Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Make a Salve with Infused Oils

Article is from http://www.commonsensehome.com/how-to-make-a-salve-with-infused-oils/

How to Make a Salve with Infused Oils

First, drain the plant material out of your oil.  I use my Norpro Jelly Strainer.
straining infused oil
For each one ounce/30 ml of infused oil, measure out one tablespoon/15 ml of grated or granular beeswax.  Place the infused oil in a small pot, add the beeswax.  Frontier has some very ease to use beeswax pellets.  They pack together more tightly than grated wax, so you should use a scant tablespoon (my first batch was on the thick side).  Here’s a photo of the pellets.  Note:  once my pellets are gone, I think I’ll be getting some wafers from Mountain Rose Herbs, as they are less refined.
beeswax pellets for salve
Place the pan on very low heat.  Susun suggests a candle flame, but that didn’t seem very practical.  I set the burner on my gas stove to its lowest setting.
melting salve ingredients
Stir constantly until the beeswax is totally melted.  This rarely takes more than a minute or two.  I blinked and the pellets were gone. Pour the liquid into your ointment jar and allow it to cool and solidify.  I ordered both one ounce and two once containers from Frontier.  The one once containers were plastic with flip tops, the 2 ounce were glass with metal caps.  Below is all the finished salve and the extra bottles of oil I kept as oil.  I reuse old extract jars, but I also purchased some glass jars from Frontier.  I sold some of these at the farmers market last year and also gave some as gifts.  It was a terribly wet year and the mosquitoes were out in full force, so the salve was pretty popular.
plantain salve
If you find the consistency of your salve to be too hard, remelt it and add more infused oil.  If it is too soft, remelt and add more beeswax.

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