Mullein Magic: Our DIY Cough Syrup Adventure

Hey everyone, I’m excited to finally be able to get our post about Mullein cough syrup up. It’s one of our staples for the winter. It works fast when treating coughs, and safe for the whole family to use.

Unfortunately my mullein in the yard is just not producing flowers this year, and the few plants that were on their way to, seem to have been attacked by mites and spiders so that the flowers were essentially unusable. So this weekend, we finally got out to forage some wild growing mullein and collected a bunch of stalks that were full of flowers. Don’t worry though, we didn’t over harvest, out of maybe 200 plants we took 10-12 stalks to bring home and collect from.

So this is a simple recipe, that takes about a month to complete. Maybe a little longer. You just need fresh flowers and white sugar. That is all.

To start with, you want equal parts flowers and sugar. I use pint jars.

2. Put a layer of flowers in the jar, about a half inch or so thick. Pack them in there.

3. Cover with some sugar.

4. Put another layer of flowers, about a half inch again.

5. Cover with some sugar.

6. Do this till the jar is completely full.

7. Set the jar in a sunny window for the next month or so.

8. As the sugar breaks down to liquid, the flowers will compact down and shrink. At this point you can harvest more fresh flowers and top up the jar. Adding equal layers of flowers and sugar.

Also, just an FYI, the stalks we cut from the mullein, we put in jars of water, outside in the sun. They will continue to produce the flowers over the next week or so. We’ll harvest these flowers every other day or so to top up our jars.

At the end of the month, you want to strain out the flowers in a cheese cloth, transferring your syrup to a clean jar. Then store in the fridge.

The cough syrup is good for about a year. You’ll want to take a spoonful every couple of hours when dealing with a cough or respiratory issue.

Also I’ve had many people over the last few years ask if you can use brown sugar instead of white sugar, or honey. And the answer is, I don’t know. I would think it would work, but I have never tried either. The original recipe I followed was from Linda Bostock, a practicing medicinal herbalist, from about 12 years ago. All I can say is this recipe works.

So let us know how it goes for you. If you make your own cough syrup or you try something other then the sugar, drop us a line later in the year and let us know how it worked out for you.