Every home needs at least one immune stimulant remedy on hand to quickly turn to when winter lurgies are doing the rounds. Fire cider could be that for you! Whilst my family tends to favour elderberry syrup, it’s so interesting how sometimes I’ll crave fire cider instead – the wisdom of the body at work. And fire cider is a great remedy to take with you if you’re on hols as it’s shelf stable.

This is a foundational kitchen medicine recipe, using many easily accessible herbs and foods! I love recipes that cross the food-medicine divide and brings herbal remedies right into our kitchen and that was the inspiration of Rosemary Gladstar who first created this remedy.

While we made this recipe at a recent workshop, I had this seriously old song stuck in my head – and I tell ya, I didn’t hold back from sharing 😂

🎤Give it to me baby, uh huh, uh huh…. pretty fly for a white guy… on repeat….. for 2 hours….🎵🎶 (ok, ok, half the time I sang in my head, I wanted people to want to come back to the workshop after all! – I run regular herbal medicine workshops on the Sunshine Coast – come join us! )

So in honour of that earworm, I wanna call this new recipe:

Give it to me Baby Fire Cider Recipe

Which also works, cause hopefully it’s so delicious your friends and family will be begging for more!😉

Recipes are great, but understanding the principles (or the ‘why’ behind things) is even better than that’s the how I love to teach herbal medicine.

So this fire cider recipe is more of a recipe framework than a recipe per se as I show you how to easily customise according to taste and what you’ve got on hand.

Don’t have an ingredient? Leave it out.

Want it to have a gentler flavour? Amp up the yummy herbs

Ingredients

• Parchment paper
• Apple cider vinegar
• Honey
• jar with lid (you can use any size jar, match ingredient amounts to your jar – see instructions below)

Core herbs

Make sure at least half your jar consists of these core herbs as they’re the ones doing the immune system heavy lifting (although they all have a role to play!).

I’ll tend to pick 3-4 of these core ingredients and then use in roughly equal parts, although use 1 or 2 herbs if that’s what you’ve got on hand.

• Onion
• Garlic
• ginger
• Horseradish*
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Nasturtium leaves and flowers
• Chillis*

*horseradish and chillis are both strong flavours, even amongst a crowd of strong flavours, so tone these down or leave out if you don’t like things overly spicy

Optional Herbs

For added vitamin C and bioflavonoids: Lemon – sliced, including peel, rosehips, lemongrass (which also has antimicrobial and antiviral properties)

To soften the taste for kids: raisins, cinnamon, blueberries or apples (I haven’t tried, but imagine it’d be nice!?)

Random ideas: herbs like cardamon, cobblers peg, echinacea etc

(Got any other herbs you like to add to your fire cider? I’d love to hear! Just reply to one of my newsletters, or use the contact form to reach out 😊)

To make:

1. Chop and slice your herbs and foods
2. Add to your jar. If using mostly fresh herbs, fill jar ¾ full, if using dried, then fill jar ½ full.
3. Fill jar ¾ full with apple cider vinegar.
4. Fill remaining way with honey (if your honey’s too stiff, gently warm jar in a saucepan of hot water)*
5. Cut parchment paper to cover jar, then screw on lid tightly (the parchment paper is super important if you’re using a metal lid as the vinegar will corrode the lid – yes I’ve had personal experience 😂) Skip if you’re using a plastic lid
6. Shake jar
7. Label jar with ingredients and date made
8. Keep jar in a handy place as you’ll want to shake daily or 3x a week for 4-6 weeks.
9. Strain and taste. If you need to, you can add a bit more honey to make it sweeter.

*Another way to make this (and you might see this on other recipes, is to infuse the herbs in only vinegar. Then once you strain them you’ll add the honey. Depending on your taste, you’ll add 1/4 cup – 1/2 cup honey for every 1 cup vinegar (and you can even increase the honey if needed, although I’d personally explore adding yummier herbs to the blend).

To use:

Preventative immune tonic: 1 tablespoon/ day for adults and 1 teaspoon for kids, diluted in water.

Acute: 1 tablespoon every 3-4 hours for adults and 1 teaspoon for kids, diluted in water.

As food: use in marinades, salad dressings etc

Hope you love this fire cider – as you make it over the years, take note on favourite batches and flavours. After a while, you might have your own favourite recipe with particular herbs and foods you like to use each time! That’s one of my favourite parts of home herbalism, as it’s a living legacy and family health culture you can pass on for generations.

