Ethanol Extract - Full Strong Buzz & Moderate flavor

Edit: Not sure if this is OK by the rules... I understand currently the whole discussion on WTA extractions seems no-no... But this doesn't seem any more dangerous than the NET extractions to me.... Sure there is trace ethanol in the alkaloid syrup... I add a few % ethanol to my diy ejuice anyway for a little added throat hit.

So this extraction was just a test... Did 3 runs, 1 hot, 1 room temp, and one freezing cold on a large tub of Drum Halfzware shag with Wisconsin quality everclear.

Soaked tobacco in ethanol for ~6 hours for all 3 runs. Filtered with a vacuum filter. Evaporated down to a thick flavorful syrup, at room temperature with a fan in front of an open window. This was weighed and assumed to be near pure tobacco alkaloids. This was then diluted into 50pg/50vg mix at ~24 mg/ml.

The hot run, was discarded it turned dark black and smelled kinda like my old ash tray... Nasty.

The room temperature was a very thick and almost molasses colored. It smelled quite a bit like the cigarette tobacco it came from. However this one never seemed to fully 'dissolve' in the PG/VG mix. I'm assuming it pulled a bit of plant oils.

The cold extract is Beautiful. The resulted syrup is a very light golden color. It smells better than this delicious tobacco did out of the bag. So far at 24 mg/ml of this stuff its pretty easy to catch a strong light headed buzz. Have not added nicotine or any other flavoring.

 

Sorry on the details... In terms of cold I froze the bottle of everclear and tobacco for a solid 12 hours before mixing. They sat in the freezer over the soak time. So far it hasn't gunked up the coil much, but I've only been using this juice for 2 days now... I'd guess around 5 ml have been vaped of it so far. I'll be sure and update as I go along.

If it matters I am using a stainless steel genesis wick with a 28 gauge kanthal coil metering at .72 ohms. So far it is still vaping great... The flavor is very unique and present yet somehow subtle... I feel it could use a little added sweetness. This morning it was my first vape of the day and I had to set down the device halfway through my morning coffee from the head rush...

I just ordered a nicotine test kit from WLs just to do some testing on how strong this turned out... From my experience so far the resulting oil is indeed very high in nicotine and other tobacco alkaloids.

 

No problems so far... Handed out a few samples to a few friends who vape & smoke... So far all around positive comments.

I'm planning on doing another run of this after Christmas on Samson Halfzware and American Spirit... Will upload some photos for the curious.

 

I did not treat the solvent as it was 100 mg/ml. I treated the resulting oil as if it was pure nicotine. My steps are pretty clearly outlined in post 1. I soaked tobacco in cold alcohol. I filtered the alcohol. I evaporated the alcohol to yield a crude tobacco concentrate. This crude tobacco concentrate, which is obviously not 100% nicotine, was treated as 100% nicotine in the name of conservative safety. This was then used to used to create a 2.4% solution.

Notice I specifically said I 'weighed' the resulting crude resin. This was then diluted based on MASS not on volume. Being as I have no idea the density of the resulting solid a volume/volume dilution makes very little sense. If you do not understand why you need to weigh nicotine and can not do 24 ml of pure nicotine in 76 ml of pg to get 24% you should not attempt any of this!

So far my test sampling, including a sample of 5 people, all 5 have preferred this over the classical pure nicotine juice. 3 of the 5 have diluted the sample they were given because it was too strong. They unfortunately did not keep methodical notes on how much they diluted.

Nicotine and harmine alkaloids are highly soluble in ethanol and water. For example, a moderately short ethanol soak of syrian rue will pull the majority of maoi harmine alkaloids. Actually soaking longer than multiple short soaks is pretty much only pulling the less soluble terpenes, oils and chlorophill.

Nicotine is marginally soluble in PG/VG. This is why a NET extraction requires so much time to achieve efficiency. A 15-20 second ice cold ethanol rinse will pull the majority of the water soluble alkaloids aka nicotine and harmines(maois) while minimizing the pickup of other crap. Chlorophyll is nearly insoluble in cold ethanol. The quick and cold ethanol extraction is quite commonly practiced with the extraction of various other plants. I would rather get 50% of the nicotine and .1% of the chlorophyll than ~100% of everything the tobacco has to offer.

Further testing is in progress.

 

nicotine = alkaloid, stimulant in tobacco.
harmine = alkaloid, mild reversible maoi. (mildly present in tobacco, present in other plants such as syrian rue.)

terpine = commonly give lots of the smell / flavor.
Chlorophyll = sticky green pigment / plant matter. You don't want this.
tannins = bitter plant compound. You don't want this.
other various plant oils = You probably don't want most of them.
edit: search wikipedia.org for each of these terms if you want more details.

LucentShadow you are pretty much right on. Goal is to get a little flavor with a clean full spectrum alkaloid extraction.

The best ghetto vacuum filtration would probably be a big syringe with a cotton ball. Suck up through the cotton ball. May be slow going and infuriating. Strongly recommend proper lab procedure and equipment with all process. Just get a vacuum flask and a hand pump if you want to extract anything from anything on any kind of regular basis.

Sorry for the lack of photos to date... Will do a nice little step by step guide in the coming week with photos for anyone else that wants to give this method a go.

 

PGA is a great solvent for this because:

- It is a strong solvent.
- It is volatile, evaporates readily, easy to concentrate.
- It is food safe and very low in contaminates. Any solvent chosen will likely be consumed in trace amounts. People already vape PGA.
- When cold it is selectively polar, very good at extracting alkaloids and leaving behind chlorophyll / non-polar oils.

I don't want this thread to go into a discussion on dangerous chemicals / solvents.

Being as I have only run this experiment once to date qualitative yields are not yet certain, however this first run left me with about 3.5 grams of thick golden oil from ~110 gram extraction leading to ~3.2% yield. There were obviously trace loses to evaporation tray, filters, and jars. At this point I am quite certain the oil resulting from a cold alcohol soak is quite potent.