Stirrer tincture of plants

[Fractalus]

Hi nexians
well its not psychoactive plant but only you guys will know how to answer this quastion
i making myself herbal formula and want to tincture Withania Somnifora root, in the traditional method you take 1 part of herb and 3 part of aqua(55%)/ethanol(45%) let it sit in a jar for 1-1.5 months and shake it every day, now the chimist part gets in
i want to let it stirr and dont know what the equivalent of 1.5 month in a jar Vs stirring it.
there is a nexian here who is also herbalist and know how long should i stirr the root?
thank you very much guys love you all

 

[Brennendes Wasser]

Well I guess only trial and error will tell you what time is equivalent - or a difficoult analytic setup with expensive instruments.

But just as a general thought permanent stirring would drastically reduce the time, even more if you swap your solvent with fresh after some time. Maybe even heating it up to 40 °C should reduce time further and then I would normally say using 94 % alcohol would be even better than a 45/55 mixture :?
Generally I would say if you ground your herb and the solvent is right + heating it a very little, then no more is needed than 6 h x 3 with fresh solvent.
But thats just a wild number, at least I would definetly say that doing this method stirring it for more than 1 day between each solvent swap would be more than needed.

 

[Fractalus]

Brennendes Wasser Thanks for your replay

there is lots of compounds in the a plant that will disolve in water and sometimes even destroy by the alcohol and every herb has its own common ratio of extraction, most are about 55%/45%. in general resins in high alcohol ratio and gentle compunds in lower ratios.

about the heat appling its a bit problem, because there is so much compounds in one plant and the researchers are far to know whats actually in there and far from knowing which compounds loves heat and which are get de-compost.

in alkaloids its bit more easy cause they are more ressist to heat and ph VS terpens, polysaccharides and other fragile molecules. in the industial extraction they are somtimes use a sonicator to extract this compounds.

and for the pulls its also not the best thing cause you cant combine the pulls and evap untill you get the amount you want, again cause of the de-composting of molecules.

i wish i have fancy analytical setup, it will defenetly add more information in the herbal pharmacopeas

so after all this information has revealed, do you guys know how long should i stirr the root?

 

[blue.magic]

I think heat is more important that stirring since solvated molecules will easily homogenize through the solvent by the process of diffusion.

Unless you crank the heat too much, there will be negligible damage. And little heat will decrease maceration time drammatically, to days, even hours instead of months.