Not the medicine, mind you, but the dried plant when you're making a glycerite!
I'm a big fan of Astragalus (Astragalus membranaceous) as an immunomodulator. I like to start on a daily regiment for at least three months before the cold season starts. Since we recently moved up 2500 feet in elevation, I'm thinking that cold season might start a bit earlier than normal. And rather than make a tea with it daily (which I'm apt to forget,) I decided to go for a glycerite.
Astragalus is water soluble, so tinctures don't extract the right constituents. A glycerine is just the trick in this instance. Glycerine extracts the water-soluble compounds (some say even better than water,) yet has the preservative properties of alcohol. Plus it tastes great!
As I had only dried Astragalus, I used a 60:40 ratio of glycerine to water. You need some water in your glycerite, unless you're using fresh plant which has a high water content already. The marc to menstruum ratio was 1:5, and I wanted to see how 8 ounces of menstruum would translate into medicine. When making herbal remedies, you always lose some of the liquid to the plant itself, regardless of your press. I have a pneumatic suction pump that I use, which usually results in some really dry spent plant matter when I'm done extracting.
Did I mention Astragalus sucks? I put in 225 ml of menstruum, and got back only 75 ml of glycerite! That's losing 2/3 of your menstruum back to the plant. Simply unheard of! Examining the spent plant, it was awfully moist. Much more moist than anything else I've seen in the past. Lesson learned. I think I'll stick with my daily infusions of Astragalus after this 75 ml is gone...