Hello there,

since may 2019 i use Salvia 20x frequently in very small doses.
Lately i ordered some and got very dark, almost black colored extract.
Beforehand i always got green extract, which looked like the normal leaf color.
I really wanted to know what happened to the plant matter and did some research.
This is the only information i found:

"The darker the extract, the stronger it usually is. This is because the stronger extracts contain more salvia plant material which contains salvinorin A and plant fats. These fats cause the extract to have a blacker color.
This is only the case with crude extracts, which are extracts made by using salvia plant material. Standardized extracts are made by using pure salvinorin A, which means their color doesn't change."

So i was very sure that i got some crude extract and exchanged the product.
Then i ordered somewhere else and the same phenomenon occured.
Now i'm a bit confused, because both sellers insist that it's standardized extract.
One of them answered:
"We've been in business since 1998 and our first products were actually salvia leaves and extracts. We also have a wholesale store that supplies dozens of other (web)shops and for all the hundreds of kilograms we sold over the years we never received a single complaint about the quality."

This sounds good, but i asked 3 times why it is almost black then?
The third time he said he doesn't want to argue anymore, but i only wanted to know why this happens and he couldn't answer, which made me a bit sceptical.
I don't know if it's standardized or not, but the info i found says it couldn't be.
Would be very helpful if anyone can answer this:

IS IT'S POSSIBLE FOR STANDARDIZED EXTRACT TO LOSE IT'S NATURAL COLOR TURNING ALMOST BLACK?
WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN, IF IT'S NOT CHLOROPHYL AND PLANT FATS?

Last year I got hold of a gram of 20x extract. It was black in color. Small weighed doses had little effect. I did finally have a breakthru experience with this stuff but had to pack a bongfull. What a wild ride that was holy shit!!!

Anyway, yeah. My salvia extract was black.

I know black extracts are in circulation
and i know they're labled as "standardized".

But the question is: Are they really standardized, if they loose their natural color?
I need to figure it out, because non-standardized extracts should be less healthy.

I wrote a dozen of emails to wholesale companies and resellers
and nobody knows why some "standardized" extracts are black.
The weirdest thing about this is: nobody seems to care.
This is a harm reduction issue and people like me,
who use salvia as a medicine really do care about it.
Aren't there any people who know about the chemical process of extracting salvia?
You probably could explain why extract may be black even if it's standardized.
OR it could never be standardized if it's black.
Actually it seems like a simple question and i'm sure someone has to know why.
Hopefully we can fill this gap here.

You're right. A real "standardized" extract has the color of the crushed leaves (the alcoholic solution with pure salvinorin has no color), a "crude" extract is most of the time brown or black ..Every crude extract I had made had this color.

If it concerns you that much, make your own extract. There is salvinorin extraction info here on Nexus.

I've talked to different trustworthy vendors, who all labled their extracts as "standardized".
Most of the extracts were very dark and a few were green.
I'm beginning to have doubts that standardized extracts have to be green.

Then someone wrote me this:

"The color of the final product results from differences within the production.
When any fresh plant material is being dried at the air with constant airflow it'll get a bit pale but stay green overall.
A darker color occurs when the plant material is not fully dried out at the fresh air but some left humidity being used for fermentation of the plant material. Fermentation is a widely used process to increase Flavors and potency of active ingredients in plant material. This is being done with Tea, Coffee, Beer, Wine, Vodka, Cannabis and countless more products.
​
During the fermentation itself the plant material is being locked in a airtight container or jar with a certain amount of leftover humidity within the material. *(humidity level and time vary depending on the product) The material is only being exposed to fresh air for short moments to avoid mold. That's a so called FAE = Fresh Air Exchange.
​
Overall during the fermentation, the active ingredients, Flavonoids, etc. are starting to break down in their chemical structure due to the activity of enzymes within the plant material.
When the Chlorophyll breaks down it changes it's color like leaves on the trees in autumn."

I don't know if this is a smart way of production, because it remains a bit wet, but could be the right explanation, why it looks like that.

Thanks, maybe i'll give it a try sometime.

Dark black is most likely just concentrated green chlorophyll and maybe some other plant material, which is co-extracted together with salvinorin during the extraction.

Maybe I am wrong, but you seem focused on salvinorin, so extract full of other plant staff is not what you want.
On the other hand, there are some speculations that such extract is better due to improved bioavailability.

I agree with doubledog, the green stuff is just concentrated salvia plant stuff.

As I understand standardized extracts, they have standard % of the actives (or more crudely sometimes a simple multiplier: plant mass to extract mass ratio).

Since only part of the standardized extract is the active product, the rest can be any number of things depending on processing. Like doubledog said, if black/green it is probably concentrated chlorophyll among other stuff.

What is your goal, do you want to have pure product? A super concentrated green product?

