Note: If you like what you read, consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/snusathome or buying something from the shop - I don't do banner ads, and pop-ups are evil. Snus at Home is possible because of you!
Introduction
I’m going to assume that by reading this, you already have some idea of what Swedish snus is, and are currently a tobacco user looking to save some cash or enter into a new hobby. If that’s the case, welcome! I’ve been making snus for about four years now, and writing seriously on the subject for two of those. If you don’t know what it is, in brief, it’s a pasteurized smokeless tobacco product native to Scandinavia that is traditionally placed under the upper lip. It can technically be purchased outside of Scandinavia, but for a number of reasons, it’s generally easier, more affordable, and more fun to make your own, and all it takes is a little know how and practice.
To give you some sense of difficulty, if you can follow a recipe for lasagna, you can make Swedish snus. It’s not hard, and with some preparation it’s almost impossible to make mistakes. Let’s begin!
Tools
To make Swedish snus, we need tools to process raw tobacco. While there are a couple of different ways to make Swedish snus at home using consumer grade kitchen equipment, I find that the simplest and most consistent method involves an Instant Pot, which is just a fancy pressure cooker controlled by electronics. Any automatic pressure cooker should do, as all of them will have the same basic control scheme that the name brand one does. While the assumption here will be that you own one of these devices (they really are very useful for more than just Swedish snus, and are worth the money), this recipe can be adapted for an ordinary pressure cooker, and notes will be provided for that adaptation.
The other esoteric tools that we’ll need are a silicone kneading bag and two kitchen scales - one for general kitchen use (again, these are very cheap and are useful for far more than just snus, and I recommend that you pick one up if you don’t have one) and one that measures down to a milligram (if you have ever purchased cannabis, you know what this looks like). The kneading bag and the milligram scale are difficult to find at ordinary stores, and you’ll probably need to order them online - and while it’s possible to replace the kneading bag with a ziplock and the milligram scale with the ordinary kitchen scale and a good sense for best guesses, that sucks, and I strongly advise you to buy them. They are what takes your homemade snus from good to perfect.
The tools that we’ll need are:
Instant Pot (or pressure cooker)
Trivet for Instant Pot (or pressure cooker)
Oven-safe cooking vessel that fits on top of the trivet and inside the Instant Pot comfortably (I use a small cake pan; the rule of thumb here is that you’re comfortable with it getting past boiling temperature for many hours at a time, and that it doesn’t touch the walls of the Instant Pot)
Standard blender, coffee grinder, or dedicated tobacco shredder (Your fancy Vita-mix or Ninja is fine, but a cheapo $20 blender is better. No food processors - those are made to chop onions and mash wet foods, not turn dry things into powder)
Mixing bowls and spoons
Kneading Bag
Food-safe storage container (This can be tupperware, a ziplock, a glass jar, or other container that will not react with its contents. Metal containers are cool and all, but are not known for playing nice with salt and moisture, both of which snus has.)
Kitchen Scale
Milligram Scale
Essential Ingredients
Swedish snus, at its core, is made of:
Tobacco
Water
Salt
Alkalizer
Sometimes, flavors are added, which can come in the form of raw ingredients like herbs and spices, or from extracts and oils. Manufacturers will sometimes add sweeteners, texture agents, and preservatives as well, and although this guide will touch upon them as well, they aren’t necessary for homemade snus. Let’s talk about each ingredient in depth, what it does, and what sort of it we can use for snus.
Tobacco
Tobacco is the star of our show here. Without tobacco, there is obviously no snus; but we have to be somewhat choosy about our tobacco selection here, because good tobacco will make good snus, and the incorrect tobacco, or bad tobacco, will make mediocre snus. Luckily, snusmaking is a fairly forgiving process when it comes to raw ingredients, and the raw tobacco that we buy doesn’t have to be top-grade.
Raw, whole-leaf tobacco is what we’re after when we make any tobacco product at home. Traditionally, snus was made from tobacco grown in Sweden, more often than not in the vegetable garden for personal use, right next to the carrots and the onions, and several specific sorts of tobacco were bred to take advantage of Sweden’s relatively short growing season and temperate climate. While tobacco is quick to grow and tolerates nearly all growing environments, it is a demanding plant that will attract pests, and requires daily supervision at a minimum to reach a harvestable state. Furthermore, tobacco requires curing, which is tricky to do at home and assumes that at least the first crop one grows will be sacrificed to experimenting with proper curing location and temperature. Whole leaf tobacco is not expensive, and you can be assured of the quality of both the crop and the curing method used to take it from its gummy green field condition to the rich shades of leather that we’re more accustomed to enjoying. If you live in North America or Europe, you can buy it online on the cheap - wholeleaftobacco.com and leafonly.com are trustworthy choices for the former, and eurotabak.de is apparently an excellent choice for purchases within mainland Europe.
