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Ask an HerbalistApr 24, 2025
Why Do You Use Alcohol in Extracts?
We love talking about herbs and herbalism, and we especially love answering your questions about those topics. That's why we brought in our team of herbal experts to respond to some of the most common questions and concerns we hear.
Our herbalists have decades of combined experience working with herbs — and the people who take them. They answer your most pressing questions, in our regular column “Ask an Herbalist.”
Why do you use alcohol in extracts?
We use Certified Organic alcohol from sugarcane to extract a broad range of beneficial compounds from herbs to make our liquid tinctures. There are a few reasons why we use it and why it is the most effective extraction for most herbs.
- Alcohol is the best food-grade solvent for extracting the majority of naturally occurring compounds from herbs that have low solubility in water. Examples would be: essential oils, resins, balsams, and many alkaloids.
- It is an excellent preservative that maximizes the shelf life of the product.
- The alcohol is used to help your body absorb the phytochemicals into your bloodstream faster.
For those that are concerned about the amount of alcohol in our tinctures, by comparison, a single serving of our alcohol-based extracts contains less alcohol than in an 8 oz serving of kombucha.
While alcohol is superior in extraction for the constituents of many herbs, it still may not be an option for some for various reasons. For those people, we also make alcohol-free extracts made from herbs, water, and palm-free vegetable glycerin. As glycerin does not extract all plant compounds as well as alcohol, we don't offer alcohol-free versions of all our extracts as some plants simply aren't good candidates for good glycerin-based extracts.
If you have additional questions, our customer service team and staff herbalists are always happy to help. Give them a call at 800-348-4372 from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. PST or email sales@herb-pharm.com.