Brewing in the Kitchen

Taking a break from all the deep-digging lately, I made a muscle balm to sooth the knot in my hamstring that's been plaguing me for weeks. My methods are not terribly sophisticated since I used a mason jar held in a pot of near-boiling water in place of a double boiler, so in this case you'll mostly just need to worry about the ingredients. Expect nicer words later, but here we are:

You'll need:

A large jar or double boiler you don't intend on using for food again (wax is very difficult to clean out entirely)
A medium/large pot of water for boiling (if you're not using a double boiler)
2oz (1/4c) coconut oil

1oz (2 tbsp) comfrey oil
1oz (2 tbsp) shea butter
1/2 oz beeswax (chopped)
25 drops cayenne extract
15 drops ginger oil
10-15 drops of the following oils:

• Black pepper
• Peppermint
• Rosemary
• Clove bud
• White camphor
• Sage
• Dragon's Blood 

Solid beeswax takes ages to  melt.

If you have beeswax in the form presented here, do yourself a kindness and go to a thrift store or very cheap place that sells a discount cheese grater and grate the wax. Otherwise you'll end up waiting ages for it to melt -- and trust me, you really don't want to use your home cheese grater for the wax unless you never intend to grate cheese with it again. While you're at the store, also pick up plastic spoon (long and thin if you're using the jar method) -- I didn't plan ahead and thus just used a stick I found that I'd stripped the bark off of, but it's entirely up to you and your level of preparedness. The stick was fine.

Put the pot of water on to medium-high. While it's heating, put the coconut oil, comfrey oil, and beeswax into your jar, and the jar into the pot of water. IMPORTANT: The water should be at least 2-3inches lower than the top of the jar.

Once the oils and wax have melted, add the shea butter. Stir well. Carefully remove from the pot and transfer to a potholder (waterproof is my recommendation here, because wax and oil are less than fun to get out of a cloth potholder if things turn messy).

Allow your mixture to cool for a few minutes. During this time you may wish to take a picture of the sun shining through your herb window and nearly blinding yourself in the process (in my defense, a storm was rolling in and the lighting was magical)

Now you begin adding your essential oils and extracts. The exact amount of some of these is estimated -- some of my reducer caps were a little more enthusiastic than others (particularly the ginger) and I ended up with more than I'd planned. To note, the dragon's blood and sage aren't in here for muscle pain, but because 1.) they're generally good, all-purpose things I use in healing/cleansing/"make things better" magical things and 2.) the smell is particularly soothing to me.

While your mixture is still hot and translucent, pour it into your jars. This blend makes about two 50mL jars (At least, I think that's the volume of the jars I had in my supply box for the past five years or so). If you don't have idle hands or pets that are prone to investigating things on counters, leave your jars to cool with the lids off. If you're on a time-sensitive schedule, you can speed things up and let the balm set in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes -- but remember to keep the lids off. Condensation isn't going to ruin your balm but it can look a little rough.

And you're done! The jars should be kept out of direct sunlight (which is why I used darker jars and not because it's just what I had lying around *coughcough*) and used ideally within a couple of months.

Note the very fancy de-barked stick in the background that I used to stir things along