If you live in the rest of the world, or for some reason are shy about buying whole leaf tobacco online, there exists the option to simply use cheap bulk cigarette rolling tobacco. This is usually labeled as “pipe” tobacco to dodge tax laws, and is sold in big ol’ bags between 12 to 16 ounces. Do keep in mind to stay away from anything obviously mentholated, which is sometimes designated as “green”, and be advised that cigarette tobacco has additives and humectants that will not give you the exact same result as raw leaf. Please don’t use actual pipe tobacco - the cheaper stuff, like Captain Black and Sir Walter Raleigh, has way too much flavoring and humectant to make an effective raw ingredient for snus, and the tobaccos used in them have much less nicotine than the real deal. The more expensive stuff should simply be enjoyed as pipe tobacco, and quality pipe tobacco usually has latakia in it, which in my experience makes for a gritty snus with hints of graphite and polyurethane. Do think twice.
Tobacco varies in nicotine content and flavor depending on the cultivar and the curing process. There are as many types of tobacco as there are different types of apples or citrus, and selection can be confusing when browsing for leaf online - however, there are three tobaccos that I recommend all beginners have on hand, as they are not only the types most commonly used by manufacturers but are also incredibly versatile and forgiving.
Air-cured burley is the first of these, and a wonderful snus can be made from just this leaf. Burley leaves are broad, a little longer than the length of an adult man’s forearm, and are typically a uniform dusty brown. The smell of good burley is reminiscent of cocoa powder, old books, and walnuts. Snus made with burley will taste very close to ordinary manufactured snus, and although it tastes great all by itself, it plays very nicely with old world spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, as well as with darker and muskier flavors like vanilla and rose.
Virginia has more or less the same versatility as burley, with a little less nicotine and a brighter flavor. Virginia leaf is smaller than burley, usually thinner, and depending on the curing process can range from a light lemon yellow to an intense autumn red. Good virginia should smell a little like citrus or plain black tea. Snus made with virginia will have a less intense, lighter flavor than snus made with burley, and is good when blended with the latter as a general base. Virginia thrives as a base for snus intended to be flavored with fresh herbs like dill and bergamot, and I have accidentally made snus that smells just like Fruit Loops when adding lemongrass and lavender to a base of virginia.
Rustica tobacco is technically a different species than ordinary tobacco, but is used in exactly the same way as our other two for the purposes of snusmaking. It has more nicotine within it than ordinary tobacco as a general rule, but is also more acidic and requires a little more alkalizer to properly activate (more on that later). Snus made with rustica has a faint dusty citrusy character, and is an excellent addition to either burley and virginia where the intention is either to make a strong snus or a snus where the taste of the flavoring, and not the tobacco, is dominant. Rustica is a natural choice for mint and menthol snus. Because the flavor of rustica, once turned into snus, is fairly innocuous and hides behind the flavor of other tobaccos, it can be useful to add some percentage of rustica to your tobacco flour to bring the nicotine up to standard; virginia snus benefits from this addition.
Other types of tobacco make excellent snus as well. Dark Air Cured leaf (strong, makes a snus with hints of molasses), Cigar leaf (makes a snus that tastes like earthy, nutty, natural tobacco), and Dark Fired leaf (used to make American dip, has a natural smoky character) all make great blending components, but my intention with this guide is to give you a solid foundation into snusmaking, and going forward the assumption should be that you are using burley or virginia, with rustica on hand for further experimentation in the moment. When you have your first few successful batches under your belt, feel free to branch outward and explore the diversity of tobacco.
Water and Salt
With rare exception, the majority of readers will have these at hand in their kitchen in near unlimited quantities with respect to the demands of snusmaking. However, not all water is the same, and not all salt is created equally. It serves us well to go over them both so that our snus can be as good as it can possibly be.
If your water is exceptionally hard, as it so often is in many places Europe and the Midwestern US, you may want to consider buying some water from the store to use in your snus. Purified water, drinking water, and distilled water are basically identical when it comes to the flavor and quality of snus, and so long as you’re buying and using water you’re comfortable with, you shouldn’t worry too much about being choosy and should just pick up whatever’s cheaper - it’s much better than hard water, which will effect the flavor of the snus, often in a negative way when directly compared with snus made with soft water. Water from a home filter is perfect, too.
