Coffeesh0p (http://www.coffeesh0p.

com)

How To Make Salvia

Divinorum Extract
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MAKING HIGH QUALITY
SALVIA EXTRACT AT HOME
Have you ever tried making your own crude Salvia divinorum extract at home,
and wondered why it looks like a black sticky mess thats harsher on your
throat than a porcupine-eating competition? Well, fear not, for this guide will
ensure a quality finished product, rivalling that of store-bought extracts, using
readily available chemicals, everyday kitchen equipment and a few other cheap
bits & pieces.
This procedure will take several days from start to finish, but only requires a
couple of hours of actual work.
The text and pictures throughout this article detail the production of 10g of 10x
extract, so dont worry if what you're doing looks different! You can use the
sliders below to calculate just how much extract youll make depending how
much dried Salvia divinorum leaf you have and the desired strength of the
finished product. Adjusting the sliders will also update the article text in a few
places to provide you with more relevant instructions. The default text is
available as a PDF at the very end and you can also print this off easily to save
you having to refer back to your screen for every step. Before we begin, please
take a moment to adjust the sliders below to your needs:

Contents
What You Need
Materials
Equipment
Making Salvia Extract
Step 1 - Powder The Leaf
Step 2 - Dissolve The Salvinorin-A
Step 3 - Evaporate The Solvent
Step 4 - Purify The Salvinorin-A
Step 5 - Fortify The Leaf
Salvia Divinorum Tincture
Additional Resources

What You Need

All we need for this procedure, apart from your Salvia divinorum leaf, are two
cheap solvents and some cheap glassware. You can substitute the glassware for
anything else made of metal or glass you might have lying around. Everything
required is listed below, along with links to buy them online if you're in the UK
(all links will open in a new tab/window):

Materials
100g dried Salvia divinorum Leaf (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/salvia-

divinorum-leaf/) (4 x 25g bags)

1 litre of pure acetone (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/acetone)
2 bottles of good quality lighter fluid
(http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/lighter-fluid)

Equipment
A coffee grinder (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/coffee-grinder)
Two 600ml beakers (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/600ml-beakers) (or
large drinking glasses)
One or two 250ml beakers (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/250mlbeakers) (or jam jars or small tumblers)
Large glass roasting dish (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/glassroasting-dish)
A few cheap pipettes (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/pipettes)
A test tube (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/out/test-tubes) and a boiling
tube (or any other tall, narrow containers you can find)

Making Salvia Extract

Step 1 - Powder The Leaf
SUMMAR Y

Set aside 10g of leaf and powder the remaining 90g with
the coffee grinder.

The first thing to do is weigh out your 100g of Salvia divinorum leaf. From this,
weigh out 10g and set this aside right until the very end. This will be the base
material for the finished product. The remaining 90g needs to be powdered
using your trusty coffee grinder. Its high RPM motor and stainless steel blades
are no match for your dried Salvia leaf. Its worth pointing out that although
the leaves may not instantly grind, youll have to give them a few minutes, but
they WILL powder eventually.
T IP

Dried Salvia leaf naturally crumbles, so you will likely have

whole leaves and stems at the top of your pile, while the
bits that crumble off will work their way to the bottom of
your stash. Crush the leaves in your hands first to create
more crumbs! You may find the stems and other lighter
bits of leaf easier to grind by putting a big pinch of stems
in your grinder first and then taking some crumbly bits
and putting them on top the stems in the grinder. This
makes sure the stems come into better contact with the
blades and speeds the process up.

Fig. 1: 100g Salvia leaf, 1L acetone, coffee grinder & glass tray

Fig. 2: 100g Salvia leaf & coffee grinder

Fig. 3: 10g Salvia leaf was set aside

Fig. 4: Some powdered Salvia leaf

Fig. 5: Some powdered Salvia leaf alongside the rest of the unpowdered leaf. A lot more to go!

