✨ Let's Gathering Spruce Tips & Make a Tincture Together!🌿

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Try setting you up here.

[00:00:03]See if the grass will comply.

[00:00:08]I'm trying to gather some of these spruce tips.

[00:00:32]What's crazy is it's been You are fine.

[00:00:38]It's been so warm out and the spruce still just didn't believe. The spruce did not believe that it was time until now.

[00:00:53]I'm probably not going to get as many as I had intended.

[00:00:59]That's okay.

[00:01:01]Once I bring a ladder out here.

[00:01:52]Some of these are just babies, not very big.

[00:02:01]>> I'm moving to the other side.

[00:02:42]They're ones.

[00:03:56]>> pokey poke Probably going to just go with this amount in the half-size jar, you know, in a pint instead of quart.

[00:04:52]So, let's go make a tincture.

[00:04:55]All right.

[00:04:57]Let's make a spruce tip tincture. You know, I was a pretty surprised that um my spruce trees didn't tip out way sooner this year cuz it's been like unseasonably warm and then got cold again, but those two big old trees, they were like, "We don't trust this. This is a fake spring."

[00:05:21]Now, I could have got my ladder out and climbed up and picked more, but that's okay.

[00:05:26]I don't end up using a ton of spruce tip tincture, but I like to have her on hand.

[00:05:32]Um and so, a spruce tip tincture is so easy. You are just going to take the jar that will pretty much get filled up with your spruce tips. And this is the green part that comes on every spring.

[00:05:45]It's kind of how like think of it like if you had a finger and every spring you grew another finger, another finger and suddenly it was an arm.

[00:05:52]That is what um spruce trees do. So, this tip will turn into the next part of the branch, the next part. Um you know, you'd have to take a log off the tree to do damage like strip her all the way and I can only take what I can reach. Right?

[00:06:07]And these tips in the springtime are absolutely loaded with all sorts of terpenes, resins, and things that are still present in her when she um stiffens up into the pokey things we know as spruce branches. Uh but she's far more resinous in this form and there's a ton of vitamin C in this. Although, no vitamin C gets of any amount really gets caught in the tincture. So, you need your spruce tips. You cannot order these. You have to get out there and find a spruce tree that is not poisonous. There aren't a whole lot of them. Most of them in the If you're in like the in North America, most of the spruce tips are usable. Uh and these were just blue spruce that somebody planted here a long time ago.

[00:06:53]I'm just going to fill up my jar. But over here we also have um Engelmann spruce and I'll use her sometimes, [clears throat] too. But this one's just right out my back door.

[00:07:02]Um and so I'm going to fill She smells so good. I'm going to fill up my jar.

[00:07:09]As easy as that. You don't even really need to cut her up. You can if you want to, but I You're going to break down the cellular structure with alcohol anyways, so it doesn't really matter. And so most people, if you have heard of spruce tips, you're thinking about her for her vitamin C content, right? People talk about that, but she's really amazing for supporting your immune system with her terpene. She's good for coughs, colds, sore throat in particular in particular.

[00:07:37]Funny word today. And here's what people miss about her.

[00:07:43]These spruce tips are fantastic for joint pain.

[00:07:48]So, she has pinene in her, which is a type of terpene that a lot of pines, pinene, spruce tips, spruce has in general.

[00:07:58]Um but she is really usually looked at for like making people feel calm when you smell her in the forest, but internally she's a power powerful anti-inflammatory >> [snorts] >> and really likes to push back against like cytokine type storms and things like that and really pushing back the inflammatory cascade that happens in your body. You really do need inflammation in your body. It's how things heal, but it gets stuck in a cycle where like the inflammation creates more inflammation and then your chronically inflamed.

[00:08:31]Um basically the compounds in spruce come in and shut that messaging off.

[00:08:36]It's like, "Whoa, we have enough here."

[00:08:39]So, if you weren't dealing with a ton of inflammation, she isn't one that I would use constantly because again, you do need inflammation, but if you've got sore aching muscles all the time, if your joints are really achy in particular, she's pretty good for that.

[00:08:55]So, if you're keeping track without me jabbering, >> [laughter] >> all I did was put my spruce tips in a jar and now I'm going to take some 100-proof vodka. This happens to be a more expensive brand cuz it's all they had, but usually I buy the bottom shelf stuff because it literally doesn't matter. Uh the different quality is just them filtering it more for better taste, but you're taking this in drops, not shots, so save money where you can, you know.

[00:09:22]Um and organic doesn't matter either because it doesn't nothing passes through the distillation process, by the way.

