Have you ever tried making your own crude Salvia divinorum extract at home, and wondered why it looks like a black sticky mess that smokes harsher than a porcupine eating competition? Well, fear not, for this guide will ensure a quality finished product rivalling that of store-bought extracts.
This extract will make approximately 10g of unstandardised 10x extract. Provided you can use a calculator, the quantities detailed below can be jiggled around to make any strength extract you want.
Equipment
- 100g Salvia divinorum Leaf
- You can get Salvia divinorum Leaf all over the Internet.
- 1x Large Saucepan
- Just a regular large saucepan. Make sure it’s clean. No one wants to find the remains of burnt on spaghetti in their pipe.
- 1x Pyrex Tray
- A large, wide, glass dish essentially. You might find a casserole dish fits the bill.
- 1x Small Glass Container
- Anything will do, even a jam jar.
- 1x Tall, Narrow Glass Container
- The perfect tool for the job is a boiling tube, but anything remotely similar will do.
- 1x Pipette
- Not everyone has access to calibrated volumetric pipettes so anything that looks like an eye dropper will do. That means, a thin tube with a rubber bit on the end which you can squeeze.
- 2lt Propane Based Solvent
- No not propane, but either propan-2-ol (AKA Isopropanol, Isopropyl Alcohol, Rubbing Alcohol) or propanone (AKA Acetone). They need to be 99% pure at least. Don’t even think about using nail varnish remover.
- 300ml Naphtha
- The best source of commercially available naphtha in the UK is lighter fluid.
Step 1 - Powder Your Leaf
The first thing to do is weigh out your 100g of Salvia divinorum Leaf. Remove 10g of the best leaves from your stash and set them aside for later. The remaining 90g needs to be powdered using your trusty coffee grinder. It’s high RPM motor and stainless steel blades are no match for your dried salvia leaf. It’s worth pointing out that although the leaves may not instantly grind, you’ll have to give them a few minutes, but they WILL powder eventually. Use the grinder in 1 minute bursts, allowing the motor to cool in between. When you remove the lid from the grinder, unless you want to look like Shrek, do it in a fume cupboard. The coffee grinder will reduce the leaf to a flour like consistency which will billow out as soon as you remove the lid, turning everything in the immediate vicinity a sexy shade of green.
Step 2 - Extract The Salvinorin-A
Now you have 90g of powdered leaf, get it in your saucepan and pour in enough solvent to comfortably cover your leaf. Stir it constantly for 5 minutes and then let it sit for 8 hours or so. After that time, enough of the salvinorin should have dissolved in your solvent, so you can now carefully pour off the liquid in your saucepan into your Pyrex tray, being careful enough to leave all the solids behind.
If you’d like to make sure you extract as much salvinorin-a as possible, you may repeat this step once more.
Step 3 - The Waiting Game
As simple as it sounds, you have about 16 hours in which to twiddle your thumbs, watch some paint dry, or whatever you feel like. During this time, don’t even think about touching your extraction, and make sure it’s in a dark place. Light has a nasty habit of destroying salvinorin-a in solution. The purpose of this step is to let any sediment such as tannins fall out of the leaf which are hard to extract later on.
After the 16 or so hours are up, you may pour off the remaining liquid into the original saucepan, provided you emptied out the powdered leaf earlier.
Step 4 - Evaporating The Solvent
This takes forever, is incredibly boring and will give you terrible stomach ache if you don’t do it somewhere well ventilated. The best, safest and longest method of evaporating the solvent is in the dark, in the absence of heat. Remember, the solvent is flammable, so applying heat to it should be avoided. Blowing air across the solvent will speed things up substantially, so if you have a fan, use it, but again, only somewhere well ventilated. If the fan produces a spark, it could ignite the vapour, blowing up both you and your extraction.
When the evaporation is complete, you should be left with a load of black gunk on the inside of your container. This is as far as most people get with their extractions and is the reason why the end result is a black sticky mess. That’s ok for about 5x or 6x extracts, but any stronger than that and it becomes unsmokable.
Step 5 - Purification
When your black gunk is completely dry, you can scrape it out of your container and place it into a tall, narrow container. To this, add 50ml or so of naphtha. The naphtha dissolves the green/black waxes but leaves behind the salvinorin-a. After you add the first lot of naphtha, allow the container 30 minutes or so to settle, then pipette off two thirds of the naphtha and discard it. Repeat this process at LEAST 5 more times until your salvinorin-a is no longer a black colour. If you keep washing with naphtha, it will eventually turn white, however that kind of purity isn’t necessary for making 10x extract. If you were making something like 40x or 60x (not recommended), then the higher the purity, the better.
After the last naphtha wash, remove two thirds one last time and this time, allow the naphtha to evaporate off, leaving you with relatively pure salvinorin-a. DO NOT try and smoke/ingest this, as even a tenth of a milligram can be too much for some people.
