I got a bunch of catnip and stripped the leaves off and ran them through the food processor untill they were a slime.

I then put the slime into a milk jug and covered the slime with 99% alcohol.
Shook it up good and give it a good shake every time I pass it.

My question.

Is the oil going to separate from the slime?
How will I separate the good stuff from the slime?

The whole point to this is that I want to be able to set cages for feral cats and not get other nontargets.

not an expert... but

your tincture would be best done in a glass container

a blend of 100 proof vodka and glycerine is a good tincture base for catnip & many other things

frequent shaking is ok but you really don't have to do that, every so often once a week or every two weeks will do

the heavy solids will seperate

your tincture can easily be strained through screen wire or a kitchen sink drain screen with fine mesh as well as other things

"Is the oil going to separate from the slime?"

With such a small quantity of raw catnip, I doubt you will be able to find the oil. I heard that it takes about an acre of fully grown catnip to get one ounce of pure oil.

I have dried the leaves first and then pulverized them into a powder before tincturing them in 100 proof vodka. It makes a reasonable strong catnip odor but not of course strong like pure oil. Pure oil can only be processes through distillation. There isn't much oil in the leaves so like Paul said it takes a whole bunch to make an ounce so it is extremely expensive to purchase. if one is using catnip in bobcat lures, they don't want it too strong anyway as too much catnip can send some cats on the run. Ace

Now I have learned something I didn't know before.

I guess that experiment was just a $4 oops.

But that is ok, you have to try stuff to learn.

sorry, I didn't realize you were thinking bout extracting pure catnip oil. just figured you knew that wont gonna happen. lol that's why I assumed you were wanting a tincture.


you'll still end up with a mild catnip tincture! that's worth $4.00