If you are using wine, then you might need at least 10 bottles of red wine to achieve 1 litre of 98% strength rectified alcohol. This is the minimum amount of rectified spirit we will require.
Distillation will take time, but it will be a time well spent as you start to learn about the distillation process and its technicalities.
For the sake of convenience, we would recommend that you use brandy or Grappa. You will need to distill the distillate at least 3 more times to achieve the required strength and once you do, keep it a clean air-tight jar and store it away.
After a minimum 24 to 48 hours has passed, we can now carefully removes the leaves from the deliquesced potash. This will take great patience, and great skill. You will have to carefully sieve out the leaves from the deliquesced potash, you can use a plastic or nylon sieve but importantly you must ensure to press out as much liquid as you can from the leaves.
After you have that, add a little more new potash into the deliquesced potash, to maintain the strength of the solution. Now slowly pour your rectified alcohol over it, until it reaches a 2-finger height above the deliquesced potash. You should immediately see the rectified alcohol being tinted green. This is the Primum Ens Melissa, which according to Hartmann's formula, is green.
If it is yellow, amber or brown, then the operation is not successful.
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| Alcohol Tinted Green with Ens after 5 minutes |
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| Failed. Crude oils of Melissa |
Once the rectified alcohol is tinted a deep green, carefully siphon it off and keep in a clean airtight jar. Now continue to pour more alcohol over the deliqusced potash, and repeat the whole process until all your alcohol is used up.
Once you have 1 litre of alcohol+ens mixture, distill the alcohol off. What you have left then is the concentrated dark emerald green Primum Ens Melissa
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| Concentrated Primum Ens Melissa |
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| Concentrated Primum Ens Melissa with different lighting angle |
"One of my most intimate friends prepared the Primum Ens Melissae, and his curiosity would not allow him to rest until he had seen with his own eyes the effects of the this arcanum, so that he might be certain whether or not the accounts given of its virtues were true. He therefore made the experiment, first upon himself, then upon an old female servant, aged seventy years, and afterwards upon an old hen that was kept as his house. First he took, every morning at sunrise. A glass of white wine that was tinctured with this remedy, and after using it for fourteen days his finger- and toe- nails began to fall out, without however, causing any pain. He was not courageous enough to continue the experiment, but gave the same remedy to the old female servant. She took it every morning for about ten days, when she began to menstruate again as in former days. At this she was very much surprised, because she did not know that she had been taking a medicine. She became frightened, and refused to continue the experiment. My friend took, therefore, some grain, soaked it in that wine, and gave it to the old hen to eat, and on the sixth day that bird began to lose its feathers, and kept losing them until it was perfectly nude, but before two weeks had passed, new feathers grew, which were much more beautifully colored; her comb stood up again, and she began again to lay eggs." - Lesebure, Chemischer Handleiter 1685