Love learning herbal medicine understanding principles, rather than just recipes? You’ll adore my Mastering Herbal Teas in 5 minutes a day course where I lift the curtain on how to craft your own tea blends for tummy troubles, anxiety and stress, sleep, vitality and more! And yes, there are a tonne of recipes too, I wouldn’t leave you hanging! Although with my simple and intuitive BASE-BUILD-EXTEND process, I know you’ll be confidently blending your own teas in no time at all! Learn more

Want a simple version of this recipe on a recipe card? Grab the DIY Immunity Kit– comes with recipe cards, herbs, bottles etc – our remedy kits are convenient, expert-backed recipes and saves you oodles of time sourcing all the bits ‘n’ bobs you need!

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They belong together.

You can eat bitter foods as part of your meals, to get this forgotten flavour into your life.

OR you can make herbal digestive bitters blends, like this one.

They’re easily customisable, delicious and optimise digestion in a tonne of ways, such as:

• increasing secretions of saliva, gastrin, mucous to line the digestive tract, digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, bile production and secretion
• increase circulation to gut
• regulating gut motility and digestive sphincters
• tonfiying smooth muscles of digestive tract, notably the stomach

Bitters, through helping us properly break down our food, actually help us better absorb nutrients and get more out of the food we’re eating!

What are herbal bitters?

Bitters are both an action and a taste in herbal medicine. Herbal bitter blends are traditionally a combination of cooling bitter herbs and warming aromatic ones (although yes, you can get warming bitters and cooling aromatics!).

In this recipe, I’m turning to the bitter powers of gentian (Gentiana lutea), arguably one of our most straight-up bitter herbs in our western materia medica.

So we don’t overly cool our digestive systems (we don’t want to put out our digestive fires after all), we blend gentian with warming herbs.

Gentian and ginger is a classic Western herbal combo and works well.

I personally find ginger too spicy sometimes and I wanted a herbal bitter blend that was delicious and works with carminative herbs to support digestion as well.

Herbal bitters blend recipe

Most of these herbs are tinctures I’ve made or bought and I’m blending together, although I’m also using rose glycetract in the blend. I love this for its nervous system support and its floral sweet taste balances the flavours in the recipe.

There’s two versions of the recipe – the first is in parts, so you can make it whatever size you want, keeping the same ratio. I’ve also then given some more directions in millimetres for a 100ml bottle (roughly).

Rosy Bitters recipe:

2 parts gentian (Gentiana lutea) tincture

1.5 parts orange peel (Citrus sinensis) tincture

1 part rose (Rosa sp.) glycetract

1 part fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) tincture

(could add 1/8 – 1/4 part ginger) (Zingiber officinale)

Rosy Bitters Recipe in ml

30ml gentian tincture

22 ml orange peel tincture

15 ml rose glycetract

15ml fennel tincture

Mix tinctures in glass dropper bottle.

Label your bottle with ingredients and date made.

To use:

Shake bottle before using to make sure all mixed well.

Use 20 drops (roughly 1 ml) diluted in 30ml water to stimulate digestion before meals.

Some people take the dropper straight on their tongue but I prefer to dilute mine with water – although you still need to be able to taste the bitter flavour.

I personally find this combo delicious, but if you’re really un-used to bitter-flavoured foods and herbs you might not. Try it for a few weeks and see if your taste buds adapt, or if you notice improvements in your digestive functioning.

If not, try another blend – there are so many bitter and carminative herbs!

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Whether you’ve got recipes, herbal research, harvest records or info on specific health issues… all this info can feel a little – or lot – unwieldy! Especially if you’ve got it stored in scraps here and there – old-fashioned literal scraps of paper, or digital clutter with phone notes, saved Instagram posts or blog links…

Let’s ditch the confusion and make a plan to create calm and simplicity, so you can find what you need – first time every time!

First up, you need to decide how you want to store your notes: digital or hard copy?

• If digital: will it be Word documents and folders or some kind of app, like a trello board?
• If hard-copy: will you use a specific notebook, pages in a concertina folder or ring binder or perhaps you’ll make A5 notecards… or something else?

You might find that you take a mixed approach, as you’ll probably end up collecting info from a variety of hard-copy and digital sources.

When it comes to keeping track of herbal info, there’s a few categories I personally like to use.

1. recipes
2. herb-specific knowledge (herbalists call this a herbal monograph)
3. garden records
4. organ systems or specific health concerns.
5. your family health records

What’s does this look like in practice?

1. Recipe book

You’ll probably come across a LOT of recipes, so how do you decide how to organise all this herbal info?