Iodized salt is technically fine for making snus, but I prefer regular salt with no additives. Too often, salt is not just salt, and includes caking agents on top of supplemented iodine to keep the salt free flowing. Luckily, plain salt is the exact same price as iodized salt (sometimes cheaper) and can be found at any market that sells the altered stuff - usually, it’s marketed as pickling salt. As with many things purchased for your snusmaking practice, pickling salt is useful for far more than just snus, and it has a coarse grind that makes it excellent both finishing foods and pickling vegetables (obviously). Fancy salts, like Himalayan pink salt and flake salt, should be avoided - not because they create an inferior final product, but because their high cost means they are much better enjoyed on the table rather than dissolved into water and tobacco to make snus with.
Alkalizer
The term “alkalizer” can be fairly mysterious at face value, but the term here means any food-safe substance that can increase the pH of any solution which it is dissolved into. The two most common alkalizers used in snusmaking are sodium carbonate (also called soda ash, or washing soda) and potassium carbonate (also sometimes called “potash”, but should not be sought after by this term, as potash is a slightly antiquated term referring to a host of different substances, many not food-safe). Although the two can be used more or less interchangeably in a basic snusmaking recipe, they are different enough to make it worth explaining: sodium carbonate has little flavor on its own, and will leave the snus more or less unchanged in flavor, while potassium carbonate adds a slight soapy flavor that can be desirable in some contexts. Anecdotally, I find potassium carbonate to be both more stable during storage, and it makes a snus that holds its strength for longer if it’s left unused in undesirable locations, like a car’s glove box or a coat pocket gone forgotten for a season. Both can be bought online, but sodium carbonate is found in different forms (in chemistry, called hydrates) with sometimes no information on which you are buying, and decomposes over time. Luckily, it is fairly easy to make at home; simply heat ordinary baking soda in the oven for 200°F (95°C) for an hour. Store this in an airtight container, with a silica gel packet if you have one.
Can you skip the alkalizer? The answer, in all honesty, is no. Tobacco contains nicotine, but the vast majority of the nicotine molecules within any given amount of tobacco are ionized, meaning that they either have one fewer electron or one greater electron than they otherwise should. Ionized nicotine is difficult for the body to absorb, and snus made without some sort of pH adjusting agent would not have very much absorbable nicotine in it at all. By raising the pH, much more of the nicotine is received by the body, and our efforts are not wasted. Traditionally, snus was from the very beginning made with some sort of pH adjusting agent (typically potash obtained by steeping ashes in water, draining off the solution from the solids, and evaporating the excess water in another container), and so if you have ideas whereby through omitting the weird ingredient you are returning snus to a truer, more essential and more natural product, you are being silly. Even pre-Columbian Americans understood the importance of alkalizing smokeless tobacco thousands of years before snus was being made (although they just usually just mixed the ashes in straight).
Other Ingredients
Snus in Scandinavia is, as it always has been, flavored and modified with different agents to produce unique blends that make using snus more exciting not only for the consumer, who benefits from a wide range of different products to delight in and experiment with, but also more exciting for snus manufacturers, who benefit from a wider consumer base by ensuring that there’s a snus out there for every tobacco user. This isn’t something that was intentionally done by machiavellian capitalists trying to get the kids hooked on to candy flavored nicotine; rather, snus flavored with fruits, fragrances, and different herbs and spices merely follows a much longer tradition of exotically scented nasal snuff in Europe, many of which were moistened and used orally before manufactured snus became a real product.
It serves us to go over them in in detail, because flavoring snus is not a uniform process across additives, and requires a little bit of prior knowledge of theory before mistakes are made, and bad snus is had.
Herbs and Spices
In Sweden, and possibly other Scandinavian states, snus is regulated by the same agency responsible for food safety standards. Keeping in theme with this classification, and with the chance to use fresh, quality herbs and spices in our snus, we can both keep alive a tradition of applying culinary technique to snus and and up with a truly delicious product without having to purchase exotic ingredients that will only be used for flavoring and then forgotten about in a drawer somewhere.
As a general rule of thumb, herbs and spices can be added before the cook or after the cook, but I personally prefer adding them before the cook, especially if they’re fresh, and in larger quantities than you think you might otherwise need - the flavors meld better, and green or woody herbs will soften and blacken to uniformity with the tobacco. You can add them after the cook, but the texture may be difficult to deal with, and the taste will not meld quite as well as it could.
