Terpenes and Tinctures
Tinctures have been around for thousands of years, but they’ve recently undergone a serious glow-up. That’s because terpene science allows us to manufacture tinctures with more specific, powerful effects and even better flavor and aroma.
Read on and learn why YOUR tinctures need terpenes plus get a sneak peek at our list of terpene best for tinctures.
What is a Tincture?
When we say tinctures have been around for a while, that’s putting it lightly. Once humans began using alcohol, it wasn’t long before they started using it to play mad scientist with various plants and herbs. What’s even more impressive is that their early efforts led to extremely popular folk remedies for all sorts of ailments.
While there are several different methods, the simplest way to make a tincture is to soak plant matter. This could be bark, berries, dried or fresh leaves, roots, or pretty much any part of a plant that has compounds you want to extract. The plant matter is then soaked in alcohol for a certain amount of time. The alcohol will extract active substances from the plant matter, and after it’s been filtered it’s used for various purposes.
While the majority of alcohol extraction processes are gentle enough to leave behind some of the original terpene content, it can’t save all of it. That’s because terpenes are volatile. Things like heat, light, and even rough handling can damage or destroy terpenes, leaving you with less flavor, aroma, and less powerful effects. If you’re making a cannabis tincture, that could even mean a less powerful Entourage Effect.
Considering the many beneficial properties of terpenes, both cannabis, hemp, and non-cannabis products will lose some of their effectiveness with the loss of terpenes. So, if you want your tinctures to WORK (and smell and taste good), adding high-quality terpenes is the way to go. In fact, here are a few of our favorite terpenes for different kinds of tinctures.
How to Infuse Tinctures with Terpenes:
Finally, we can add some terpenes to promote the specific effects of our CBD or THC oils as well. In that case, however, we should follow the 0.1-0.5% terpene content when it comes to tinctures
Using a syringe or a dropper while adding terpenes would allow us to be more precise.
Alternatively, we can add some terpene isolate to each dosage (especially when taking CBD oil).
As always, it’s best to start slowly here as well, so we shouldn’t pour 5% right away.
We can start with 0.1% first and see how we react to the added terpenes. If the results aren’t that different, we can always add more.
