Daniel Vitalis Creator of the Elixir Craft Mastery program for tasting our medicines

Daniel Vitalis Creator of the Elixir Craft Mastery program for tasting our medicines

In this article, Daniel Vitalis shares the step-by-step process of making an elixir and some amazing insights into “tasting” our medicines. Daniel Vitalis has gained a wealth of knowledge about water and elixirs and created the Elixir Craft Mastery Program.

Kevin:We talk a lot about elixirs and I'm sure there are people who don't even know what you put in an elixir. I'm not even sure what kind of things you put in your elixirs. Why don't you explain some of the things that you've put in and then we'll explore some of the different questions that some people have specifically about different herbs and this thing.

Daniel:Great. Okay, the foundation of every elixir - you know you've heard the saying, "We built this from the ground up" - elixirs are built from the ground up. So I'll start with the water I collect. Sometimes I postpone it a bit. For example, in Maine in the next few weeks we will begin harvesting water birch and maple trees that will be turned into maple syrup or birch syrup. So sometimes you can pull liquids out of places like that. Sometimes you can pull liquids from plants to make juices. But most of the time the spring water is the foundation of my drinks

I collect that.

The course itself takes you sequentially through the Elixir Craft Mastery Program. It's a sequential thing that I built, starting with water. The second step is that I often take the water and turn it into a tea. For example, my tea today was dandelion root, dandelion leaf, nettle leaf, burdock root, yellow dock root with rose hips. I just threw these things in there. I like them together. This is the medicine I want right now. Again, it's not a specific prescription that I'm trying to get people to take, it's just what I'm using right now because those are the medications I want right now. So it's always changing. Whatever herbs you work with, you can make a tea with them. This is the second part of Elixir Craft and this is the second part of this course. We're talking about how teas are made, which are essentially water-based extractions.

So I like to extract herbs or medicines into the water so that now I drink a tea. I can take this tea and put it in my blender. I really love VitaMix blenders. I wish they weren't plastic but I really love them. Throw this tea in the blender and that's where you can add your superfoods. When the superfood thing started, we suddenly had all these plant flours. They are essentially flours, like you have flour made from wheat powder. We ended up with chocolate flour, maca flour, mesquite flour, carob flour, and all these powdered power foods. What do you do with these things? Well, I thought, just mix them into the tea. So I started mixing these in. This is like the third step, I'm going to start mixing in these different powders.

Then we have to think about it: "If I just drink tea with a few powders, I won't be very satisfied. I need a few calories." So we have to determine, “Do I want my calories from protein, sugar, or fat?” These are the only places you will get your calories from. What you can do then is add things... If you want to fuel yourself with fat, you can add coconut butter. If you want to fuel yourself with protein, you can add something like chlorella. If you want to fuel yourself with sugar, you can add honey. This is where you can start adding calories.

What I do is start with this water and build it up and add medicine. This sounds like something that would take a long time, but once you understand the system it is very quick. So in about five minutes I can make meals that contain so much nutrition that I would say that on average one of my drinks probably contains more ingredients and more nutrition than the average American eats over the course of an entire month. It's about putting medicine and nutrition together. Hippocrates said, “Let food be your medicine and let medicine be your food.” We take all these medicines and turn them into food, be it these elixirs, and then drink them.

The whole goal is to make it taste good. If it tastes bad, you're not doing it right. If it tastes bad, there is a subtle rejection from your body. In other words, your body isn't really excited. It gives you the message, “Hey, I don’t like this.” So it's not really open for reception. The whole goal is to match the flavors to what your body is really asking you for. So it's something very similar to the best smoothie you've ever had, except it contains all the medicine of high longevity foods and herbs.

Kevin:Is there a place for things that don't taste good that your body absorbs, like very strong herbs and the like?

Daniel:That's a good question. I'm surprised you asked that because here's what I want to say. What doesn't taste good? Is bitter a bad taste? We have a mental program. Bitters can be a really bad taste if you grew up on Mountain Dew and Ding Dongs. I grew up with these things and bitter tasted bad to me. Over time, I really appreciated the taste of things that are bitter or what we might say doesn't taste good.

Kevin:Interesting.

Daniel:If there was something that didn't taste good, the flavors are mixed inappropriately. If they are mixed inappropriately, it won't taste good. But I think most medicinal herbs have a good taste. One of the things I like to do in Elixir Craft is instead of trying to hide the flavor, instead of trying to cover up and mask the flavor, I try to highlight flavors. So if something is bitter, I would rather work with it than hide it. Here's a little secret. This next statement could add tremendous value to your listening experience. It will sound very simple, but if you let this unfold and meditate on it, you will understand something that very few people get today. You know they don't understand because you can see how our herbal systems work. We encapsulate things. The Chinese told us that the taste of a medicine is an essential part of its effectiveness. In other words, if you take your herb and put it in a small capsule and swallow it and your body doesn't even come into contact with it and the substance of that capsule breaks down in your stomach and you bypass your taste buds, your body will not get the full effect of this medicine. So instead of trying to hide your tastes, bring them out. When something is bitter, a little bit of salt and a little bit of sweet can really bring out the beautiful part of that bitterness rather than trying to hide or disguise it. I really enjoy working with the flavors.

Kevin:Where can you find pure herbs?

Daniel:That's another great question because we're really running into some problems in our culture right now. I won't go into the negative aspects here, but we are all seeing some big changes here in this country that are economic in nature. The beauty of it is that it drives us towards local economies. It drives us to collaborate. The paradigm of having food delivered to your doorstep from all over the world, from different locations, is not going to last that long. We need to start getting things locally. The best will come from nature, wild where you live.

The next best stuff will come wild from somewhere else. The next best thing is cultivated by people and grown locally by people in very intelligent ways.

The next best thing is stuff that has been very intelligently grown and shipped to you. Where things get really, really weird is that you start accessing things that have grown badly, where you don't know where they came from. So what I would say is you can access things locally, like local gardeners, local herbalists. If you can walk in natural forests, you can get the best things. Otherwise, look for reputable companies that make products that are organic or beyond organic. As you know, organic is becoming kind of irrelevant. What we need to find are things that are beyond organic, things that are biodynamically grown or wild processed.

I get a lot of stuff from where you do it, Kevin. Lots of great superfood and raw food people out there are bringing the best stuff. I like companies like Mountain Rose Herbs. I get a lot of stuff from them. And I'm collecting more and more of my herbs. That's what I've learned over the years. This is something I know will be something I will learn over many, many more years throughout my life. You don't learn that straight away. A company like Mountain Rose Herbs is a good place to start. Over time, you can learn how to do this directly from nature. That's where you get the best things.