Fig. 6: All 90g of Salvia leaf powdered and ready for Step 2

Step 2 - Dissolve The Salvinorin-A

SUMMAR Y

Wash the powdered leaf with plenty of acetone for five

minutes, filter and repeat.
Keep the acetone, discard the leaf. Allow the acetone to
stand for 24 hours in the dark.

Now, we need to get all the Salvinorin-A out of your powdered leaf. Luckily for
us, Salvinorin-A is readily soluble in acetone (approximately 23mg/ml)! Place
your powdered leaf in a container (Ive used a 600ml glass beaker, but a clean
glass jar or similar will do nicely) and pour on enough acetone to cover it.
Make sure to stir the gloopy mixture and add more acetone until all of the
powdered leaf material is soaked. Leave this to stand for five minutes.
The liquid is the part were interested in, so we need to filter this mixture to
separate the acetone from the leaf. The easiest way to do this is to place a
cloth over another container and empty the contents of the first container
into it. Gather up the cloth and give it a squeeze to get most of the excess
acetone out.
Put the container with the acetone in to one side for now, then put the
powdered leaf back into the original container and repeat the process to get
as much Salvinorin-A out of the Salvia leaf as possible. You can now throw
away the damp powdered leaf.
As you can see from the pictures below, the acetone also contains a lot of
small particles that we don't want in the finished thing. These are small
particles of leaf and tannins that went straight through the filter. These are
difficult to remove later on and if we ignore them, we will end up with a worse
quality extract as a result. The best way to get rid of them is to let your
acetone sit for 24 hours in a dark room so all the particles settle at the
bottom. (Salvinorin-A in solution can be destroyed by light, so it is important
to keep your container in the dark while everything settles out!)

Fig. 7: Powdered Salvia leaf is placed in a beaker

Fig. 8: Excess acetone is poured over the powdered leaf, stirred and left to stand for five minutes

Fig. 9: The mixture is poured through a cloth to separate the Salvia leaf from the acetone

Fig. 10: This is the acetone containing the Salvinorin-A immediately after being filtered. Shining a torch on it
reveals a thin red layer of acetone and a big green layer containing the particles we need to get rid of.

Fig. 11: This is the acetone containing the Salvinorin-A after allowing it to stand in the dark for 24 hours. Now
everything has settled to the bottom, only a thin green layer of particles remains.

Step 3 - Evaporate The Solvent

SUMMAR Y

Pour the acetone into a shallow dish and allow the

acetone to evaporate completely in the dark, leaving
behind a waxy, green precipitate.

This step is nice and straightforward. Carefully pour the acetone into a flat
glass tray, being careful not to disturb the sediment. This should now be left in
a dark room (remember, Salvinorin-A in solution is sensitive to light) until it
has fully evaporated.

Fig. 12: The acetone is carefully poured into a large flat tray, while the sediment remains in the beaker

Fig. 13: This is the sediment we dont want left in the beaker

Fig. 14: Topdown view showing the acetone in the tray

T IP

You can gently help the evaporation process by placing a

fan nearby. A gentle breeze provided by two fans taken
from an old computer evaporated all the acetone in about
four hours. Here are a couple of pictures showing the fans
screwed onto a block of wood, wired in parallel via a
terminal block and powered with a 12V 1A DC adaptor:

Fig. 15: Evaporating the acetone with the help of two computer fans

Fig. 16: Two fans are wired in parallel and screwed into a block of wood

Note: Acetone is flammable so you should NOT use a

heat source (eg a hair dryer) to aid evaporation! Use a
simple fan, or nothing at all.

Your acetone will always contain a percentage or two of water. While the
acetone will evaporate off easily, the water will remain for some time. You can
either wait until the water evaporates of pour off the water and discard it.
When the green contents of your shallow dish are totally dry, scrape up as
much as you can with a razor blade or similar, ready for Step 4. This is your
extracted Salvinorin-A and other plant waxes.
This is as far as most people get with their extractions and is the reason why
the end result is a black sticky mess. Thats fine if youre making a weak
extract, but if youre making anything stronger than 5x, it becomes
unsmokable and you will need to purify it further.