You might use your recipe book for:

1. bulk storage of all the recipes you come across
2. to save only your favs so it’s quick to find them when you want to make them. All the rest you jmight store in the relevant monographs (see next point).
3. Your recipe book might be organised by preparation type (ie teas, tinctures, oils), herb, health issue or organ system

2. Herb-specific knowledge (herbal monograph)

One of our core goals in herbalism is to know our plants well. Part of this is having one place to store all relevant info for each herb and we call this a herbal monograph.

All together, our collection of in-depth plant profiles is called a Materia Media.  

What I love about this, is that your Materia Medica will be unique and personal to you. It’s a beautiful expression of your home herbal journey, the place you live and your medicine.

It can often help to alphabetise the monographs (if using folders on a computer, this might happen automatically). You’ll need to decide whether to organise your herbal info by common name or botanical name

Monographs always contain basic info about each herb:

• botanical name
• plant family
• energetics
• taste
• list of herbal actions
• plant parts used (ie leaves, roots)
• common preparations (ie tea, tincture)
• how to use it – clinical indications, scientific research, traditional use
• safety and contraindications
• suggested dosage
• harvesting and growing information

After that, it’s up you to you what else you add. You might also like to include:

• picture or botanical illustration
• recipes and formulas
• more research you’ve done
• notes from your own use of the plant, including what’s worked, not worked etc.
• notes from any plant spirit communication, meditation or drum journeys
• garden and growing notes
• list of sources you’ve accessed to compile this monograph

Your monograph can be as pretty or utilitarian as you like!

The idea is that your herbal monograph is a living document. As you come across new info, or record notes on your experiences, you can add this info to your monograph. It becomes a beautiful, personal record of your knowledge and relationship with each herb.

It’s also a quick reference guide for you when you want to quickly check something.

3. Garden records

If you grow or forage your own medicine, you might like to keep track of this info in one handy place. This could be just be on one page, in a garden book, or perhaps just stored on each herbal monograph.

This info might help you know when to sow seeds and tips for each seed, when to plant, ideal harvest time – what to look for in the plant’s growth as well as records for when this was in previous years. You might record info on drying and processing, pests and diseases, conditions the plant seems to like etc.

You also don’t need to collect any of this.

Remember, your records are simply here to support you and if this knowledge helps you plan, or know your plants, then record it.

4. Organ system or specific health concerns

I’ve included these together, but you might also keep track of them separately, depending how and why you’re using herbs in your home.

Herbalism isn’t just about knowing diagnoses or herbs, but it’s about understanding the body and learning how to support it.  A common way to learn about both the body, health issues and groups of herbs are through organ systems, such as the digestive system, respiratory tract etc.

At home, you might also start by grouping together your research on a specific health concern. Ie. if your family’s prone to coughs, you might use that as motivation to learn all you can about coughs. So you’ll create a folder/ file / section of your notebook for coughs, or perhaps you’ll store your research by the organ system: the respiratory tract.

Obviously, there’s lots of cross-over as we’re interconnected holistic beings, but these categories give us a starting place to organise our herbal info

Use what makes sense to you in your home and feel free to adapt it as you travel the plant path.

5. Family health record

You might also like to keep a little record of your family’s health, health issues and reflections on what’s worked, not worked or things you’ve tried. This can be as simple as one page, or perhaps you create a treasured legacy by recording special recipes for each family member in your recipe book.

I hope this article has given you lots of ideas and inspiration for how to organise your herbal info and simplify your home herbalism. Having an easy system to ‘tame the beast’ of endless info and notes makes it easy to slot new things you’re learning into place!

Enjoy finding what works for you!

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1. Get to know your fear

Fear often drives our decisions, but this can lead us to make impulsive purchases which stretch our budgets. This is easier said than done, as I know from personal experience. When I was in the thick of a really challenging health issue, I was desperate for anything that’d help me get better – but so much of it I didn’t need and didn’t help. It is a journey though, to figure out what helps and not, but if you need to practice herbalism on a budget, I really recommend getting familiar with your inner world and making friends with fear, or grief (and hope) or whatever else you might find.

2. Don’t mistake common for ineffective

We’re awash with information on fabulous, and often exotic herbs. This is a blessing, but they can come with a hefty price tag. Don’t forget, our bog standard, common herbs are very powerful medicine, ones that have stood the test of time which is why they’re so culturally familiar. Thyme, rosemary, sage, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper. They’re affordable, many are easy to grow and can support many everyday health issues that crop up in our homes.

3. Needs vs wants

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to health, this can be very hard. In our modern consumer wellness environment, luxuries seem to have been reassigned as basic needs – basic human rights almost. When we through our fears on top, we’ve got a perfect storm creating an endless spending vortex that can subsume our incomes.