You may be able to make a cleaner more concentrated powder by dissolving the extract in acetone and letting it rest in the freezer for a few days. Decant what settles and evaporate the acetone to recover a cleaner more concentrated product (mass ratio would be a new multiplier).

If you want to get salvinorin xtals, wash the acetone evaporate with Naphtha, dissolve it in boiling IPA (no open flame), decant off what doesn't dissolve.l, add two volumes of Naphtha and set in the freezer, white xtals should form that can be rinsed with freezing IPA if needed.

Keep everything, if something doesn't work the crude product will be somewhere.

1mg of salvinorin is a high dose - be warned.

But what about all these seemingly trustworthy vendors, who label their extracts as standardized?
90% of these extracts are almost black.
It would mean that 90% of these vendors are fooling everyone.
It could be the case, but i doubt it.
Maybe the info above is accurate and some manufacturers ferment their extracts?

As an example...i received very dark extract, and this is what they write on their website:

"The Salvia 20X Extract contains 72mg of pure salvinorin-A per gram of extract which is extracted from the plant and then redeposited back onto dried leaves. Our skilled chemists use a standardized method, which costs a little more than non-standardized methods, but means you will find no extra plant matter which can be harmful to your lungs."

Would be pretty brazen to write something like that and sell crude extract.

Dark green or black extract still could be standardized, if pure salvinorin was added.

Let's assume raw leaf has ~3.5mg/g of salvinorin (0.35%).

Then, any extract with 70mg/g of salvinorin is standardized to 20X, no matter what color it has. It could be neon pink, hot orange, etc: as long as it is from the plant and has 70mg/g of salvinorin it can be labeled standardized to 20X.

That's how I think about it.

Right, as long as you'd know that it's really 70mg/g it would be fine.
But the question is: How do you know?
Since Salvinorin-A is colorless, standardized extracts should be green (this is what approx. 80% of people i asked say).
Unless the explanation about the fermentation is accurate. Then it could be dark as well.
(But i think i wouldn't smoke pink extract though)

Another thing: I saw 20x as 40mg/g | 50mg/g | 72mg/g | 80mg/g
To make the confusion about these extracts a bit more perfect

Second link in this post gives a useful perspective, particularly Chapter 2, pp.68-69.

IMO the blackish tar sounds like a bunch of chlorophyll, oils and whatever. Some of this may be desirable salvia terpenoids but much of it will in effect be filler, which is perhaps both necessary and desirable given the potency of salvinorin A.

Ice-cold acetone on whole leaves yields the cleanest extract. True standardization would be achieved by isolating crystalline salvinorin A from the initial extraction solution, redissolving it to a known concentration, and evaporating that onto a known amount of a suitable substrate such as some of the spent leaves from the extraction, although much of the salvinorin A then ends up inside the leaf instead of on the outside where it started out. Maybe fermented leaf material traps the salvinorin to a lesser degree as the cellulose matrix has been broken down.

Now that you have this stuff you'll have to work out the best way of using it.

I think color is meaningless when judging if it is 20X or not, even at 20x, salvinorin is only 7% of the material, the rest of the material can have different color depending on the process used.

To know you would need to (for example) isolate salvinorin crystals like DWZ said and weight them. There are a couple ways to do this at home (check out gibrans thread and the nexus wiki). There are other ways with analytical equipment and a standard reference, but that is out of reach for most of us.

Once again, looking at the color to determine if the extract is indeed ~7% salvinorin is not meaningful in my opinion.

The wide range given for 20X makes sense. There is plant and extraction variability. I think you need the crystals to dose exactly (e.g. dissolved in acetone and dosed drop wise on an e-mesh - see this DMT nexus salvia wiki entry). Even then, 20% of the crystals are estimated to be inactive salvinorin B, so there is still a range/uncertainty.

@downwardsfromzero

Thanks for the link, i was looking for something like that.

@Loveall

You're totally right, but i wasn't worried about the potency, more about my health. I thought there could be more solvent residues (or extra plant matter), which could be harmful.

Now that i tested the black extract a bit, this is what i noticed:
The black one scratches the lungs, while the green one doesn't.

I noticed the black one is full of small shining crystals.
I really hope they're not solvent residues.
Not a good setting, if you suspect poison inside the product.

Again: Trutsworthy vendor says highest quality, but who really knows.

Can someone explain what these crystals are?

While we could be hopeful and think that they're salvinorin A, that would not be a safe assumption. Salvinorin would more likely occur as an oil in these circumstances. My best guess is something like calcium oxalate or another alkaline earth salt of an organic acid like magnesium phytate. Third guess is silica, then magnesium ammonium phosphate. This is all just informed speculation and should only serve as pointers towards methods of analysis. The first thing to determine is what, if anything these crystals might dissolve in.

They will not be solvent, which would again be occurring as an oil.

Thank you downwardsfromzero!