g. 80 proof) = 0.8 cups alcohol = 5/6 cup * 95% alcohol

Hey Martha, I’ve used Wild Turkey 101 successfully for many tinctures! The higher proof means that it extracts more effectively, and personally, I enjoy taking a “shot” before bedtime ; )

Constance, we often buy tinctures from Heaven Help Me, a store on Facebook, and have been very happy with them. The calm down tincture has worked very well for our family.
I also was just reading today actually about zinc being helpful for people with autism.
I hope you are able to find something that works for your family and helps your son sleep through the night!

I don’t make it to sell (nor do I have time!), just for my own personal use and for a few friends and family members…