Introduction
"Making a bud mother macerate is within everyone's reach" - Mon manuel de gemmothérapie - Valérie Catala
To make a bud macerate, recognizing trees and shrubs by their buds is a prerequisite. We recommend choosing trees we know well. They must be healthy and far from sources of pollution.
The buds must be harvested in dry weather, then immediately macerated at the place of picking to preserve all the medicinal virtues of the young shoots. The maceration liquid (a mixture of alcohol, glycerine and water) must therefore be prepared beforehand.
Indispensable for making a bud macerate, these three excipients each contribute to the extraction of active ingredients.
Water extracts energy, information and water-soluble derivatives: tannins, mineral salts, water-soluble flavonoids, water-soluble vitamins and some water-soluble acids.
Alcohol extracts alkaloids, heterosides, glycosides and other acids.
Glycerine extracts essential oils, fat-soluble flavonoids, fat-soluble vitamins and also some acids.
In contemporary times
The respective proportions are adapted to the alcohol content. Glycerine can be replaced by agave syrup or honey. But other substitutes for glycerine can be proposed.
For 100 g of buds, the traditional recipe calls for a quantity of mother macerate corresponding to 20 times the mass of the dry equivalent of these buds. Determining the moisture content of the buds is therefore a prerequisite. Note that this rate varies according to the plant and environmental conditions, and can therefore change from one place to another and from one year to the next. If we assume that buds contain 75% water and therefore 25% dry matter, we obtain 20 x 0.25 x 100, or 500 g of mother macerate.
After the buds/young shoots have been macerated, the jars are shaken several times a day. They are then filtered after the required number of days of maceration. Bottling can be carried out immediately after filtration. At all stages, it's essential to label the bottles correctly to avoid any mistakes. For a family production, remember to indicate the date, the name of the plant used, and why not, the place of picking.
Gemmotherapy is slowly managing to take its rightful place in the world of phytotherapy. Still too little known, it nevertheless enables in-depth and gentle action on the body.
Learning to make a bud macerate is a way of initiating yourself into gemmotherapy by establishing a link with nature, with trees. It helps us realize that the trees that surround us also help us take care of our health, so they have their rightful place in phytotherapy.