Fig. 17: The waxy Salvinorin-A precipitate is now completely dry

Fig. 18: Scraping up the Salvinorin-A with a razor blade. Very sticky!

Step 4 - Purify The Salvinorin-A

SUMMAR Y

Wash the green Salvinorin-A repeatedly with naphtha.

Pour off the final wash and allow any remaining naphtha
to evaporate completely.

Acetone is a powerful solvent; as well as Salvinorin-A, it also dissolves a tonne

of waxy stuff from the leaves that we don't want. In order to purify the
Salvinorin-A, we will need to use another solvent: one that can dissolve plant
waxes easily but leave the Salvinorin-A behind this is where our lighter fluid
comes in! Lighter fluid is basically naphtha (petroleum ether), a great
nonpolar solvent that can dissolve nonpolar waxes with ease, while our polar
Salvinorin-A molecules remain untouched.
Begin this step by placing your waxy Salvinorin-A scrapings into a tall, narrow
container (using a test tube makes this a lot easier). Fill this container with
lighter fluid and shake or stir it for a few seconds. The naphtha will
immediately take on the dark green/red colour (depending on the light) that
the acetone had previously as the waxes are dissolved. Within minutes, a
sediment of Salvinorin-A particles will form on the bottom of your container.
After several hours, most of the Salvinorin-A will have made it to the bottom
of your container. Pipette off most of the liquid, being careful not to disturb
the sediment. Save the liquid in a larger container (it will still contain some

Salvinorin-A that we will reclaim later) and repeat the process by adding fresh
naphtha to the first container.
This washing process should be repeated at least five times to make a high
quality Salvia extract. After five washes, the sediment will still be green even
though npure Salvinorin-A is white. If you continue this washing process
further, you will end up with white Salvinorin-A, however this is not required
you can tell by the colour of the naphtha after each wash that a lot of waxy
gunk has already been removed.

Fig. 19: The impure Salvinorin-A is placed into a test tube

Fig. 20: Lighter fluid label showing that it contains naphtha

Fig. 21: First naphtha wash

Fig. 22: A layer of sediment is visible not long after the first lot of naphtha is added

Fig. 23: When lit from behind, the Salvinorin-A is still visibly suspended in the naphtha. This is why you should
allow several hours between washes, to give enough time for most of the Salvinorin-A to settle to the bottom!

Fig. 24: The second naphtha wash. Already the Salvinorin-A in the bottom of the tube is looking a little lighter.

Fig. 25: During the fourth naphtha wash, the naphtha is starting to look a little cleaner, indicating less and less
impurities in the Salvinorin-A

Fig. 26: The fourth naphtha wash, lit from behind, so you can see how clear its becoming

Fig. 27: A comparison of the sixth naphtha wash and the naphtha saved from previous washes. While the old
naphtha looks red from the plant waxes, the current naphtha wash is practically transparent. Also notice the
layer of Salvinorin-a at the bottom of the old naphtha.

After the final wash has settled, remove most of the naphtha from both
containers and dispose of it. You will now be left with relatively pure
Salvinorin-A in both tubes with a little liquid left on top. Add a little clean
naphtha to both containers, shake them up and pour them both into a wider
third container. Rinse out the previous container with more naphtha if
anything is left behind.
The remaining naphtha needs to be completely evaporated. You can either
let it stand for several hours and let the naphtha evaporate naturally or use a
fan to assist. I used the same fan setup from Step 3 (figures 15 and 16) and

this only took 90 minutes. Again, do NOT use heat to evaporate the naphtha
lighter fluid, is, well ... flammable!

Fig. 28: After the sixth and final wash, almost all of the naphtha was removed from both tubes, leaving behind
purer Salvinorin-A

Fig. 29: The Salvinorin-A and remaining naphtha are decanted into a new container. The old test tubes are
washed out with fresh naphtha to remove any chunks of Salvinorin-A stuck in the test tubes.

