MAKING alcohol-based Benzoin Tincture
pry...@access.one.net
My question, simply put, is this:
I have Benzoin powder, alcohol (Everclear, 95% pure) and water. ...Can someone
give me an easy recipe to combine the three and make my own benzoin tincture to
use as a fixative in perfumes, etc.?
Thanks for any/all help.
kent and kat dyer
Is not *Orris Root* what one uses as a fixitive in perfumes, incenses
etc?
Kat
str...@usit.net
pry...@access.one.net wrote:
>Thanks for any/all help.
Take clean glass jar. Add 4 oz benzoin pwd. to 1 pint alcohol. Put
top on jar. Shake. Let stand at least two weeks (more is better).
Shake daily. When done, strain through cheesecloth (available at
grocery or kitchen ware store). Wet piece of cheesecloth with
distiled water. Drape over collander or tea strainer. Place this
over glass or stainless bowl. Dump in benzoin mixture. Let drain.
Gather up cloth edges and squeeze out all of tincture. (Squeeezing a
resin like benzoin will not produce a cloudy tincture, but squeezing
an herb might. It will produce a prettier result to just lleave it to
gravity with herbs. You will want to let it drain longer, so you will
probably want to cover the whole thing with a towel or something to
keep dust out.) Store in amber bottle. Percentage of alcohol doesn't
matter since you are using as fixative. For herbs, you may want to
reduce the alcohol percentage by adding distilled water either with
the alcohol or at the end of the process. The alcohol should be at
least 30% because it acts as a preservative. Benzoin actually
probably needs preserving less than most anything else.
Why do you want to make benzoin tincture when you are making perfume?
An EO, actually a resinoid, is readily available. Benzoin is a lovely
bottom note which is what so-called fixatives usually are in perfumes.
The EO is thick and I always take the orifice reducer (little plastic
dropper goodie) out of the bottle because it will just pour drop by
drop.
Re: Orris Rt. Yes this is a fixative used in potpourri. A lot of
people are allergic to it so it has been losing favor. The only oil I
have seen is a synthetic, not a true EO. There are a lot of
fixatives. In potpourri, if I wanted to use benzoin, I would probably
just use the powder. -------Jo
SS
str...@usit.net wrote:
>Take clean glass jar. Add 4 oz benzoin pwd. to 1 pint alcohol.
would that be a good ratio for all herbs and alcohol???
str...@usit.net
som...@somewhere.net (SS) wrote:
>str...@usit.net wrote:
Not a bad one, but there are differing schools of thought on all of
these things. Some have divised specific recipes for each herb.
Whatever you do, your extract will not be a standardized one as are
many that one can purchase. It might well be stronger. You'll have
to adjust dosages. Start small. -------Jo
pry...@access.one.net
On 10/20/96 12:53PM, in message <54dlm1$2...@news.xmission.com>, SS
<som...@somewhere.net> wrote:
> str...@usit.net wrote:
>
> >Take clean glass jar. Add 4 oz benzoin pwd. to 1 pint alcohol.
> would that be a good ratio for all herbs and alcohol???
>
..Actually, the advice in the book I read said 1-4 oz. A lot of people
responded (thank you kindly!) that 1 oz to a pt. should be sufficient; shake
daily and filter at the end of 2 weeks.
Least, that's what I'm hearing...
pc...@a4455apc.esr.hp.com
: >Take clean glass jar. Add 4 oz benzoin pwd. to 1 pint alcohol.
: would that be a good ratio for all herbs and alcohol???
What I've seen in most references is 1 oz. (by weight) of
herb to 1 pt. of 50% alcohol. 100 proof vodka is the common
source of alcohol. The "folk method" is to put the herbs
into a pint jar to about three-quarters volume and add alcohol
to cover them by an inch or so. You want to leave enough
room in the jar for a vigorous shaking once a day.
Clear Spring, or Graves Grain alcohol, or whatever 190 proof
alcohol you find, is useful for those special items that
dissolve ONLY in alcohol. I don't know which is cheaper
or better, Clear Spring diluted to 50%, or 100 proof vodka.
In any case, for milk thistle as an example, 50% water and
alcohol will produce a weak tincture with a few undesirable
and possibly toxic volatiles. With 95% alcohol, you get a
nice clear yellow tincture.
If you use 95% alcohol, treat it very carefully. It is a
deadly poison. Use proper ventilation, and keep it locked
up, especially if there are young people around. Inform
everyone that if they drink it, they could slip into a coma,
die, or, if they survive might lose their eyesight.
