Making your own extract?

[Alphabet]

I was curious if anyone has tried making their own extract? I don't yet have privilege to post in the DIY section. I was debating on trying to make extracts with grain alcohol, throwing the flavor I want in (mint leaves, lavender, etc.) and letting it soak for a week to pull out the flavors. I was just curious if anyone has had success with this, or if I am failing before starting ! Thanks!

 

[Drewsworld]

There are several recipes on here...I have tried the one with alcohol....The taste is not so great but thekick was definatley apparent...The problem ,IMO, is that raw soaked tobacco is not a pleasent taste nor is it a replication of the taste I was looking for...The taste your looking for is acyually BURNDT tobacco... therefore you can extract nicotene, but unless you own a spectrometer or something it is hard to say what strength you 3end up with...Which can be very dangerous...So diy has a bunch of extraction methods that are relatively simple to very complex....Good luck

 

[Alphabet]

I was thinking of doing fruit or herbal extracts, not tobacco... yet! I have some recipes to do extracts, I was just looking for a success rate if anyone has tried it for flavors. Thanks for the input on tobacco... good to know!

 

[Nick O'Teen]

You need a very high concentration of flavour - at least 30-100x more concentrated than is palatable to taste, since your device will be delivering only a few micrograms of flavouring per puff, and that's more concentrated than you're likely to be able to get by soaking most fruits or herbs (perhaps some strong spices might work, but do you really want jalapeno juice?)
You're probably better off using concentrated essences like Loranns unless you have the equipment to concentrate your own extracts (by distillation, chemical extraction, or other processes.)
But if you do have (or can rig up,) the necessary gear, then go ahead and experiment - DIY juice flavourings and formulations are of perennial interest to many people here, and we'd love to hear of any successes (or failures,) and any tips or ideas you come up with.

 

[Alphabet]

I found a few recipes for extracts, and they end up pretty concentrated as they do have to soak for periods of a few weeks to months.... I think vanilla takes up to 2 months to get a good strong extract. Here is a recipe if anyone is bored enough!

Vanilla Extract

To make your own vanilla extract, combine vodka, bourbon, or brandy with 5 split vanilla beans in a one-quart glass jar. Close the jar tightly and store in a dark cupboard. The vanilla extract will be ready to use after two months.

Top off the jar for up to one year with the same alcohol you originally used to make the extract. After a year, replace the old vanilla beans with five new split beans.
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[Alphabet]

Hmmmm. I think I am going to have to play around a bit.

 

[Nick O'Teen]

I found a few recipes for extracts, and they end up pretty concentrated as they do have to soak for periods of a few weeks to months.... I think vanilla takes up to 2 months to get a good strong extract. Here is a recipe if anyone is bored enough!

Vanilla Extract

To make your own vanilla extract, combine vodka, bourbon, or brandy with 5 split vanilla beans in a one-quart glass jar. Close the jar tightly and store in a dark cupboard. The vanilla extract will be ready to use after two months.

That would be delicious poured over ice cream, but 5 beans aren't going to flavour up a quart of juice so strong that a couple of micrograms delivered in vapour will taste rich and vanilla-y - by definition it's going to be 98% alcohol and water from the spirits (and almost all of the other 2% physically occupied by the beans is going to sit there like pieces of wood.) The (complex mix of) flavouring compounds will certainly amount to rather less than 0.01% of the volume of the extract.
To get it up to vape strength, you'd need to concentrate it by eg: fractionally distilling the extract to separate the alcohol and water (which boil off at 78.4'C and 100'C respectively,) and recombining the other fractions to reconstitute the flavour. That's assuming none of the chemicals involved will react adversely in the heat of a still - some flavours have to be extracted in ether to keep the temperatures down (effectively ether will evaporate at a lower temp than almost all the components you want, so it can just be boiled off to leave the concentrated flavour compounds. Though some flavours require extraction in liquid nitrogen if they contain very low-temperature volatiles.)

Flavours are tricky things - they're lovely when they work, but beyond my competence and patience to attend to at present - I'll stick to nicotine extraction for now

 

[crazyhorse]

Nick, I have a nice distillation setup but I don't think I could ever pull off anything like that.

 

[Nick O'Teen]

Nick, I have a nice distillation setup but I don't think I could ever pull off anything like that.

It would certainly be easier to use pure ethanol as the solvent - then you only have one break point to work with - collect all the condensate from room temp upto the mid 80s'C (if any,) then change the collection vessel and hold the temp at 87.4'C (as close as you can - a little variation's unavoidable in a home setup) to rack off the ethanol.

Once you've recovered most of the ethanol that was in there, you can add the first condensate to the residue (assuming it's clear of gunk, and not too dark or oily,) and theoretically have all of the flavour with almost none of the solvent. Or if it's gunky (or you just want an absolutely clear product,) replace the collection vessel, and collect the condensate as you crank up the heat as far as you need to go. However, you'll probably get some burnt flavour in there if you have to go much over 100'C, and that would probably ruin it for most flavours. There's going to be some degradation anyway with these temps. And not all components may be viably volatile - if you discard the residue, you may lose some key components (only trial and error will let you know.)

If you can get ether, that can be removed at a much lower temp (34.6'C), so you may not even need to collect the first fraction - soak your material in ether, filter it well and then just boil off the ether to leave all the flavourings behind with boiling points higher than that. Much less risk of degrading the flavour molecules that way.

I've done it with herb oils (lavender, rosemary, fennel, etc.) but not for full-spectrum food flavours. It's perfectly feasible, but you'll need more patience than I have. And I'm inclined to think that commercially produced essences will always be better (commercial outfits can afford the outlay to use vacuum distillation and liquid nitrogen, etc. to get really clean, full flavours.)