Extracting nicotine from tobacco

[TropicalBob]

A few further thoughts on this:

Remember those liquid burn tests done by knutselpeter and posted on the Dutch e-cig site (Ruyan came out great and E-Cig stuff looked dreadful, convincing knutselpeter that E-Cig E-Liquid ruins atomizers). How? Tar deposits.

When I cooked down my homebrewed tobacco liquid, attempting to distill a clear liquid that I hoped might contain some nicotine, what I got was shocking. The pot was coated with black tar. When it was cool enough, I ran a finger around the bottom of the pot and came up with gobs of pure, carcinogenic tar.

It was so thick that I had to use a chemical product called Goo Gone to get it off the countertop, sink and pot. And how much liquid produced this? One 10ml vial of cooked tobacco juice!

Had I smoked that vial, much of that tar would have moved into my lungs, I'm sure. Some would have stopped in the filter, turning it brownish, but some would make it through with the vapor, ending up inside me. Not a happy thought. I love e-smoking precisely because it's healthier than cigarette smoking, minus the tars produced by combusting tobacco.

In making my own liquid, I had succeeded only in thwarting the very reason I think e-smoking is superior. Ironic, huh?

And know that E-Cig still uses tobacco extract, an oil, in its e-liquid. It produces tar, and you see it as the brownish stain on the cartridge after short use. Ruyan stopped using the real tobacco absolute last November.

So where does this leave me? I'll think about it some more, but I sure hope I can find happiness with pure Bickford and glycerine. It's not nicotine I'm fleeing, however; it's the tar I cooked for myself in home experiments and the knowledge that it's there in the liquids I ordered from E-Cig many months ago.

[toekuttr]

The funny thing about non-tobacco nicotine is that I heard it's made from potatoes and eggplants. Can you imagine the quantities of taters it would take to extract a viable amount of nic from them? Thank God for Snus!

[TropicalBob]

Amen.

But I do plan to eat more potatoes and I love fried eggplant!

[MacFan]

I think you're right. If it were easy to get nicotine, the whole world would know how to do it. Instead, distillation needs to be done with chemicals in a lab setup. Not for me.

BUT .. the gummy stuff I did distill smells great! Just like pipe tobacco. It kept the aroma and probably the taste. But ... it's gum and I can't smoke that.

TB, One of the methods I use is Steam Distilling. I like this because it uses no chemicals but actually draws a very pure amount of the natural 'oils' from the tobacco leaf. One of the best distillation methods but expensive and a little dangerous.
Also, I did in fact mean to ask you, are you using Pipe tobacco? One thing to bear in mind is that most pipe tobacco is Cavendish which is naturally oily. Add to that the fact that they usually load it with sugars and extracts (hence the heavy, sweet feel) that may not come out to well when 'cooked'. Just a thought.
Anyway, I heard you like Kahlua, TB?

[jamie]

TB, I've heard you refer to snus before...I'm curious, can you tell me what they are?

MacFan, snus is a smokeless, spitless, low-carcinogen pouch of tobacco. You can find more info in the smokeless tobacco subforum or via the snus tag.

[TropicalBob]

I do like Kahlua, yes. The base tobacco for the homecooked experiments was a burley, Carter Hall, jokingly called a Codger Burley by oldtimers. It's cheap, clean and smells pretty good. I did not test some of my expensive Latakia blends with cavendish. I'd rather burn them than boil them, so to speak.

[Mihai]

sorry for reviving the dead...
I just want to remind SmokeyJoe or other mod to move this to it's brand new subforum where it belongs

[TropicalBob]

Actually, this was a pretty good thread, with some good info. Since the last post, Drew Estate announced it was discontinuing Kahlua cigars, so I got my tobacco shop to order me two tins. I'm puffing one cigar a day now, after dinner. The unsmoked butt ends will become the next home cooked brew! I plan to use my coffee bean grinder on them, put them in refillable tea bags and cook 'em for smoke juice flavor.

Someone on another thread talked about having to throw away the tobacco. Heavens, no. After it's been cooked, remove it and let it dry. When it's mostly dry, spray it with your favorite Bickford flavor. The PG will attract moisture to the tobacco at exactly the right 70% humidity level and the Bickford flavor will remain when you actually puff it in your pipe.

Strange but true: Many commercial pipe tobaccos are sprayed with propylene glycol for its humectant qualities. It prevents the tobacco from drying out.

[K-Sound Krew]

Never tried it but on foodnetwork there is a show good eats with alton brown, in one episode he shows you how to make liquid smoke for BBQ, If anyone wants to try you could use this same technique for flavor extraction, maybe even some Nic extraction, not sure

[Denni]

Argh, I just had a look at the spreadsheet. If you start with 15mg/g tobacco (medium: my zware shag has about 25, I think even cigars aren't much higher) and use 20g tobacco then you'll end up with just over 10mg/ml in the final reduced volume (20ml) assuming 85% efficiency (double wash and all, so assume less).

Given that you want to have a final volume of at least 80% PG/VG, you'll end up with 2mg/ml which is just not worth bothering

Stockpile the xx-strong liquid while you can!