Old snuff recipes

volunge

This is a very simple recipe of Peterburgian snuff, which was made in Poland (Union factory, Warsaw) in the second half of the 19th century. It was the most popular snuff among those produced by Union.

"Add 15% of wood ash, 10% of potash, 7% of salt, 2% of fragrant meleot herb to the dust of the very best mahorka; after mixing and sieving it properly, add drops of fragrant bergamot oil, then package it up".

Meleot - Melilotus officinalis (yellow sweet clover), mahorka - Nicotiana rustica.

Though most old Russian varieties of rustica didn't bear mindblowing amounts of nicotine, it was (and still is) considerably stronger than regular tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum).

Strangely, water is not mentioned in this recipe. If anyone would like to recreate this snuff, I recommend using water instead of ash, which contains mostly potash after all, whereas the originally indicated amount of potash (10%) alone is more than sufficient for freebasing the nicotine. Potash can be substituted with 8 % of sodium carbonate (anhydrous) for the same effect. Sweet clover contains coumarin, so it can be substituted with tonka beans, adding them to taste into the finished snuff.

Here's a link to the blog in Russian where I found this recipe: https://masterok.livejournal.com/3369277.html

A very interesting article about snuff taking in Russia there with a reference to another, more sophisticated old recipe of stove-fermented Rose snuff, which I will hopefully translate and post in this thread someday.

I'll try to find out the original source of Peterburgian snuff recipe. Rose snuff recipe is disclosed in the book "Moskva i moskvichi" ("Moscow and Muscovites") by V. A. Gilyarovskij (1926, Moscow), here's a link to the snuff-dedicated chapter: http://www.gilyarovsky.ru/index.php/2010-09-11-15-43-53/2010-09-11-20-14-03

P. S. 10% of potash or sodium carbonate with 15-20% moisture makes a strong snuff even with ordinary tobacco. Expect ammonia party! :)

bob

interesting

tobaccobob

Excellent post!

Congratulations my friend!very interesting indeed.

Everybody who knows of an old recipe should post it here!

:-bd

volunge

I'm happy to share a find! I hope it will inspire and encourage some folks to try their hand at snuff making.

Found another one yesterday. It's Zolotaya Rybka nyuhatel'naya mahorka - Goldfish rustica snuff, produced in Soviet Russia in the 1960's:

"Goldfish -
highest quality nasal rustica snuff. Fine dust-like grind, mentholated. Nicotine
content 1.8%, moisture content 25%. Contains (in % by weight) potash 1.5,
ammonia 15, mint oil (containing 50% menthol) 0.5 to increase the strength and
create a cooling sensation. Packed in 50 g paper packages with inner parchment paper
and foil lining."

Source: http://www.mintorgmuseum.ru/vocabulary/445/

NB! No ammonia concentration indicated for this Goldfish.
Reproducers,
be careful! I would advice using 10% ammonia water. Consider adding 10 parts of water to achieve the 25% moisture, too.

volunge

Regarding ammonia content in Goldfish snuff, 15 parts of ammonia is a gross blunder. I tried adding such amount of 10% ammonia water to some stale snuff and binned the concoction immediately after a single pinch. It seems there's a decimal point missing - should be 1.5%, not 15. I tried 3% previously and found it all-right.

1.5-3% meets the requirements of old Soviet snuff manufacture regulatory document VTU 256-56, which defined a total amount of alkalizers (potash, sodium carbonate and 25% ammonia water) up to 3%.

Cobguy

@volunge, I just did the same thing with slaked lime.  I could have sworn I'd read that up to 10% by weight was ok to use.  It was WAY too much ammonia!  However, after a couple of weeks in the jar, I dumped it out into a large bowl and set it outdoors in the breeze.  About two hours later, I could actually sniff the bowl without it "knocking me out".  LOL

volunge

@Cobguy, White Elephant contains 6.39 g of... calcium (sic!) per 100 g of snuff:

http://www.41photosnuff.in/certifiacte.php

If calcium stands for slaked lime, that's almost 6.5% of the stuff in there. I bet moisturized Elephant would emit knocking amounts of ammonia as well.

I would love to play with pH meter someday... You can't go wrong with that device. Here's the link to related discussion: https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/threads/homemade-snus-with-rustica-tobacco-leaf.82566/ , breathtaking! Some interesting diagrams there.

volunge

Morning, friends!

Sharing the latest find - 
Verbesserte Rauch- und Schnupftabak- und Cigarren-Fabrikation.  Leuchs, Johann Carl (Nurnberg, 1846).

It's a German book on tobacco, snuff and cigars fabrication. Scanned book is available here: https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10305199.html

Or you can visit Bavarian State Library :). 