Step 6 - Fortification
Now we have the salvinorin-a from 90g of leaf, we shall add it back to the 10g of quality leaf you set aside in Step 1. Although not completely accurate, you can see this is why it’s called 10x extract, as there’s 10x the amount of salvinorin-a in the finished product.
To do this, we place the salvinorin-a we produced in the previous step into the saucepan and add to it the same amount of solvent we used in step 1. Stir it round for a few minutes to ensure it has all dissolved. Next, add the 10g of leaf to your small container and pour the contents of the saucepan over it.
You can now evaporate off all of this solvent as before, until all of the solvent has evaporated.
The finished product is approximately 10g of leaf, looking a little darker than normal, 10 times as strong.
After I wash all the powdered Salvia with solvent, what do I do with all the solids which is left behind? Can it be used for anything?
Not really, no. You could perhaps wash them once again just to be sure you’ve got everything, but you’ll pull far more waxy crap out of the leaves compared to anything useful, especially if acetone is your solvent of choice.
You may as well throw them away.
Very Good explanation of the process. Thank you, still I have a very stupid question. When you speak of powdering the leaf, I automatically think your speaking of dried leaves. Does this whole process begin with 100g. of dried leaves or leaves freshly pulled from the plant?
You’re right, that’s 100g of dried leaf.
Of course the maths would work out the same for dried or fresh. Taking the material from 90g of fresh leaves and depositing it onto 10g of fresh leaves, you’ll still have an approximate 10x extract. You’d then have either a) 10g of extract that’s 10x stronger than the same weight of fresh leaves or b) much less than 10g of a 10x extract once you dried it out.
No doubt that’s further confused things, so just stick with the dried leaf!
ok i’ve smoked xxx from club 13, it was pretty strong, how do i make that?
That depends on just how strong their XXXtract is in comparison to plain leaf. Surely it should say somewhere on the packaging? If not, that’s some shameful marketing by Club 13…
okay, so when extracting this with rubbing alcohol and cleaning it with lighter fluid, are any of these solvents left in the final product? I am all for it if the solvents can completely leave the end product.
thanks guys,
BJ
Providing you evaporate the solvents completely, there should be nothing present in your final product.
One decent way to check is by pouring a bit of either solvent onto a clean surface, let it evaporate and see if any residue is left behind. There should be none, but if there is some, try a different brand of lighter fluid or something…
what did u use to make it more potent? what was your solvent choice?
Very neat and helpfull guide, well done.
I have a few questions, I would be glad if you could help me out:
1. Which would be the best solvente to use? At the moment I have access to 99% acetone, 99% ethanol or 99% isopropyl alcohol, which of these would work best/worst?
2. How come in the “Fortification” step we dont lose half of the salvinorin by it getting stuck to the walls and bottom of the container? As the solvent evaporates, the salvinorine will cristalize both at the leaves and at the jar.
Thank you very much.
Good guide
but what other solvents can i use for the extract?
is there any potential danger when making the extract if i missed a step or didnt do it exactly right?
When placing the dried leaf into the saucepan with the solvent, should we be heating the substance or boiling it? And if we should be heating it for how long exactly?
No need to heat or boil with this method. Some people using acetone prefer to use it chilled — you get less salvinorin-a, but a lot less waxy gunk.
I’ll get back to the other questions when I have a bit of time.
During purification, when i add the naphtha, I give it 30 minutes to settle and pipette off 2⁄3! will there be clear separation if looking at the container and if so is the top 2⁄3 supposed to be the naphtha and the bottom 1⁄3 supposed to be salvinorin-a?
In the naphtha, there should be some stuff that won’t dissolve at the bottom of the container. 2⁄3 is an arbitrary amount to remove, just to avoid disturbing (and accidentally removing) any of the solids at the bottom. The solids will be black at first, but with subsequent naphtha washes, it will eventually go light green and hopefully white.
This is the Salvinorin-A.
So by the end of the whole process u should be left with relatively light green liquid or relatively light green solids?
Light green solids.
Here’s a couple of pictures of what I’m talking about:
Third Wash
Seventh Wash
I might make my own pics if I ever do this again, but they should suffice
Hi, This is really good method. but I do have a question on the picture. How come on the third wash, the black liquid is on top and on the seventh wash, the black liquid is on the bottom? What should I remove, the black stuff or the green stuff? thanks
Eddie
i hope someone resoponds quick.
how high of heat do i cook the salvia at in the pan?
Ed: The liquid goes from dark green to light green because each wash removes some green waxy crap from the extract. The solid goes from green to white with more washes. It’s the solid stuff in the bottom you need to keep.
Anthony: You don’t need to heat it at all. A saucepan is just a convenient size.
okay thank you. so when i wash out the napatha i just can get ride of it cause it dosent have any extract in it? and does it have to be pure napatha? cause my lighter fluid only contains it? The solids in the bottom of the napatha contaior are the salvia right? so i keep them? if i keep purifying it does it get stronger?
Maybe you could read it again or utilize Google to answer these sloppy questions.. took me approximately 3.4 seconds.
Achieved near white extraction first time.
peace.