Fig. 30: Relatively pure Salvinorin-A is left behind after the remaining naphtha has evaporated

Step 5 - Fortify The Leaf

SUMMAR Y

Redissolve the Salvinorin-A in a small amount of acetone

and drip onto the leaf set aside in Step 1. Mix throroughly.

This final step is where we add the Salvinorin-A weve just purified back onto
the 10g Salvia divinorum leaf we set aside in the first step, creating a fortified
extract with 10x the amount of Salvinorin-A compared to dried leaf alone.
Take your container of dried Salvinorin-A and add just enough acetone to
dissolve everything. You dont need much! Stir the contents of your container
to make sure everything is dissolved, then use a pipette to deposite the green

liquid onto your Salvia leaf, a few drops at a time. Every time you empty a
pipette onto the leaf, give it a good mix to make sure the liquid covers the leaf
material uniformly. Repeat until all the Salvinorin-A acetone solution is gone.
You will probably find that the container that previously held the liquid is still
rather green rather than let this go to waste, add a little bit more clean
acetone to it, then pipette this onto your leaf as before.
Now you simply leave this in the dark for the acetone to completely
evaporate, leaving behind a beautiful, high quality Salvia extract! This took
around an hour with the help of a fan.

Fig. 31: Salvia leaf set aside in Step 1, acetone and Salvinorin-A

Fig. 32: Dissolving Salvinorin-A in a small amount of acetone

Fig. 33: Closeup of Salvinorin-A in acetone solution

Fig. 34: Pipetting Salvinorin-A acetone solution onto Salvia leaf

Fig. 35: Topdown view of wet Salvia extract and empty green container

Fig. 36: Mixing the wet Salvia extract to ensure an even distribution of Salvinorin-A

Fig. 37: Wet Salvia extract after being mixed

Fig. 38: Evaporating acetone from the wet Salvia extract using fans from Step 3

Fig. 39: The final product: 10g of 10x Salvia extract, now completely dry!

Salvia Divinorum Tincture

SUMMAR Y

Instead of Step 5, make a saturated Salvinorin-A solution

with warm pure alcohol.

A tincture is simply a solution of something in alcohol (ethanol). So, all you

need to do to create your own Salvia divinorum tincture is to make a
saturated Salvinorin-A ethanol solution. Here's roughly how it's done:
1. Follow the above procedure up until Step 4, then wash the Salvinorin-A
with more and more naphtha until the sediment after each wash begins
to turn white, then allow the naphtha to evaporate completely.
2. Warm up the highest concentration of ethanol you can get your hands
on in a water bath.
3. Pour a tiny amount of ethanol into another container (also in the water
bath) and add all of your Salvinorin-A.
4. Give it a few minutes to disolve as much as it can, shaking or stirring
occasionally.
5. When no more Salvinorin-A will disolve, add more warm ethanol a few ml
at a time. Eventually, you will have added enough warm ethanol to
disolve all of your Salvinorin-A.
6. Take your solution out of the water bath and allow to cool

Additional Resources

You can click here to print this guide, or click here to download a PDF copy
(http://www.coffeesh0p.com/articles/pdf/how-to-make-salvia-divinorumextract.pdf).
If you have any questions about the extraction procedure, the friendly folks at
Reddit.com/r/Salvia (http://www.reddit.com/r/Salvia/) will be happy to help. If
all the above seems like too much effort, you can buy standardised Salvia
extracts (http://www.coffeesh0p.com/salvia-divinorum/) directly from
Coffeesh0p.com. For general queries, email info@coffeesh0p.com
(mailto:info@coffeesh0p.com) (please note: we we will not be answering
questions about the procedure itself!)
Good luck, have fun & stay safe!

First Published on the 10thth of June, 2014 by John Clarke

Coffeesh0p.com