But, if we want to practice herbalism on a budget, being able to distinguish needs from wants is a crucial skill that can lead to greater financial stability and overall well-being. Needs are essential for survival. Distinguishing needs from wants involves recognizing the difference between what is necessary for our basic needs and what is simply desired or preferred.

Please know – this will look different for everyone. What’s a want for someone, will be necessary to someone else because we’ve all got different constitutions, health histories, personalities etc. With health and wellness, especially when practicing herbalism on a budget, we really need to pay attention to ourselves and what WE need, not what someone else does.

4. Community is your superpower

Whilst I generally don’t like mega corporations and big factories, they’ve at least highlighted how to gain efficiencies – that’s making the same thing over and over again. We can adopt this on a small scale to help us make herbalism more affordable on a budget.

Rather than each of us having to stock up on everything individually, I can ‘specialise’ in a certain remedy or grow a certain herb and then swap with friends who grow and make other things. ie. making a big batch of elderberry syrup takes the same amount of time as a batch just for my family. And my patch of catnip has plenty to share, and perhaps then I can swap for lemon balm (which somehow never grows well for me!)

This approach saves time, money and encourages community and deeper, mutual relationships – which is win-win-win in my book.

5. Work out what’s more affordable for you

I wanted to give a list of the cheaper remedies to make, but honestly, it in part depends what you have access to, and what you need. So rather than being another online herbalist who gives out generic lists, I encourage you to reflect on what you’ve got access to and crunch the numbers on what’s cheapest for you.

For example, I’m a home beekeeper, so making remedies with honey is economical for me. If you’ve got to buy your own local raw honey however, that might make it more expensive. BUT, if you’re already using honey in your life, maybe supercharging it with herbs makes it work double – both as your preferred sweetener and as your herbal medicine.

AS a general rule, water is known as the “universal solvent” – meaning it’s really effective for a wide variety of herbs and constituents. So the humble old pot of tea might really be your most affordable and effective solution.

Tinctures in general are really expensive to make at home because of the alcohol (and depending on the herb can be less effective at extracting the medicinal constituents if a particular herb needs a higher concentration of ethanol than you’ll find in a regular vodka). Perhaps you’ll swap expensive tinctures for teas, or you might find vinegar is more affordable for you – especially if you’re a bit of a homesteader and want to make your own apple cider vinegar from apple scraps!

These are just a few ideas for how you can start to practice herbalism on a budget. I’d love to know if you’ve found them useful, or any of them have stood out to you.

I’ve got plenty more practical tips coming in part 2. Stay tuned!

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1. Are the herbs good quality?

Are your herbs vibrantly coloured and smell good (or what they’re supposed to smell like, which sometimes isn’t “good” 😂). When you taste them, do they have flavour (whether that’s pungent, sour, bitter etc)? Are there signs of spoiling?

If you’re storing herbs at home, I recommend keeping them in an airtight glass container and keep in mind, dry herbs are usually only really fresh for a year (or as short as 6 months and up to 2 years). They’re best kept in a dark cupboard that’s relatively temperature stable (but do your best and use your common sense, you also want them accessible to use, not locked up in a dungeon).

It sucks to have to throw herbs out (and by that I mean compost them), but if your herbs aren’t good quality, neither are your remedies and they won’t work as effectively.

2. Are you using the right dosage?

Higher doses aren’t necessarily better, but if your herbal remedies aren’t working, this might be a factor. With tinctures, it can be relatively straightforward to increase the dose by a few drops, to mls until you reach the higher suggested dosage range. But there are two other elements to consider:

The first is using enough herb material. Oftentimes you’re just not getting enough herb to make effective remedies, and this can be with a variety of preparations, such as teas, infused oils, vinegars or tinctures.

The second thing to think about is steep time. Chamomile can make a delightful beverage tea with a 5 minute steep, but if you really want its strong antispasmodic effects to help with period pain, you might need a 20 minute steep with up to ¼ cup of herb material.

Always check with a trusted herbal reference to see the safe, suggested dosage range for each herb. Keep in mind, some herbs are only to be used in low doses (although you’ll generally know that because these will often be given from a practitioner).

3. Are you taking the herbs regularly enough?

Often (*not always*- really depends what you’re using them for) small doses of herbs taken regularly is more effective that large doses less often. For example, at the very first sign of a cold (ie within first 24 hours), I use elderberry syrup every hour before tapering off to 3-4 times day (learn more about how to use elderberry syrup effectively)

Most remedies don’t need to be taken hourly, but this is really the art of home herbalism, and you’ll find your rhythm over time.

