Hi all,

Looking to make a salvia tincture in a month or so once i've collected enough leaves.

Just want to know what strength of alcohol is really required to hold the salvinorin.

https://erowid.org/plant...salvia_extraction4.shtml

Reading the tek above it says 190 proof is best, but he's used 151 also, but I can't find grain alcohol anywhere. Could be illegal to sell in NZ? I'm not sure.

But I can buy Absithne up to 89%, it's just expensive lol.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? will Absinthe still hold plenty of salvinorin?

It's alot higher than 151 proof so i'm assuming all good, I'd just like to make it as strong as possible so that I don't need to burn my mouth too much.

Cheers.

You could looking into buying Korn (liquor) because the Absinthe contains more than just alcohol as active ingredient. Thujone is also contained in it which wont go good with salvia.

You could also look into buying or making a small distillery and then simply buying cheap vodka to distill.

You could also go ahead and buy acetone. Then do the whole extraction and then dump the extract into vodka which will be cheaper overall and also food save if the acetone doesnt contain any bittermakers in solid form.

Balkan 176 vodka is 88% abv, it is what I intend to use for exactly the same thing, it's not exactly cheap, but should be a good choice for tincture, I am not sure on the availability in your area.

If you do make a tincture please report back on it, I would be interested to hear how it works out.

Thanks for the replies. The amount of thujone is so small i didn't think it would be a problem? there's also fennel and anise and stuff i guess the more ingredients the less room for salvia but i thought they'd make up less than 1% or so total volume?

I searched for Balkan vodka but no luck. Highest strength vodka i can find here is 50% abv, which isn't strong enough. Could be there's a legal requirement.

I thought about a home still, I may give it a go, or i'll try find someone to do it for me.

Cheers.

LSD is active in 1/100000 g the blotter is less than 00.1% LSD but it can still mes you up. Just because its only 1% doesnt mean its not dangerous. Its highly damaging to the liver so its heavily restricted. They can cause seizures and even hallucinations on their own so you better leave them out. They are active at a 0.01mg ranges ,in germany the highest limit for thujones is 35 mg/kg in alcohol so you can be sure that even a few drops of your extract will yield an active dose of thujones. Especially if you evap most of the alcohol off. The thujone will crash out just like the salvioritin A because both a highly insoluable in water but highly soluable in alcohol

Look up Bacardi 151 a rum with 75% alcohol.

Ok I see where the confusion lies. I'm not evaping the drinking alcohol. It's the liquid I want to suspend the salvinorin in after extract/evap with IPA

Home distilling is legal in NZ! (Or at least it was last time I checked.) Just make your own! Be careful, obviously.

Home harvested leaves, home made solvent. What could be better?

I strongly recommend not distilling alcohol unless you are thoroughly competent.

Yes it's legal here, you can make your own moonshine, it's just illegal to sell.

It does sound kind of fun, I will look into it further!

It will be a month or so before I've collected enough salvia leaves for a decent extract anyway.

You could just go ahead and buy the cheapest wine or vodka depending whats the cheapest per % of alcohol. Just keep temperatures under 80°C and throw away the first few drops and last few drops.

If you make it yourself make sure you use proper brewing yeast and keep air away or else you will create alcohol that will make you go blind.

I'll echo that, careful watching of the still head thermometer is paramount. Distilling whatever (potable!) alcohol you can get your hands on for the best price per unit is an optimal short cut. I'd avoid cider as I've found that to contain tons of methanol!! (It was from Lidl...) A fractionating column is fairly easy to build into your still as well and assists greatly in getting high proof spirit as quickly as possible.

I've noticed the cheap and easy local availability of non-acetone nail polish remover, consisting of mostly ethanol and ethylacetate. Gentle reflux with sodium hydroxide solution and subsequent distillation should make for some pretty pure ethanol...