To Grind...Or Not To Grind:
That is the question!
Ive seen and been a part of, on several occasions, debates over the efficacy and reasons for grinding herbs before using them in dit da jow versus using whole herbs.
Some people will never grind because their teachers never said to (perhaps teachers of old didnt have access to powerful modern grinding machines), while others grind simply because they know that herbs are often times ground before use in plasters and poultices, or for internal recipes and pills. The fact of the matter is that barring 1 quite unlikely assumption, using ground, crushed, or whole herbs will yield an effective jow, as long as it is given enough time to age properly. But since we are concerned with the MOST effective results, lets discuss this a bit further...
Breaking precedent, Im going to explain the one simple assumption *after* going over details about grinding the herbs or not:
Grinding Down
Herbs are often times ground for use in poultices that are used externally, or to make internal use herbal concoctions (some made in the same way dit da jow is). Both of these types of products are used commonly, often times with great success. Based on this, its fairly clear that grinding is not a practice that carries any visible problem--But make sure to read the assumption below!
Grinding herbs has a couple of intrinsic pros and cons:
CON: Volatile Herbal Ingredients. Grinding many herbs will not harm the important ingredients. However, many herbs, specifically the family of aromatics, have essential oils or other volatile substances that can be both destroyed and evaporated by the heat and friction associated with a grinding machine. This will lower the potency of some herbs.
PRO: Surface area increases substantially. There are a variety of shapes and sizes of herbs and some are more favorable to this than others. For example, leaves and flowers will not benefit from this as much as bulky roots such as san qi.
What this really translates to is aging time. A recipe that utilizes ground herbs will age more quickly than one that does not. The drawback is that as the solution ages, a jar with loose herbs will slowly catch up as the herbs give off their constituents and the alcohol begins to become saturated with that great herbal goodness.
CON: Grinding Is Messy! Not only is grinding a pain in the ass unless you invest in an expensive herbal grinder (do NOT use your coffee grinder--I promise you will never use it for coffee again), but it is rather messy--before AND after you make your jow. The problem with ground herbs comes from its powdery nature. Its often a bit of a mess adding to your jar of jow, creating annoying little puffs of smoke and often times being spilled or otherwise making its way to somewhere other than the jar. Furthermore, you will have to decide what to do with the herb once your jow is ready to go: You can either keep them in there to keep the aging process going, or you can strain them out. If you keep them in, you will notice the jow is much more messy upon application, leaving behing a paste of sorts, and little balls of ground herb. If you strain...well straining is a mess too!
CON: Loss of Freshness. Ground herbs are often times bought ground, as customers do not usually have access to a grinder or mortar and pestel. Remember the surface area advantage above? That same principle is about to work against us. When an herb is ground, more surface area of that herb is exposed to the environment. This means that the rate that this herb will lose its freshness is substantially effected.
Consider a tomato: Cut the tomato in half and expose the new surfaces; those new surfaces will spoil quickly. If you want to eat the tomato, simply cut off the end that was exposed and the rest of the tomato is still edible. Now imagine cutting up a tomato into many small pieces. I don't think you will disagree that the entire tomato will quickly go bad! This process is exaggerated for the tomato, primarily because the tomato is in its natural state and the herbs should be dried by the time you get them. Nevertheless, it proves the point.
So the moral here? Ground herbs should be used as soon as possible! Freshness is more difficult to preserve.
Whole herbs essentially have the opposite properties in this context. They:
- Take longer to age, but narrow the gap as time passes which makes this largely irrelevant.
- Are not as messy due to lack of grinding; even straining is not as difficult if that is what you wish to do.
- Maintain freshness as a result of less surface area.
Based on this, it seems fairly clear that while grinding is not necessarily detrminetal as long as you follow the advice above, the better route seems to be to use whole herbs. But are there any other options? Exceptions? YES, Im glad you asked!
CRUSH
Crushing/breaking up the herbs is a 3rd option. A halfway point, the harmony between the yang of grinding and the yin of whole. A balancing point:
Instead of grinding, break them up. If you have a mortar and pestel, gently break up roots, twigs, barks, and carefully crush flower, leaves, fruit, etc. If you dont have a mortar and pestel, wash your hands and use your hands to break up the herbs into as small pieces as you can manage. A small hammer and a wooden bowl may come in handy for some of the harder herbs. For example, san qi (or pseudoginseng) mentioned above is a somewhat bulky and hard root. Breaking this herb up takes some work but is important, as exposing the inside of the root will grealty aid in releasing its properties into the jow.
This way you can keep your herbs whole to maintain freshness, break them up to help increase surface area for aging, and not have to deal with the mess that is a result of finely ground herbal matter. Now lets get on to that assumption, and a list of exceptions of herbs that should be ground...
Grinding Assumption
Grinding that is being performed is on a scale that it produces a powder that is composed of herbal matter that is significantly larger than the size of the largest herbal molecule of consequence.
This assumption is largely academic as I do not know if any grinder in use actually grinds small enough that this is an issue. But now that its been said I feel better... ;)
Some Exceptions
As with most things in life, there are a few exceptions of herbs that probaly should be ground. Given that we have observed the assumption above, the family of resins should probably be ground. This includes herbs such as frankincense, myrrh, dragons blood, amber (pine resin), and catechu paste. An experiment carried out at PlumDragon showed that these resins are almost entirely soluble (given enough time) in an alcohol/water base. Therefore, grinding these resins will help to speed up the solubility into your jow. However, please remember not to grind them until you are ready to use them.
If you are interested in contributing to this effort, want information you dont see here, or have other questions/comments please email PlumDragon Dit Da Jow and Herbs
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