I was using some year-old Bernards Feinst Schmalzler today and I noticed in the drip that I had what seemed like fine grains of sand in my mouth. Now I live in Florida, and so sand is a constant companion to me, but this stuff has never left my house and I don’t live close to the beach.
Yes, very similar to how planets were formed. Gravity and such, blah. blah. blah. All part of the cursed sneeze box effect. Nothing out of the ordinary.
It may be salvageable. 1) Dump it out in a large tin or plate wide enough to spread it out. Take a butter knife or little snuff tool and chop it up so that all the clumps are broken and it is smooth. If the snuff is still greasy move on to step 3. If it is totally dry go to step 2. 2) Take a tiny, and I mean tiny (like the tip of a knife’s worth), bit of oil (shortening or lard… butter if its all you have, the longer shelf life the better) and mix it into the snuff. You make have to transfer everything to a bowl for mixing. Get it nice and smooth anduniform consistency. 3) Return the snuff to a large tin. A 25g Toque tin or a snus tin will be best. Spread the snuff around evenly. Nest into the center a beer bottle cap or similar, top down. Take an eye dropper of water and fill the cap drop by drop until it is almost full. Put the lid on the snus tin and do not disturb it for a day. 4) The next day check to see how much water has ben absorbed. Remove the cap, stir and chop the snuff and see if its good. If not, repeat step 3. Do not return the snuff to the tap box unless you will use it quickly. A little schmalzer bottle is better.
Thanks for the step-by-step tip, Xander. I’ll give it a try. Would a vegetable or canola cooking oil work OK ?
@Z_2K: I don’t know. Experiment if you don’t mind possibly runing it. I would think you’d need something a bit more viscous. If you are looking for something plant based rather than animal, I would think vegatable shortening would have the better consistency. You could of course use food grade paraffin or some such mineral oil.
@Z_2K : I wouldn’t use any kind of vegetable oil, they all go rancid in the end. Here’ s copypasta from my earlier post: “I, too, found my schmalzler (Poschl Schmalzler A) quite dry, as I had left the container open. I tried water first, but it didn’t really bring back the original fluffiness. I had read here schmalzlers being moistened with butterschmalz (clarified butter) and I happened to have the Indian version, ghee, in the pantry. I mixed a half a teaspoon to approx. 30gr of schmalzler and let it rest for a day or so. The result was very good. It still hasn’t gone rancid in four or five months.” Edit: I must now admit that it didn’t quite bring back the original aroma, but was very much snuffable, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee