The Grateful Healing Project

1. Gather your things!

Materials needed:
1 quart sized mason jar, lid, and ring.
2 cups of dried devil’s club chips.
1 quart of neutral oil (I use extra virgin olive oil)

2. Fill your jar!

Fill the jar about half way with dried devil’s club chips (about 2 cups), and pour in olive oil until it’s nearly full.  Leave some headroom.

3. *optional step*

I use a Foodsaver jar attachment to put the jar under vacuum several times. I think it helps the infusion.

Here’s an animated gif I made at ezgif.com from a video I took with a macro lense. This was the moment I first put the jar under vacuum. You can mmediately see a large number of air bubbles rise to the top as the oil saturates the chips

Once the chips stop producing bubbles seal the jar under vacuum one last time.

4. Heat it up!

Prepare you crock pot. I use a small cloth in the bottom to prevent the jar from rattling at it boils.

My crock pot is a little too shallow to hold the jar with the lid on so I made an extension ring from aluminum foil.  This works well and helps keep the water from boiling away to quickly.

Set your crock pot to low and leave it for about 8 hours. Make sure you keep the water topped up if the lid doesn’t work well.

After the time has passed, shut off the crock pot and let the jar cool completely before handing.

That’s it! You now have oil infused with devil’s club. You can store this in a cool dark place until you’re ready to use it. The longer you keep the oil and chips steeping, the stronger the medicine will be.

5. Strain It

When you are ready to use the oil, you need to strain it. You can use cheesecloth in a colander over a bowl or a pot, which is common. Simply line your colander with several layers of cheesecloth and suspend it over your bowl or pot. Empty your jar into the cheesecloth lined colander and wait for the dripping to stop. Gather all the sides of the cheesecloth and twist them together at the top. Continue to twist the top and compress the mass like a tourniquet, squeezing the remaining oil out.

I wanted something easier to deal with so I built a simple device that holds brewing mash filter bags, also sometimes called hops socks, over a clean jar. I used a strong 1 liter bottle with straight sides and cut the bottom off.

I cut a hole in a used canning lid, added the sealing ring over the neck of the bottle and pushed the threaded bit through the hole in the lid. I used a copious amount of hot glue on both sides of the lid.

I added a small strip of nylon strapping near the top to help a rubber band hold the bag secure. Now my strainer screws securely to the top of a fresh jar.

After loading the strainer, I let it sit for a couple of hours, periodically pressing the chips down with gentle but firm pressure with a small thick piece of devil’s club cane. It’ll stop dripping after a while and you can remove the strainer from your jar.

I’ll vacuum seal it until I’m ready to make salve. Stay tuned for the next post detailing that process!

Gunalchéesh and thank you for reading!