For whole herbs, chop them very fine or mash them into a paste with a mortar and pestle, and add two heaping tablespoons (level tablespoons, if they’re mashed) to your uncooked snus mixture (meaning, the ingredients before they go into the pressure cooker). For dry, pre-ground herbs and spices, add a level tablespoon to the batch. These recommendations are placed under the assumption that you’re making snus using 100g of tobacco flour; adjust accordingly if your batch uses more or less than this.
Some herbs and spices I enjoy using are citrus zest, dill, mint, fennel, lavender, rosemary, thyme, cocoa, nutmeg, clove, black pepper, cayenne pepper, lemongrass, juniper, and ginger; so long as they do not include large amounts of sugar or are acidic, they are fair game. For this reason, lemon zest is alright, but lemon juice and honey are off limits: sugar causes tooth decay.
Essential Oils and Flavoring Oils
Perhaps there are some flavors that you either do not have access to, or are too exotic, costly, or unfitting towards a snus’s chemistry to use by themselves in their natural state. Natural herbs and spices, as wholesome as they are, do not cover the full range of flavors that manufactured snus offers, and hardly scratches at the potential that your homemade snus can have.
As a rule of thumb, essential oils (here meaning any extract of any plant part labeled as a food-safe or pure, undiluted with other oils or with ethanol as is the trend for “essential oils” sold for use as home fragrance) and flavoring oils (here meaning any extract or essence of any plant part, or synthetic recreation of the aromatic compounds present in those plant parts, which may be sold diluted with ethanol, oil, or propylene glycol but which is explicitly sold for human consumption) should be added after the snus is fully cooked and has had time to settle (more on this in a later section). For the most part, adding flavors in this manner is safe and an excellent way to both recreate manufactured blends and to experiment with your own unique blends, but it should be done with patience and frequent tasting.
My method is as follows:
Approach the oil with your best judgement. Is the flavor strong? Does it have the tendency to overpower other foods or beverages it is added to? Peppermint oil should be added with a more conservative hand than vanilla extract, for example.
Prepare your workspace. This includes your unflavored snus, a small mixing bowl, two clean spoons, a glass of water, your flavors, and a way of taking permanent notes (your phone is good here).
Measure out a small, easily divisible portion of your cooked snus. 10g of prepared snus for experimenting is what I like to use, as the measurements of added ingredients are easily scaled up.
Place your snus in the mixing bowl, which should be on your milligram scale. Set to tare.
If your oils are in a dropper, add no more than three drops at a time of whichever principal flavor you want your snus to taste like. Is it a mint snus with vanilla undertones? Mint first, and vanilla later.
Every three drops, mix thoroughly, pressing and fluffing the snus as you mix to ensure consistency.
Take a very small portion of the snus, about the size of an orange seed, and place it on your tongue. Mash it around your mouth. Is it too strong? Too weak tasting? Smell the entire sample batch during these moments, too; aroma is the majority of taste.
Adjust accordingly, taking frequent notes and measurements and tastings with every meaningful flavor addition.
Patience here is key - it is always better to end up with an under-flavored snus and think of what it could be while you use it, rather than end up with an over-flavored snus and wish that you had applied a lighter hand during flavoring. Unless you are tasting hundreds of times, or if you are sampling with too large of a pinch at a time, adjustments to your measurements to account for the minute amount of snus lost to the tasting process aren’t necessary.
Good oils to have on hand as a snusmaker are bergamot, peppermint, spearmint, lavender, vanilla, tonka bean, spruce, cedar, and orange. Essential oils should always be preferred to baking extracts or “designer oils” such as those used for vapes, with the exception of vanilla extract, which truly is better when extracted in ethanol.
Sweeteners
Sweeteners are much more commonly found in American dipping tobacco than they are in Swedish snus, and personally, I find sweeteners in snus to be both unnecessary and a little revolting; tobacco has a natural sweetness that is brought out during the snus preparation process, and adding any amount of sweetener overrides this much more pleasant sweetness with one that is unwelcome to the palate.
Nevertheless, I am not foolish enough to think that there will not be people out there that would like sweet snus, and I would never not encourage anyone to experiment with sweetener in their snus at least once. The best one, and the one that is used by manufacturers for dipping tobacco, is saccharine: you probably know this better as the sweetener provided by coffeeshops in the pink paper packet. It is non-caloric, has no deleterious effects when consumed in the amounts needed to sweeten snus, even in snus that is sweetened well beyond the point of being pleasant, and will not decay the teeth and gums. I recommend that if you want to sweeten your snus with something, it should be this. Buy it as a liquid - more often than not, saccharine sold as powder is mixed with maltodextrin to make it easier to add to foods and drinks. Maltodextrin is a true carbohydrate, and may effect oral health in a negative way.