Many famous recipes there. Jump to page 200 for snuff.

snuffmiller

Is a good one. I used a later edition for recipes!

volunge

@snuffmiller Thanks for verifying the source, Jaap! I will search for different edition to make a comparisson. Interesting to explore, how the recipes evolved.

mecompco

This is awesome. Just gearing up to start making my own. Wish Chef Daniels was still around! Good to see others involved as well.

volunge

Many old snuff and snus recipes and other useful information shared in this yahoo group:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Snuff_Grinders_homemade_nasal_snuff

ar47

Hey @volunge quick note: when possible (and convenient) please copy the pertinent quotes from the source material over here. I ask that because when reading old snuff threads so many of the links are no longer accessible. Thinking of myself when I come back to this thread years from now when I finally start making my own snuffs :)

volunge

@ar47 Unfortunately, scanned Russian and German books are in .pdf and .jpeg formats, and it's impossible to do OCR conversion to editable text format due to old fonts (OCR would allow basic machine translation). Learning languages can be fun, but these two sources are probably the worst way to do that. While old Russian doesn't differ much from modern (just some obsolete letters they don't use anymore), Gothic font might be a pain. Anyway, I'll drop links for downloading these files once I have them uploaded somewhere. Or even transcribe them using modern fonts, but it's too time consuming for me at the moment.

Some dead links can be resurrected with a help of Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/web/

mrmanos

Interesting indeed! I bought a paper package of Russian snuff on eBay 10 years ago. It was really horrible! I like the old recipes of de kralingse. I still have many 100 gram tubs in my freezer but I like to take modern snuff just as much. I wish we could still get snuff from the windmills!

volunge

@mrmanos, if you still have that old Russian rustica snuff, try restoring its original moisture by adding 25% of water. Or - even better - 22% of water and 3% of ammonia water (of 10% concentration). It makes day and night difference! Regrind with spoon before proceeding, add liquids, mix properly, let it sit overnight, mix again and sift through any tea strainer. Work with small amount of snuff, add 2.2 ml of water and 0.3 ml of ammonia water to 7.5 g of snuff.

If you don't want to mess with ammonia water, skip it. Just add 2.5 ml of water.

Fresh stuff was released with 25% of moisture.

Which one did you get, the regular plain one, or the peppermint version?

tobaccobob

Didn't know where to post this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4i32cGbxlw

is this the St.Omer 1 mr @snuffmiller ?

snuffmiller

@tobaccobob: No Sir! This picture was made after I left the windmills. I don't know what the result  was of this "exercise" but I doubt it resulted in any special snuff at all.

Jaap Bes.

volunge

@tobaccobob, thanks for sharing the link!

rostanf

@volunge here's the man himself I believe @snuffmiller.

snuffmiller

@rostanf: Yes, I can recognise myself.

Jaap Bes.

volunge

Here's a link to snuff recipes thread in Polish snuff forum:

http://www.top25snuff.com/forum/41-produkcja-tabaki/137-przepisy-tabaczne.html

Just one of the recipes, originally posted there by top25snuff.com member Calculator:

"The following recipe is a great instruction for producing Scotch snuff:

16 pounds of potassium carbonate,
5 pounds of ammonium chloride,
4 pounds of salt,
100 pounds of smalls and stalks

Dissolve the first three ingredients in approx. 20 pounds of warm water, then pour onto the stems (finely cut) and smalls. The whole mixture must stand for 10-14 days until it is warm enough. Before it is ground, set it aside to dry. If it is to be scented, the essence of bergamot or lemon or Tonka beans will give it the right aroma."

Rough expression in % (mass fractions of Scotch snuff components):

Tobacco 69 %
Water 14 %
Potash 11 %
Ammonium chloride (salmiak) 3 %
Salt 3 %

snuffmiller

The best way is to disolve potassium carbonate and ammonium chloride seperately and not one after another in the same volume of water, cause that gives a lot of foaming!

volunge

@snuffmiller, thank you for the spot-on elaboration!

volunge

Two rappee recipes:

https://snuffhouse.com/discussion/12209/what-is-your-favorite-rappee-snuff (@rostanf's post); the function of logwood, used with iron sulphate in the last formula, is to dye the snuff black.

Best Parisian Rappee

Tobacco bill:
50 parts aromatic Domingo leaves
30 parts aromatic East Indian leaves
20 parts flour of thick Havana leaves

For carottes, use 20 parts Havana leaves instead of flour.

Sauce:

Powdered cream of tartar ("wine stone") - 8 parts (can be substituted with 8 parts potash)

Medoc wine - 6 parts

Water - 25-30 parts

Mix the cream of tartar (or potash) with wine and water and work
this sauce into tobacco.

When "fermentation" is over, mix the snuff with finely ground 15 g crystalline sodium carbonate*, using sieve.

