Say i had a 5 gram tin of wilson toast#22 how much baking soda would i have to add to it to get a real big nic hit
@cmorgan87 extremely little. EXTREMELY LITTLE. and remember, you can always add more but you can’t take any away once it’s mixed in. use a small snuff spoon/pipe tool spoon/tip of a scissor blade and take a tiny tiny scoop (it will look like too little to make any difference). Mix it up (I just close the tin and shake it around for like 30 seconds) and start with a small pinch to ‘test the water’ so to speak. If it seems like not enough, keep adding (although I think you’ll find that the tiny amount you add at first is plenty).
@cmorgan87 At 2% a full 5g tin would take 100 mg (1/10th of a gram). That’s about 1/32nd of a teaspoon.
Ultimately, you raise the amount of free/available nicotine and get a good hit for a minute until your tolerance adjusts. I also worry that this is not good for your nose. Someone once recommended to me the use of baking soda as a natural deodorant, it worked fine but repeated applications made the skin very red and tender.
I figured out the issue I was having with ph. Sorry I didn’t think of this without bugging everyone for info, and thanks for being helpful. I am using flavoring designed for soft drinks. It has acids to give the drink tartness. From what I can gather, the acid in with tobacco kills the nicotine hit due to low ph. Adding sodium bicarbonate to the flavoring soup (water flavor salt and sugar) neutralized the acids. With this change I’m now getting a correct nic hit instead of very little. Thanks again.
Weird science! I mean yes it can help with the uptake, but it is rough on the nose, and it really bastardizes the snuff! And boosting a low natural snuff like a HDT, well, count me out. That is why they make Grunt and Snus. If you chase a nic hit, it will just get frustrating fast. Tolerance to nicotine builds faster than your ability to tolerate the burn. It will end badly! I mean they make Bruton, it is high in nic and ph, and is not very loved, that,s why they call it Brutal. Have fun, be careful, enjoy exploring. But get some NTSU! I like my snuffs for taste and balance. Order some Thouc Lao and grind that into snuff with just a smidgen of Salts, that one kicks. That being said I have a kilo of Y1 Frankenstein tobacco ordered, twice the nicotine and the same sweet Virginia taste. That is going to make the snuff you seek, but I will not have to push the ph to do it justice. All of the rustica goodness without the drip. Now there’s a science experiment I can get behind!
“With this change I’m now getting a correct nic hit instead of very little.” DANG. All this time I haven’t been getting a correct nic hit??? Tradition sucks. And to think all these snuff companies needed to do was add some baking soda… lol
I usually add ph ingredients to chewing tobacco or oral tobacco instead of snuff. I like to use snuff for the flavor and other tobacco’s for the nicotine. Ph additives actually have a nice effect on oral tobacco flavors as long as you don’t use baking soda as it is too salty. It’s fun to experiment though.
I will never add baking powder to snuff again. Like Whalen, I tried it with Rustica. All it did was to make the snuff smell like freshly mowed grass. I’ve made LOTS of snuff (not mixed, MADE the stuff) and baking powder FUBARed a lot of my work. Leave that stuff alone, it was made to go through your mouth, not your nose
Baking soda is good for brushing the ol’ bicuspids, though.
@bart So is snuff from what my Indian friends tell me
Oh wow kodiak has 65+ percent free based nicotine lol that explains the heart palpitations.
I’ll not be messing with NaHCO3 in my snuff!! I realized a long time ago that too much of any chemical at one time is a recipe for destruction. Putting a chemical into your body is one thing. (pacing it). Putting it in faster then your body knows what to do with it is another. Spins, cold sweats, nausea, praying to god to make it stop, swearing that you’ll never do it again. No thanks! That was called high school. Been there , done that, bought the T-shirt, never going back!!
http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/guides/salinenasal.htm Baking soda not for the nose?
has anyone tried sodium carbonate? Im told it can be made by heating baking soda to 400F for 2 hours. I believe this is the same thing as soda ash. I’ve only seen recipes for using it as a solution before drying but was wondering if anyone has used it dry?
Soda ash and salt are the two main snuff making additives for my home made snuff. Playing around with these additives is not recommended by me. There is a limit to how much it can increase the uptake of an EXISTING snuff, maybe a tad, then it just messes up everything, your nose, for example. Yes it takes a little PH adjustment to help with uptake of nicotine from a base RAW tobacco, just a smidge (1 to 2 %), then it increases the nose burn exponentially, as in a hell of a lot. Adding these PH adjusters to a already processed snuff, is “stupid” IMHO. I always use a 1% by weight amount of these in pure water to start processing any raw tobacco into snuff, only then do I consider more adding more. Too much will render the snuff into a caustic experience. Bad move. Adding baking soda to an existing snuff to get an increased amount of nicotine is a good way to ruin some snuff and burn the dickens out of your sinus. If you want to increase the amount of nicotine uptake from a snuff just take another freekin pinch! Its not Rocket Surgery here boys and girls. Sorry but the concept of turbo charging snuff with PH additives is juvenile.
@Gsnuff sodium carbonate made in this way is unstable and will not last very long without reabsorbing carbon atoms and reverting back to a bicarbonate. Using it dry no problem but it does need moisture to create an “active” relationship with tobacco. Whalen, by the way is, completely correct in stating that adding additional alkalizing agents to an already alkalized snuff is foolish.
I’ve never had any luck with dry blending alkalines. Easiest I’ve found would be to make a solution with water, sprinkle (or spray?), blend well, wait for it to dry and work out the clumps. My preference is calcium hydroxide (slaked lime) which is used in snuff from India. A little bit goes a long way. I use 2 teaspoons per pound of pipe tobacco (454 grams). I haven’t tested this ratio with snuffs. I’m guessing something like 1/2 of 1 percent by weight. Overdoing it, just makes it taste bad when smoked, and probably nostril burn when snuffed.
Thanks for all the feedback! @Juxtaposer Sometimes I want the full snuff experience… aroma, taste, a little lift. My favorite is Toque H&Whisky and I wouldnt dream of adding powder to it. Im OK with being juvenile, it not that, I just agree it tastes bad. Other times, it’s 2AM, I still have to hammer out a proposal and I can’t think straight. Thats when I need a spike of nic. Not “another pinch”… a spike that sends me over a threshold and the concentration kicks back in. For this Ill go the full 9-yards (without smoking): Rustica, fine ground, 10% soda ash as solution, and to heck with the taste.
Roasted baking soda will stay in the carbonate form for at least 3 months if it’s kept in a tightly sealed container. Sodium carbonate converts to bicarbonate when added to Swedish snus and it seems reasonable to assume that the same thing happens with other forms of snuff. I’ve used the carbonate in the past, but plain baking soda is potent enough with the tobacco I’m using now.