Thyme Oxymel: A Simple Home Apothecary Remedy for Chesty Coughs
There are some things we make for the home apothecary because they're interesting to try (cue my elderberry syrup gummies), and others that earn their place because there's a fairly good chance we'll actually reach for them. Thyme oxymel falls firmly into the second camp.
We're making ours in September, while there's still plenty of fresh thyme growing outside and, hopefully, before anyone actually has a cough. It's part of the Autumn Home Apothecary we're building together over the season: taking some of the plants and ingredients available to us now and gradually turning them into useful things to have around as we move towards winter.
Thyme is particularly interesting because, despite being such an ordinary kitchen herb, it has a very long history of medicinal use for respiratory complaints, including the chesty, productive coughs that often accompany an ordinary cold.
Combined with vinegar and honey, it also makes one of the simplest preparations we've made so far.
What is a thyme oxymel?
An oxymel is a traditional preparation combining vinegar and honey, often with herbs infused into one or both. I've written much more about their history, how they work and the many different ways we can use them in Why Every Home Apothecary Should Have an Oxymel, so rather than repeat all of that here, we're going to concentrate on this particular version and why thyme is worth putting away for winter.
We're making ours in two stages. First, fresh thyme is infused into apple cider vinegar for a few weeks. Once the vinegar has had time to extract the plant, we strain it and combine the resulting thyme vinegar with an equal amount of honey.
It sounds much more elaborate written down than it actually is. Most of the process involves leaving a jar in a cupboard and getting on with your life.
Why thyme for a chesty cough?
Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is one of those plants whose medicinal history has become slightly obscured by just how familiar it is. We think of it as something to throw into soups and roast potatoes, but it has been used traditionally for respiratory complaints for centuries.
That traditional use hasn't entirely disappeared from modern herbal medicine either. The European Medicines Agency recognises thyme herb preparations for productive coughs associated with colds, based on their long-standing traditional medicinal use.
That wording is worth paying attention to because it gives us a much more sensible understanding of what we're making.
It doesn't mean that a homemade thyme oxymel has been clinically proven to treat a cough, nor does it turn thyme into a natural antibiotic or an alternative to appropriate medical treatment. The clinical evidence for thyme herb alone remains limited, and the EMA's recognition is based primarily on traditional use rather than the sort of evidence we would expect for a licensed pharmaceutical medicine.
For me, that doesn't make thyme less interesting; it simply tells us where to place it. We have a plant with a long and well-documented history of respiratory use, some interesting pharmacology behind it and a traditional indication that has survived into modern herbal medicine. That's quite different from claiming that the bottle we're making in the kitchen has been proven to cure a chest infection.
It's exactly the territory I want to explore with the Autumn Home Apothecary: taking traditional plant knowledge seriously enough to investigate it, without asking it to be something it isn't.
Why add honey?
Honey obviously makes thyme-infused vinegar considerably more pleasant to take, but that's not the only reason it's here.
Honey has its own long history as a soothing remedy for coughs, and modern research has found some evidence that it can reduce cough frequency and severity in acute respiratory infections. Much of the clinical evidence involves children and young people, so we need to be careful about extrapolating those findings too broadly, but it does make the combination of thyme and honey rather more interesting than simply using honey to disguise the vinegar.
The finished oxymel is sweet, sharp and strongly herbal, and can be taken from a spoon or stirred into a little warm water when you want something soothing. I use raw honey for mine, simply because I prefer to keep it as close to its original, minimally processed form as possible.
Remember however that honey is not suitable for children under 12 months of age.
How to make thyme oxymel
If you’d rather see the whole process than read it, you can watch me make the thyme oxymel step by step here:
You'll need fresh thyme, raw apple cider vinegar, runny honey and a clean glass jar. You'll also need a clean bottle or jar for the finished oxymel.
Take a good handful of fresh thyme, give it a rough chop or bruise it slightly and put it into your jar. There's no need to painstakingly strip every tiny leaf from the stalks; this is supposed to be something we can actually fit into normal life.