[00:09:30]Um so, I'm just going to pour 100-proof vodka over top now. 100-proof vodka is 50% water, 50% alcohol. That means I already have the ratio I need in my jar for a balanced extract every time. That means every single drop of this tincture you take is 50/50. So, if you take 10 drops of tincture, you're only getting five drops of alcohol, right? But, that's important because that water aspect that's present here is going to get us our water-soluble properties alongside of our alcohol-soluble properties. Some people will tell you that you have to use grain alcohol, which is like Everclear. It doesn't mean it's made with grain, it just means that it's like 99% alcohol with no water content, right? And they're like, you need that to spruce in my hair.

[00:10:18]>> [laughter] >> I thought it was a bug. They're like, you need that to break down the resins.

[00:10:23]But, what they really should say is they need that to break down the resins really fast because they're not patient enough to wait the 6 to 8 weeks. Because there still is 50% alcohol in this, and it will break it down just fine. Now, I pretty much filled that to the tippy top. You want to make sure when you're making tinctures that you pick a jar that you can fill all the way because you want to push back against oxidation.

[00:10:45]Oxidation is like when you take a bite of an apple and you leave it somewhere, or you peel a banana or whatever, and it turns brown. Basically, it's just uh air react oxygen reacting with the cellular tissue of a plant, and then it goes brown, and it's a literally a type of rust. Right, so that will happen in your tincture if you have too much head space in there with air, right? So, filling it up to the top is important.

[00:11:10]It doesn't ruin the tincture, and inevitably there will be some oxidation after you strain it in particular, but you kind of want to help prevent it a little bit in the very beginning. So, that's pretty much it. Gather your spruce tips, put them in a jar, dump vodka over top. Now, I'm going to write what it is and when I made it because this one's probably pretty easy to remember what it is because they're very uh you know what they are. You know, they're very distinguishable. But, it's always a good idea cuz you get busy making tinctures, you forget what you've made. So, spruce tip.

[00:11:45]And then I'm just going to write the month and the year. I don't usually mess with the day at this point in my life.

[00:11:51]>> [laughter] >> Uh okay, so May 2026. There we go. And you know, after 6 to 8 weeks you can strain this.

[00:12:02]I often don't strain my tinctures, if I'm being honest with you.

[00:12:05]I just start to pull off, right? When I need them and I'll just sit them up here with my tincture stash. Uh and then they don't go bad. You're not like, "Oh no, it's been a year or a couple and I haven't strained it." Well, your alcohol like you've never been like, "Oh no, this bottle of vodka went bad."

[00:12:21]Right, it doesn't go bad as long as you have this capped tightly, right? Because you're just preventing evaporation.

[00:12:27]Really, that's the only way that it can go bad is if it does evaporate off. Um you know, and listen, after 5 10 years, 5 8 years, or whatever, you start having a little bit less of the medicinal compounds that you've extracted in this tincture present.

[00:12:45]Right? And if you store them in the dropper bottles, you've got like 6 months, maybe a year top before it's bad because it's evaporated off because those little rubber toppers uh they they let evaporation happen, right? But, in this you know, even if it's, you know, been 10 years, you can still use it. You might just have to use more of it, right? Um and I know you'll inevitably be like, "How much do I take?" There's going to be a video up here somewhere that says how to use a tincture because these aren't pharmaceuticals. Uh you use them based on your own body and your own needs and your own like paying attention to how it interacts with your body versus weigh this amount, take this amount of pills, right? But, you know, we've been conditioned to look at health that way, so it's really easy to expect to know exactly what to make. But, yeah, that was so easy. How is a come on, you are smart enough to do that, right? You're smart enough to go pick some spruce tips, put them in a jar, vodka over top, label on them, right? And then watch the video about how to figure out your own tincture dosage. You are more than capable of doing that. Like, don't let anybody make you believe that you can't. So, that's a spruce tip tincture, and I you know, honestly, usually when I'm reaching for her, it's wintertime. I really like to say that like spring, summer, and fall, they all kind of every season kind of exists for the next, but when it comes to tinctures, I usually find that I'm reaching for them far more often in the wintertime when it comes to something that's for like immune support or, you know, when it's cold, your joints might hurt more, things like that. So, yeah, I mean, be the ant, not the grasshopper, right?

[00:14:27]Make stuff before you need it, and you're like, "Oh, yeah, you know what? I can just sit this up here, and then whenever I need her, I can grab her and pull her off." So, if you like my random videos where I'm just a real human, and I'm just doing my best to share with you what's in my brain, and you'd like to support my capacity to continue teaching freely, consider becoming a member. It's just a way to throw me a less than a dollar a month. You get early access to videos, Q&A's, little things like that here and there. Um if you can't afford to, don't even worry about it. Uh these videos do come out first for members, but if you're not a member and you're watching this, it's because I let them out for everybody else, too.

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