Hands on, how to - alder infused oil; the good, the bad and the ugly

Dammit!!
click to embiggen

We'll start with the bad and the ugly, since that's where the story begins.

I went to refill my trusty little bottle of alder oil and discovered this ----------------------------------->>>>>

My backup jar of alder oil was moldy, throughout!

See now, this is the kind of lesson one learns over and over and over when one is lazy or forgetful. You can leave herbs (almost) indefinitely in vodka, but not in oil. No sir. Normally I would have strained this - heaven knows why I didn't - and I would have put some coarse salt in the bottom of the jar of strained oil, too. Salt pulls any excess water to itself and keeps the oil from going off. Like that. Yuck.

Bad girl, wildcucumber, bad, bad!!


Sometimes mold will show up when an oil is in the initial stages of infusing, and if you're lucky, it only appears on the top where leaves might have floated up to the surface. When that's the case, sometimes you can just ever so carefully lift the moldy leaves and anything nasty floating on the surface off and save the day. Sometimes. But when it's like this? You toss it. And since I don't want that in my drains, I poured the whole thing into a (previously used) large ziplock bag and tossed it in the garbage.

But alder oil has become a necessity in this house. Yes, I still have aspen oil, which is wonderful stuff for aching joints, and there's that pine resin oil coming soon, but alder is instant relief for my man's snow-shovelling-strained muscles so I don't want to be without it for long.

Neither does he, so when he heard the moldy news he said, "I can take you to where there's some alder, where do you want to go?"

Well now, there is alder everywhere up here, but there are also snowbanks the size of mountain ranges that would have to be climbed over and hip deep snow in the fields we'd have to cross to get to the swamps and cricks where alder lives, so I had to think about it. But right here in the village, there's a road that runs along a little spit of land that juts right out into the great big frozen Ottawa river. And sure enough, that road is lined with alders.

Aren't they just the prettiest things you ever did see on
a winter's day? Those dangling catkins sure look like earrings to me.

Check out the skidoo tracks heading
for the island!

As it happened, there was one poor alder that had been mangled by the snowplow, so that's the one I clipped a few branches from. (MAN it was cold when I took my mitts off to clip those branches!)

Now I should probably mention that I have no idea whether alder taken in winter time will make a satisfactory infused oil. I know there's a reader out there somewhere who was going to give it a try some weeks ago - I'd love to know how it turned out. There's just so little information "out there" about how to do some of the things we crazy Underground Medicine people want to do, all we can do is give it a shot, cross our fingers and learn as we go.

Whether or not this turns out to be a decent oil, the method is the same no matter the time of year it's gathered, so this post should serve as a decent reference for those of you who want to get up to this kind of thing.

I let my branches sit for about 24 hrs to warm up, and now that they're peeled I'm letting the strips of bark sit for a few hours more before I cover them in olive oil. Alder, growing next to water as it does, has lots of moisture to it; I don't want any more disasters so I want my bark on the dry side, but not so dry as to lose any goodness. That 'goodness' shows itself in two ways with alder, the fragrance and the nifty colour change that it does.

The fragrance was not as strong as it is in summer (alas) but when I stuck my nose right into the bowl of bark it was discernible (and delicious). The nifty colour change was there though!

Let's do some pictures ..

Here are a few of the catkins, just to give you an idea of the size.
These ones are larger than what I usually see. These are the males,
and they'll swell up, turn green then go POOF with pollen in the summer.

A couple of minutes after breaking this open, behold the nifty colour change
from white to orange. In the summer, it would be more red, but this makes me
happy. I included some of these in my infused oil, but mostly I use bark. In summer, when the
catkins are sticky, I would include more of them. 

Pretty bark, yes? Note the flecks, the auburn colour, how smooth it is.
Branches bigger than this work too, this is just the size I happened to get.

With my trusty pocket knife, I peel right down to the wood. Usually I peel
towards myself, sometimes away from, sometimes it's sort of a shaving action.

The shavings all turned that nice orange-y red, a good sign.

From there, I snipped up the shavings to about half that size, put them in a jar, covered them generously with olive oil, put the lid on and told myself it would work just fine ...

...........

It's been about a week, and I've been fretting about that oil. Impatient, too. So, I pulled out my trusty miniature crock pot and poured it all in. I did not have high hopes, mind you. While the resin mentioned last time worked out really well in that pot, I once tried a batch of yarrow oil in it that was nothing short of a disaster because it got too damn hot and cooked the herb. Deep fried yarrow, anyone?

No?

But since I didn't have a whole lot of faith that this winter-collected bark was going to turn into anything by the slow infused method anyway, I went for broke.

And the damn thing got too hot again (no controls on it) and (pretty much) deep fried the alder bark. The strips of bark were suspiciously crispy, and the oil, instead of having that alder-y fragrance I was hoping for, smelled like nothing but olive oil. Crap!!

BUT guess what? The oil is fine! I just happened to have a bit of a crick in my neck, and good old alder relieved it almost instantly, just like it always does.

So there you go, class. Winter-collected alder bark infused by the heat method turns out just fine.

PS - cleanup after working with oils can be a bitch, but I have a secret weapon - rosewater. I keep a spray bottle of 50/50 rosewater and tap water by my sink. The little crock pot doesn't separate from its base, and it can't be submerged for cleaning. But a good wipe with paper towels, then a soaking spray with the rosewater and another wipe got it squeaky clean.