Sometimes it’s not about regularly through the day, but regularly over time. For example, many adaptogenic and immunomodulating herbs, such as astragalus or withania, have cumulative effects, meaning you need to take them regularly over time for them to be effective.

4. Is this the right preparation for this herb?

We have a wide variety of ways to work with herbs – in water, alcohol, vinegar, glycerine, honey, whole powdered herbs, in oil etc. Whilst some of these are just personal preference and what’s available, often it’s because certain chemical constituents extract better in different preparations.

If your herbal remedies aren’t working, then it’s really important to consider if you’re making the right preparation.

Even when working with the same herb, you might work with it in different ways to extract different constituents. For example – you might have heard nettle is an amazing source of iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and zinc, but these minerals don’t extract well into alcohol. So if you’re using a nettle tincture you won’t get these benefits (but you’ll still get the anti-histamine actions for example). If you want the nourishing components, these extract better into vinegar or water.

So then you decide to make a nettle tea. Going back to the second point however, quantity of herb and steep time are both really important here.

Steeping a teaspoon of nettle for 5 minutes won’t give you the nutrient-dense punch you’re looking for, compared with a traditional nourishing infusion, which uses 30g of herb (per litre) with an 8 – 12 hour steep time.

5. Is this the right herb for this condition or person?

We are all different and herbs are all different. Respecting this, it doesn’t make sense that there’s JUST ONE HERB that will suit every person and every condition.

This nuance can be challenging when we’re used to the modern medicine take-this-pill-for-this-disease mentality. But it means we can get much more specific, personalised and effective support from our herbal remedies.

If your herbal remedies aren’t working, it’s important to consider the person’s constitution, the season, and herbal energetics of the both the tissue state and herb.

Simply put, energetics refer to whether a herb and tissue state is dry or moist, hot or cold. In general, our goal in herbal medicine is to create balance. For example – for a wet hacking cough, we’d use drying herbs, but those same drying herbs might not help, and might even aggravate, an already dry, unproductive cough.

Depending what’s going on, choosing the right herb for the right person might also refer to the psychological indications for particular herbs, or the overall symptoms pattern.

If you’re new to herbs and this seems confusing, take heart! You don’t need to know it all, or do it alone. You’ll pick things up over time, and can always work with skilled practitioners or take courses to learn.  

This is really why I emphasise learning the basic pillars of herbalism so you’ve got a good baseline understanding of what to think about. It’s also why I suggest learning fewer herbs more in depth. You’ll be more likely to understand this nuance related to the particular herb and you’ve got a higher chance of using it effectively and confidently at home! (Like the sound of this? This is what our courses are all about – join us, we’d love to support you!)

6. Are you addressing the root cause?

Depending on the issue, this might be something you work with a skilled practitioner to work out, then you can continue to care for at home. Oftentime we can get caught up treating the symptoms but not the root cause. Sometimes there’s even layers to root causes. If you’re not seeing results with your home remedies, or even with practitioner-prescribed remedies, keep searching till you find what works for you!

Keep in mind as well, that different modalities and herbal traditions describe root causes differently.

7. Herbs aren’t magic bullets and work best in tandem with core lifestyle pillars

Herbs are incredible but they’re not magic bullets and they really do work best with a solid life-nourishing lifestyle, such as movement, laughter, enough sunlight and fresh air.

Sometimes the herbs are effective, but they simply need more time to work, or give our bodies more time to rest.

A simple example of this and the previous point about root causes is we might get caught in that recurrent cold spiral. We might find ourselves regularly reaching for our cough syrup or elderberry syrup. But in this case, you might actually need deeper immune system support, or have a vitamin/mineral deficiency you need to address. You might need a week to just sleep or perhaps you’re too socially isolated and need to make time to build stronger relationships. Health if multi-layered, and herbs work most effectively in tandem with core lifestyle pillars and addressing the root cause.

To make it easy for you, here’s your quick checklist in condensed form. If you’ve got a little herb nook in your home, feel free to write these down, so you can return to it if you need it,

7 reasons your herbal remedies aren’t working:

1. Are the herbs good quality?
2. Are you using the right dosage?
3. Are you taking the herbs regularly enough?
4. Is this the right preparation for this herb?
5. Is this the right herb for this condition or person?
6. Are you addressing the root cause?
7. Herbs aren’t magic bullets and work best in tandem with core lifestyle pillars

Keen to make your own herbal remedies but want a bit of extra support? It’s really simple with our DIY Remedy Kits.

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