Ambrette seed tincture Update

[Guest guest]

My Ambrette seed tinctures are 5 weeks old now. 3 more weeks of

maceration, then filtering, bottling and finally the experimental

blending will begin. The ground seed tincture 25% (by weight) has a

slightly musky scent, but as Ayala said, it smells more like " skin. "

On the other hand, the whole seed tincture 50% is extremely musky!

It smells so wonderful, almost as potent as my Ambrette seed absolute

and much less expensive than the absolute, I'm sure. Now, I wish I

had made the whole seed tinctures only, but in that case, I would not

have been able to smell the difference.

I do not understand how there could be such a difference between

ground and whole seeds? Ayala says the musky part is in the seed

hulls (outside cover), but the alcohol penetrated the whole seeds and

must have extracted the " inside " part, too. I wish a botanist or

extraction expert could explain this.

BTW, for those of you who were worried about rubber dissolving into

their tinctures, I suggest that you use Erlenmeyer flasks with ground

glass necks and stoppers. There is no rubber involved - only glass -

and these flasks were invented for just such things as tincturing.

They also do the best job on shaking up a tincture.

Mark