The Workbench

Pick up an unlabeled bottle. Brown glass, cork stopper, maybe two inches of dark liquid at the bottom. Hold it to the light. You cannot tell if it is a tincture or a vinegar. You cannot tell if it is six weeks old or six years. You cannot tell if the menstruum was 40% ethanol … Read more

Pour a shot of cheap vodka over dried rosemary and leave it a week. You’ll get something. Color, a little scent, a faint resinous bite on the tongue. Now do the same thing with a lump of raw benzoin resin. Come back in a week. You’ll have pale, slightly fragrant water with a lump of … Read more

Pick up a mason jar. Hold it up to the light. It is, at this moment, nothing — a vessel waiting for a decision. By the end of this post it will be the center of an athanor, the alchemist’s slow-heating furnace, rebuilt for a kitchen counter in the twenty-first century. Paracelsus worked with bellows … Read more

Pick up a piece of dried valerian root. Smell it. That wet-earth, almost rotten funk is valerianic acid, and it does not care how politely you ask it to dissolve in water. You can steep that root in a cup of boiling water for twenty minutes and get a pale, faintly bitter tea that carries … Read more