Cover the thyme completely with apple cider vinegar, making sure the plant material is submerged. If you're using a metal lid, place a piece of parchment or waxed paper between the vinegar and the lid so that the acidic vinegar isn't sitting directly against the metal.
Label the jar with the contents and date, then leave it somewhere cool and dark for around two to three weeks, giving it a shake every now and again.
When the infusion is ready, strain the thyme from the vinegar through a fine sieve or muslin and press the plant material well to recover as much of your infused vinegar as possible.
Now measure the liquid you've collected and add the same volume of honey. If you have 100 ml of thyme-infused vinegar, for example, add 100 ml of honey. Don't get too caught up on this though - its fine to "eye-ball" it and/or adjust to your personal prefernce and taste.
Stir until the two are thoroughly combined, transfer the finished oxymel into a clean bottle and label it with the name and date.
That's your thyme oxymel made.
How do I use thyme oxymel?
This is one I'd reach for as a soothing home preparation when an ordinary autumn or winter cold comes with that familiar chesty, productive cough.
For a generally healthy adult, I use around one teaspoon (5 ml) when needed, either taken from the spoon or stirred into a little warm water.
It's important to distinguish that from a medically established dose. This is how I use my homemade oxymel; it isn't a standardised medicinal thyme preparation and hasn't been clinically tested as one.
I think that's a useful distinction to become comfortable with as we build a home apothecary. Not everything has to be either a clinically proven medicine or useless. There is plenty of room for supportive things that make us feel a little more comfortable while our bodies get on with recovering from an uncomplicated cold.
Remember that this is an adult preparation and honey is not suitable for children under 12 months.
How long does thyme oxymel last?
For a homemade oxymel prepared with fresh plant material, I prefer to err on the conservative side: keep it in the fridge and use it within six months.
This is also why labelling everything as you make it is worth the extra thirty seconds. A beautiful amber bottle of something herbal looks considerably less reassuring when you find it at the back of the fridge in February and have absolutely no recollection of what you put in it.
As with any homemade preparation, if you notice mould, unexpected fermentation or a significant change in its smell or appearance, discard it.
A note on using it safely
Thyme oxymel sits very comfortably in the supportive-care end of my home apothecary: something we might reach for alongside rest, fluids and the usual things we do to make ourselves more comfortable through an uncomplicated cough or cold.
It isn't where I'd turn for someone who is becoming significantly unwell, and it isn't a treatment for pneumonia, a significant chest infection or an asthma exacerbation. A persistent or worsening cough, difficulty breathing, chest pain, coughing up blood or becoming significantly unwell deserves proper medical assessment rather than another spoonful from the apothecary.
Honey also shouldn't be given to babies under 12 months because of the risk of infant botulism. If you're pregnant or breastfeeding, taking regular medication, living with a medical condition or thinking about using medicinal herbal preparations with children, it's worth getting individual advice from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Putting something away for winter
One of the things I want to do with the Autumn Home Apothecary is make this feel achievable. You don't need shelves filled with obscure herbs, and you certainly don't need to make everything you see somebody making on Instagram.
I'd much rather have a small collection of things we understand, know how to use and are reasonably likely to reach for.
So far we've had elderberries heading into the freezer, fire cider slowly infusing in the cupboard and various autumn herbs being dried and preserved. Now we've got thyme oxymel to add to the collection, made while the thyme is still abundant and ready to be pulled out when cough-and-cold season properly arrives.
If you're joining us part-way through, everything we're making is gathered together in the Autumn Home Apothecary, so you can dip into the recipes that are useful to you and completely ignore the ones that aren't.
And if this is your first oxymel and you'd like to understand a little more about why vinegar and honey have been used together for so long, head over to Why Every Home Should Have an Oxymel next.
Hopefully this particular bottle will sit untouched in the fridge for months. But if the first horrible chesty cold arrives in November, we'll know exactly what's in there and why we made it.
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