Hello David, Our materia medica sheets for Fu Ling and Chaga suggest tincturing in the following manner: Fu Ling Tincture (1:5), 25-27.5% ETOH Chaga Tincture (1:5), 30% ETOH Are these made in the usual way (grind dry herbs, add alcohol and water) or are they decocted first? If the process differs from the manner in which we learned tincturing, could you please explain in detail (with relevant math) what that process would look like with 100 g of dried herb and 94/95% alcohol. Our tincturing worksheets don't include instructions on how to do this and I would like to be able to prepare these tinctures effectively. A work sheet for tincturing mushrooms and/or a class on this would be really beneficial. Thank you!

They are decocted first, all mushrooms should be. Unfortunately doing the decoction first makes things more complicated and I cannot easily write that out. What I can say is I decoct the mushrooms with water for 8-12 hours, you need to increase the water - depending on your cooking temperature by 50-100% (but first weigh it with the actual amount of water it should have, lets say 70% H2O, and cook it slowly till you are back to the original weight). Let cool , then add ETOH.