* crystalline sodium carbonate - a weaker decahydrate form of sodium carbonate - Na2CO3 * 10H20, or natron - naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate and around 17% sodium bicarbonate along with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate); use smaller amount - 12.5 g, if you have sodium carbonate moohydrate - Na2CO3 * H2O, and even smaller amount - 6 g, if you have anhydrous sodium carbonate.

Dunkirk's Fine St. Omer Rappee calls for 50 parts thick Domingo lamina, 30 parts aromatic Virginia lamina, 20 parts Carolina, mixed with the following sauce: 8-9 g cream of tartar (or potash), 8-9 g Burgundy wine (or any other similar wine), 15 g crystalline sodium carbonate* (see above), 25-30 g water. Mix the cream of tartar (or potash) with wine and water and work this sauce into 100 g tobacco flour. When "fermentation" is over, mix the snuff with finely ground carbonate, using sieve.

volunge

ENFIYE - Turkish nasal snuff



https://i.postimg.cc/QC7FdTWk/ENFIYE-Turkish-Snuff-made-by-TEKEL.jpg

This interesting information about Turkish snuff comes from Facebook Nasal Snuff Takers group wall, originally posted by a group member Yunus.

"Enfiye had been the snuff produced by Tekel, the Turkish tobacco monopoly. Medium-grind and medium-moist, it was strong in nicotine, fragrant and naturally sweet.

Enfiye was discontinued by early 1990s (exact date unknown). Its production in 1991 was around 100 kg.

Enfiye is not a brand name but an Arabic loanword meaning ‘nasal’ (cognate with neffa). In Turkish, it is the most common term to refer to snuff, as well as non-tobacco sternutatory powders.

Tobacco base (demi-gros):

- 6 parts of sun-cured Hasankeyf rustica;

- 3 parts of high-nicotine and high-sugar Turkish tobaccos (any of Gurs, Alexandretta, Bahce or Trebizond varieties or any combination thereof);(1) and

- 1 part of tombac midribs.(2)

Instructions:

- Weigh the tobacco base and place in a metal basin.

- Add water (half of the weight) and mix thoroughly.

- After absorbing the moisture, sift.

- Repeat with a sieve of fine mesh.

- Fill in the cask (3) and ferment for 30 days.

- Empty the cask and check its content in a metal basin. At any olfactory sign of deterioration, sift it entirely.

- Transfer to drums and further ferment for 10 days.

- Remove from the drums, weigh and place in a metal basin.

- Mix in a fresh batch of the tobacco base (10% of the weight).

- Add sodium bicarbonate (1% of the weight) and mix thoroughly.

- Alkalinise in drums for 30 days.

- Remove from the drums, weigh and place in a metal basin.

- Add powdered cassia, cloves, caraway, sodium chloride and ammonium chloride [unspecified quantities] and mix thoroughly.

- Arrange in thin lines.

- Sprinkle bergamot oil and violet oil [unspecified quantities].

- Cover the basin and leave for good absorption.

- Mature for 30 days in smaller drums.

- Distribute to nylon pouches (50 grams each), seal and place in cardboard boxes.

(1) Of the listed, only Gurs (also spelled Xurs or Gurs) is still grown in its namesake valley. Nevertheless, Bahce's heirloom Celikhan is also extant.

(2) These had been leftovers from Tekel's plain hookah tobacco (tombeki) production, which was continued until 2000s.

(3) The standard material for casks and drums at Tekel was the Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto). The large cask at the Cibali factory (Istanbul) had a capacity of 200 kg."

The preface and footnotes are by Yunus.

Hloridison

@volunge that sounds very very tasty

volunge

@Hloridison, indeed. 

Here's a formula for Russian Snuff.

Source: http://www.tabakanbau.de/de/poolinfo.php?id=8374 .

Russian Snuff (Russischer Schnupftabak)

Tobacco: 60% Nicotiana rustica, 20% Oriental (sun-cured), 20% Dark air-cured.

Ingredients for 1 kg tobacco flour:

Salt 30 g
Soda 20 g
Peppermint leaves 55 g
Caraway oil 0.7 g
Marjoram oil 0.15 g
Water 280 ml

Formula in %:

Tobacco  72%
Water 20%
Peppermint  4%
Salt 2%
Soda 1.5%
Caraway oil 0.05%
Marjoram oil 0.01%

This snuff probably was similar to Russischer Augentabak (Russian Eye Snuff), made by Bernard. At least flavour-wise; not sure, if Bernard used rustica tobacco for their Russian snuff, but it also had a peppermint flavour. A review of Bernard Russischer Augentabak: http://www.smokeless-forum.de/3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1907



Image source: https://picclick.de/Alte-Schnupftabak-Dose-Gebr-Bernard-Regensburg-Russischer-392056765287.html