Made a batch and random tins are coming up with surface chrystals, not sure if its too much moisture or too much menthol, I might have to break out my chemistry books to figure out how to prevent this. Anyone in the know have any suggestions?

sorry about the bad picture, i am at work and its my phone’s camera

Is this homemade snuff? If so, what ingredients did you put into it? It’s always easier to speculate given a multiple choice question. I think that the most common cause of ‘crystals’ in commercial snuff is due to the salty water evaporating, leaving the salt crystals behind. There may be other chemical reactions with the tins, etc, but I think that the salt water evaporation happens most frequently. Maybe the same could happen with menthol, but I’ve never worked with menthol crystals before, so I can’t say for sure.

using stainless steel tins, using menthol chrystals disolved in alchohol, the only other ingredients used was spearmint oil and peppermint oil.

Do the peppermint and spearmint oils use the same base solvent ? Then the alcohol ? Reaction or crystal garden, Never mix an acid and base ? Unless

same manufacturer so i would assume it would be the same, perhaps adding a drop of xanthum gum to the mix to prevent chrystalization. i really loved the batch until i opened a tin today, took about 2-3 weeks before i noticed the problem

@Cros This is the website I buy my essential oils from. They also have the MSDS data that give you the info about how much and what to dissolve each product in. They sell menthol crystals and all the good stuff you might use to make snuff. Maybe this will be helpful to you. They also have a forum where their science guys will answer technical questions for you. Great prices and excellent products BTW. http://www.newdirectionsaromatics.com/essential-oils-essential-oils-ac-c-9\\_25.html?gclid=CK7ylq7O0bICFYFo4AodNkYAuQ

@bigdaddysnuff - that’s quite an impressive selection! Cheers for the link!

@BigDaddySnuff I used Nielson-Massey which is definatly good quality and already safe for consumption. Thanks for the info!