Manohman: You’re my new favourite blog commenter.
wow. manohman your kinda bitchy! whatever no worries. sending goodvibes your way and maybe i can cure your rudeness.
Can u use some other Solvents?
Like spiritus? 95%…
Which are the safest methods to use from solvents?
And do u have to use naphta? or is there something safer?
Just to add, why I’m looking for some extra details about the solvents… They are dangerous if you consumpt them or inhail, so u have to be 100% sure there none in the salvia left so u can’t inhale the… there’s my question about how to be sure or are there some other methods or alkochols.
Thank you.
According to wikipedia ethanol is also a good solvent for salvinorinA. Using take 95% ethanol and make a tincture? Is it usable in this form or will I get side effects from using it with alcohol? Would evaporation produce a residure or at least high concentration, i,e, a usable alternative to the above method?
i’d just like to say, this is very clear and precise
i’ve yet to grow my salvia divinorum plants but once i have done, i’m sure i’ll use this method of extraction ;D
i tried 60x last week and i have to say… its pretty insane
at first i felt like i was in a movie then i got the giggles and everything started flashing, time felt like it had slowed down, i love this stuff xD
manohman you have a point, with questions like these maybe they should read with there eyes open or better yet not be working with flammable liquids . Good luck thank God for firemen!
10g is for the extract and 90g is for the extraction process itself right? In the purification stage, would you not need to add more than 50ml of naphtha? As I dont think 50ml is going to cover 90g of salvia leaves.
Sup easy to understand video on how to do this
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4746493190031137237#
Do u think if u took the extract after purifying it with the lighter fluid and soaked salvia seeds in it… It would make new salvia plant already 10x stronger??
Alsooo.. After u get the purified extract from washing why do u have to put the solvent (alcohol) back with it when u put it on the 10g of leaves? Why not just the extractt?
Sry for the questions just alil confused. Thanx in advance!
The your seed theory to make a 10x plant wouldnt work. Salvinorin A and B are found in the leaves of the plant, not the seed.
If you smoked the 10x extract without the purification process it would produce too harsh a smoke.
The purification process reduces the harshness. If you want to create extract without the purification then the maximum ‘x’ you can get without producing a harsh smoke is 5-6x.
Hope this helped
Doug
Does this same thing work with the herb “Damiana Leaf”? I have looked all over for tips on how to extract “Damiana” and cannot find anything, I was just wondering if this method was universal for herbs/leaves, or if it works only for the Salvinorin chemical. Thanks –S
I am not sure if it works for Damiana. However when it comes to extractions people either try water (used for extracting lsa in morning glory and HBW seeds) or alcohol (again for seeds or psylobin) or a solvent (as is the case here for salvia leaves). If you have enough Damiana leaves to spare then you might want to try serperate extractions using alcohol,water,and a solvent such as acetone.
Your best bet is with acetone or another solvent.
Hope this helped
Doug
confused on how to make stronger extracts
Hello hope your all ok,just a small question,what type of solvent is one tou use with salvia?.
Does it make a difference whether you use acetone or IPA.? IPA is a lot cheaper but will it cause lower yield than acetone? I don’t mind waiting the extra time for the IPA so that isn’t a factor
Can this be done with Marijuana? I have cancer and am prescribed marijuana as part of my treatment.
yes this can be done with marijanna. So I figured out it is just like a ratio to tell how strong your extract is. so if you put less leafs back into the pure salvia you can make stronger extracts. like instead of putting 10 g of leaves back into the 90 g of extract you could put like 1 g back in and make a stronger extract.
i have used this method for THC extraction and during the drying time i dont wait i light the acetone on fire as long as it is in a pyrex dish the glass wont break,its alot faster and i find the end result less harsh then when i air dried it. the fire is not whats gonna hurt you, you being stupid with the fire is what will hurt you.so try at your own risk.
So if its so easy to make this, how about i offer you $25 for the ten grams you make?
So as Brian before me asked the question…in the ‘fortification’ step how do we know that the extract will only stick to the leaves, and not be wasted on the walls or at the bottom of the saucepan, after the evaporation?
Ok so I got the leafs powdered and in the saucepan , I get everything else BUT why use acetone? Or How do I keep acetone from evaporating before the 8 hour wait on the directions in the second step much less the 3 and 4 because it sounds and looks as if it needs to stay liquified the whole process? Pls help As to how to use acetone without it evaporating and thank you
It’s been about 20 min with the acetone in the saucepan it’s holding up well but I know acetone has a tendency to evaporate
i hope someone answers quick.
where can i find naphtha?
where can i get some naphtha in the uk? the ‘swan’ lighter fluid i have contains petroleum distillate,nos.I have done a search but cant find it.
DO you need both Propane Based Solvent and Naphtha? i can get 99% isopropyl alcohol no problem its just the Naphtha
i have a question, if you wash it less will it make it stronger, an another, if u use less nephtha an more leaf does it make it stronger?
Zippo brand fluid is very refined and contains naphtha