Herbal Tinctures: Hops, Benefits & Uses

Hi, YouTube friends. I'm Heidi Villegas with Healing Harvest Homestead. And I am actually going through my herb storage this week because as many of you know, we have leased a clinic. Well, we've leased a little studio area down in town. It's five bedrooms. So I'm actually going to set my clinic up down there for consultations. And I'm going to be doing much of my writing down there. I've moved my herbal library, most of it down there. I'm actually probably going to buy double some of the books because I just love to have them at my fingertips. So I do want some of them at home, but the vast majority of the hundreds of books I have are down there in the office space. And my herbs are coming next. The thing is, is when you are an herbalist, you've probably collected herbs for a very long time. And it's very likely that you have some older herbs that lack the quality and you want to get rid of them. So what I'm actually doing is starting to get rid of them. In the process, I'm also getting ready to tincture other herbs that I know I'll be growing this summer. And I can just start processing them right now and get them down there as well to the office area. So I thought since I'm going to go ahead and tincture some hops right now, that I would go ahead and just talk about hops really fast. So hops, yes, it's H-O-P-S. It's the same herb that's used in brewing beer. It has been since, I believe, right around the fifth century or so. It's been a really long time since beer's been brewed naturally. And hops has been a flavor agent as well as a therapeutic agent in healing beers for, as you can see, centuries. So the Latin name for this herb is Humulus Lupulus. I love that name, Humulus Lupulus. Anyway, it's very easy to grow. These hops here came out of my garden, my medicinal herb garden this past summer, 2022. So I want to get them tinctured and get them processed because I just don't want them sitting around any longer. Anyway, the hops part that you harvest, they're like little conical flowers. They look kind of like little pine cones or little cones, but they're not hard. They're really, really soft and fluffy. And so you can see here, I don't know if you can see that, but they're very, very fluffy. The leaves tend to fall off when they get dry. And they're just a really neat little plant. And you harvest these in the late summer. So what you'll see is that they'll turn green. And then as the summer progresses, they turn a little bit yellow and they get a very strong smell. And it smells like beer, if you know what a good IPA smells like. But they're just lovely. So let's go ahead and talk about some therapeutic uses of hops. And then I'm going to go ahead and get the tincture started. So therapeutically speaking, hops is actually full of phytoestrogens, which makes it a very nice herb to use for female reproductive support. And it's just helpful to combine and synergize with other herbs that have that capability too, like red clover would be one. So I like to combine certain herbs and also essential oil blends for supporting hormones. And hops is really nice for women. And I know men love to drink hoppy beer, but just know that you're going to be getting some phytoestrogens in your drink there. And that's okay. So hops is a very nice nervine herb. It's a sedative herb to an extent. It's calming and reduces anxiety. It helps people with ADHD focus better, potentially, you know, depending, but it's really wonderful. I love using it with some kids as well. It's a nice herb to use, especially along with chamomile. I think that combination for focus is helpful if you've got an overactive mind. It's actually helpful for pain relief too. It's a relative of marijuana. It is actually in the cannabis family. There are two genuses or genera in the cannabis family, and that would include hops, humulus, lupulus, and cannabis. What we refer to as marijuana. What happens is they act exactly the same. There's a chemical in there that attaches to the pain receptors and hops does it just as well as CBD, to be honest. So if you run out of your CBD, or if you are in a place where it's illegal or more difficult to get, like here in Idaho, then hops is just absolutely wonderful. Okay, so one other thing about hops is that it's great for the digestive system. It's really a nice antimicrobial. It helps with maintaining healthy gut health. And I just really love this herb. I love growing it. It's a vine. So it actually arches up and over arches, if you have arches, or if you wanna train them up a tree or a pole, and they provide actually a lot of shade. It's a very, very beautiful plant in my opinion. All right, so to tincture this herb, what I've got here, I've got a quart of hops from the garden and I've got a half a gallon jar. And yes, I am making a lot of this. The thing about tinctures, you guys, is that they last forever. Like they just don't go bad. When I take my hops from last summer and I tincture my hops from last summer, guess what? I am preserving last summer's goodness indefinitely. And what an amazing thing that is. So if you like to simple your tinctures, which means to just tincture one herb at a time, and then combine them with other tinctures, like I like to do, then you can do this. There are some blends that, mm, it smells so good. There are some blends that you can combine hops with. One of them that I just love is my sleep blend. I'll put a link to it above, but it's really amazingly helpful. Now, when you tincture hops, one thing you need to know, and you can see how fluffy they are. So I've only taken, and this was packed. So I've taken about half of the hops out of this quart jar. And packing them actually helps keep them fresher over time in your storeroom. But look at this. I've got about three quarters of the jar filled up right now with my hops. Now, hops absorbs liquid like crazy. It expands. So I'm not going to fill this jar very much more with my hops. Wait, that's a nice one there. Mm. I'm sorry. I love smelling my herbs and my essential oils, and I just think they're just beautiful. All right, and let's go ahead now. This is very simple, right? I've got my jar three quarters of the way full of my dry herb. This is the folk method, by the way. I could have chosen to use a little bit lesser, but still it'd be just fine. Here I'm using 80 proof alcohol, and I am just simply going to finish up this bottle and start another bottle. And I'm going to fill this within an inch to the top. One thing I often do is as my tinctures progress, if after a few days I notice that I can add some more herbs, sometimes I'll add some more herb. And if I need to split a jar, sometimes I will mess up and I put too much herb in and I might have to split a jar if it kind of expands too much. And there's no problem with doing that. It's very, very simple. So you're not going to ruin your tincture. Herbalism is very forgiving. And now you're going to shake this. Get all of that moisture around all of those little hot strobos. So you want to shake it really well. And now I'm going to go ahead and set this aside. I personally love to use a warm window that's not getting blasted by the sun, but that gets a little bit of heat because the warmth helps the herb release its constituents. Now, a lot of people aren't a fan of that. There's like two camps in the herbal world. I mean, who wants to argue, right? If you feel like you want to put your processing tincture in a dark cupboard, be my guest. You're going to get a nice product either way. Then you're going to let it infuse for about four to six weeks, shaking occasionally just to make sure that that herb is always exposed to the liquid. And I just want to say this too, like obviously we're using the whole flowers here, but if you are using a powder in your tinctures, you must shake it every day and even possibly give it a good little stir because the powder gets compacted at the bottom and you're not going to get a strong tincture. So if you're tincturing powders, just be aware of that. I personally love to tincture the whole herb. I like to see it. I can look at those leaves and as it processes, I can tell when it's getting finished. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little video on tincturing hops. Oh, by the way, after the four to six weeks, all you do is you take a strainer and you pour out your liquid through the strainer, leaving the herb behind. I compost the herb and then you bottle it up and you get to use it. And this is delicious and wonderful. You can also use hops in herbal teas too. All right, now I'm going to go grab my big box of herbs and take them down to the shop in town and I will see you later. So I'm Heidi Villegas with Healing Harvest Homestead and the School of Botanical Arts and Sciences. I love teaching people how to use medicinal herbs and the aromatic chemicals, the volatile oils from plants, i.e. the essential oils for your health and wellness. And I hope that you'll join me in a course. If not, please go to my website, healingharvesthomestead.com. There are a ton of free resources over there, literally hundreds and hundreds of articles that I've written over the years. So I would love to have you join the community. All right, oh, and free gifts. I do have some free presents for you. I've got an herbal remedy guide and cheat sheet. I've got a book on how to relax using herbs and I'll put links in that first comment section below and also in the description. All right, I'm Heidi Villegas. I'm signing off and I will see you later. Bye-bye.