What alcohol for the tincture

One of the basic ingredients of any tincture, an ingredient without which no tincture can be made - is alcohol.

Store spirit - is the basic raw material for making tinctures, accessible to everyone. Store spirit is sold with potency 95%. Here you should remember, that pure spirit should not be used to prepare the tincture 95%. Not because the tincture will be too strong, but it is related to the extraction of the flavors of the ingredients used in the preparation of the tincture. Extracting aromas is, in other words, "extracting" aromas from the ingredients from which we want to make a tincture. alcohol 95% it will not allow full extraction from the fruit and simply preserves the fruit in the world. The alcohol used to prepare the tincture should not be stronger than 70%, 70% this is the upper limit that should not be exceeded. A tincture prepared from such alcohol will always have a more intense color and richer aroma.

How to get alcohol for tincture 70%

The easiest way is to have an alcohol meter. We measure the content % pure alcohol and then slowly add water. After each part of the added water, we mix everything up, set aside for 10-20 minutes and measure with the pointer. We repeat the procedure until the optimal power is obtained, e.g.: 65-70%. We need to know when "troubling" alcohol, that each indicator has a specific temperature of the liquid for which it has been scaled. If the temperature of our alcohol is different, but we're still hovering around room temperature, keep in mind that the difference may be 1-2%.

Another way is to use the developed tables to mix the spirit. The assumption is, that we are mixing store spirit with strength 95%:

736ml of spirit 95% + 291ml of water = solution of approx 70%

631ml of spirit 95% + 400ml of water = solution of approx 60%

Another type of alcohol from which we can prepare a tincture are various types of home distillates (obviously in countries where the production of distillates is legal). More about the types of distillates in the article: What a distillate for a tincture. Distillates can be of different strength, therefore as is the case with store spirit, you have to dilute them to the strength below 70%. The advantage of home distillates is their price. It is much cheaper to make a distillate at home than a spirit, and the quality of the home-made distillate is often much better than that of the store's alcohol.

The last alcohol encountered in making tinctures is beer. Just like that, our shop beer is an ingredient of many delicious ones, even the iconic tinctures. An excellent example of such a tincture is Porterówka - prepared on dark Porter beer, other commonly used beers are strontiums and lagers.