-------- Paul A. Cook
str...@usit.net
pc...@a4455apc.esr.hp.com () wrote:
>-------- Paul A. Cook
My suggestion for 4oz benzoin to 1 pt. alcohol was based on the fact
that benzoin is a gum/resin. 4 oz = about 5/8 cup of benzoin or most
resins and roots. On the other hand, 4 oz Lavender flowers is more
like 1qt. Obviously, proportions have to vary according to the herb
involved and the strength of tincture desired. The original post was
for benzoin for perfume. It seems reasonable that for this tincture
for this purpose, stronger would be better. Extracts will sometimes
be labelled 1/1, or 2/1, etc. 1/1 means 1lb herb to 1 gal alcohol.
2/1 means 2 lb herb to 1 gal alcohol. 1/2 means 1 lb herb to 2 gal
alcohol. 4 oz herb to 1 pt = 2/1. 2 oz herb to 1 pt = 1/1. 1 oz
herb to 1 pt. = 1/2. Use any proportion you like, your result will be
accordingly weaker or stronger. -------Jo
Douglas Wiggins
> If you use 95% alcohol, treat it very carefully. It is a
> deadly poison. Use proper ventilation, and keep it locked
> up, especially if there are young people around. Inform
> everyone that if they drink it, they could slip into a coma,
> die, or, if they survive might lose their eyesight.
Actually, this is not true. 95% alcohol is only slightly more deadly
or poisonous than vodka. 100% alcohol will burn the tissues of the
throat if drunk straight and in quantity, but people have survived
this - and there are stories of people who have done it with some
regularity, just to prove something (the nitwits), as well as stories
of people who guzzled too much plain beer or other mild alcohol and
died (a guy a couple of years ahead of me in high school did that - he
started downing beers, one after another, and died before he finished
a six-pack - and it was not an "urban legend", either - my civics
teacher made the announcement), but that is not normal or to be
expected. Certainly people could slip into a coma if they drink _too
much_ alcohol, on the order of fifteen or more drinks of hard liquor
or more than fifteen beers (that is, if my memory serves that a blood
alcohol of 0.3 is about the right amount to cause danger and that it
goes up by 0.2 percent per drink and that it takes two hours to
metabolize one drink - I am sure these figures are heavily rounded) -
this amount would have to be drunk all at once to cause a serious
problem.
However, no matter how drunk people get, even to the extent of being
"blind drunk", they will _NOT_ loose their eyesight! Even isopropyl
alcohol, which is much more toxic, will not cost people their eyesight
- "wood" alcohol (methanol, a single-carbon alcohol derived from the
destructive distillation of wood) is the alcohol which will destroy
eyesight (isopropanol _can_ cause organ or gastric damage, though.)
Certainly alcohol should be kept out of the reach of children and
pets, as should anything even containing alcohol, but, even more
importantly, children should be educated by a professional concerning
the dangers of alcohol (at least, they should be educated by someone
with a better head on their shoulders than my own parents - most of my
current problems in life are based in the erroneous and purposely
falsified information I was fed as a child ["if you look at the sun,
you'll go blind" resulted in my having a burn across my retina from
staring at the sun, since, once Earl Smith proved that it would not
cause blindness by thus staring, I felt it important to find out what
really did happen, and nobody had told me that it would cause any
other kind of damage].) Ethyl alcohol (drinking alcohol) is extremely
poisonous to cats, resulting in organ damage, so it is especially
appropriate to keep it away from cats.
In case it helps to keep them straight: methanol is wood alcohol, with
just one carbon atom; ethanol is grain alcohol (made from any kind of
starch or sugar by fermentation, or chemically synthesized), and has
two carbons in the chain. Besides carbon, there are only hydrogens
attached except for one OH (oxygen hydrogen, or "hydroxyl" group). In
fact, if this group were _not_ present, the molecule would be a gas -
methane, ethane and propane correspond to the alcohol with a similar
name. In the case of propane, the hydroxyl group can be attached in
two different places - with the hydroxyl attached to the end carbon,
it is called "propanol", but if attached to the center carbon, it is
"isopropanol", or isopropyl alcohol (sometimes known as rubbing
alcohol, if it is in a 70% solution with water - 70% is required for
maximum germicidal action.) When the OH group is attached to the
center carbon, the molecule is called an "isomer", which is why it is
"iso"-propyl (-duh.)
I was going to explain how the solvent nature of these alcohols is
affected by the different molecular configurations, but most people
would probably rather see an end to this message.
Good luck.
-douglas
Find Glassblowers at www.teleport.com/~zoron/glass.html
Glasswork resources: www.teleport.com/~zoron/sources.html
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miraculo...@aol.com
miraculo...@aol.com
> My question, simply put, is this:
> I have Benzoin powder, alcohol (Everclear, 95% pure) and water. ...Can someone
> give me an easy recipe to combine the three and make my own benzoin tincture to
> use as a fixative in perfumes, etc.?
>
> Thanks for any/all help.