Snus and nicotine pouch manufacturers in recent years have also begun adding xylitol to their products to use as a sweetener. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol and is caloric, but has the curious effect of reducing dental caries (the cause of cavities) rather than promoting their production. This doesn’t mean that snus made with xylitol is an alternative to a good dental hygiene regimen, but it does mean that its effect on oral health is likely benign when added to snus, which makes it fine to add. Xylitol also has a slight cooling effect not too dissimilar to menthol, but much milder.
When adding any kind of sweetener to snus, use a very conservative hand and follow the same sampling procedure as outlined in section 3.2. Be advised that it is very easy to turn a perfectly usable snus into a disgusting one by sweetening it, and one should consider carefully whether it should be added to a specific batch before experimenting.
Menthol, Eucalyptus, and Capsaicin
These ingredients, especially menthol and capsaicin, are uniquely valued for their ability to stimulate certain nerve receptors in the body to invoke the sensation of being cold or hot. Menthol and tobacco are no strangers to each other, and are as popular now in snus as they are in cigarettes. Capsaicin, from chills, can also be used in snus for an interesting effect. Eucalyptus oil is also sometimes used in snus for both flavor and for its menthol like chill, but one should be very caution with its use, as it is slightly toxic when ingested in quantities pretty easily achievable by accident.
Menthol in its pure form is a waxy, clear crystal. To add it to snus, crush it first in a mortar and pestle, or dissolve it in an equal amount of hot vodka. Be sparing when adding menthol to your snus - no more than .25 of a gram at a time before tasting - as it is very easy to create a snus that is “too cold” by accident, especially when you’re adding menthol to a snus that you’ve already flavored with essential oils of mint, as those extracts naturally contain a high percentage of menthol. Eucalyptus essential oil should be treated in the same way. Chilis, either fresh or dry, should also be added sparingly, with caution towards the type of chili that is being used to avoid irritation to the gumline.
Precook Process
Equipped with the knowledge in the prior sections, and with all your tools and ingredients assembled, you should now finally be ready to make some snus! The process ordinarily takes about two hours to take the ingredients to the pressure cooker, but with practice, one can prepare everything for the cook in less than thirty minutes.
Preparing Tobacco
In this section, the assumption is that one is using whole leaf tobacco that has not already been dried. Whole leaf tobacco purchased online will likely be moist enough to work easily, but if it is not, consider moistening the tobacco set aside for processing with a couple spritzes of water from a spray bottle to make it pliable enough for processing.
Inspecting the Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product: as with all other fruits and vegetables, it should be closely inspected before use. In fact, it’s even more important that we take some time to pay attention to our tobacco before we cook with it, because it’s spent some time being shipped from a hot warehouse in a truck that is more than likely unrefrigerated. You wouldn’t trust a head of romaine lettuce that’s been sitting in your glove box for a week, would you?
We are looking for signs of damage, insects, mildew, and mold. Some damage to the leaf is acceptable and inevitable, but if the damage is ragged or holey and common to the bulk of the tobacco leaves, take additional time to look for signs of insects in the package. Weevils are the main villain, small pill shaped bugs about half the size of a grain of rice that will eat through tobacco undetectably until the whole stock of leaf is ruined; if weevils are found, isolate the tobacco from any other tobacco you may have, and destroy it outdoors.
Mold and mildew are two other tobacco destroyers, but as with damage, expect and accept some of it, sometimes. Mold is more pernicious than mildew (fuzzy and white, opposed to scaly and pale green), and if much of the tobacco has it, discard it. The midrib, being the part of the leaf that has the most moisture, is a good place to check. If it’s not spread to the rest of the leaf, brush it off or cut it out and carry on.
Ribbing the Tobacco
To more easily process our tobacco and to lead to a better and more consistent final product, we have to separate the midrib (the thick, woody middle part of our tobacco leaf) from the lamina (the soft, leathery portion of the leaf). Midrib has its use in snusmaking, which we will touch on later, but it should be separated for now.
To remove the midrib from your leaf efficiently, make sure that the leaf is moist and pliable enough to be manipulated without cracking any part of it. Most whole leaf tobacco has enough moisture in it already, but just in case it doesn’t, spritz the leaves with a fine mist spray bottle of water and wait five minutes for it to soak in.
Find the top of the leaf, and run your finger down to where the midrib begins. Many leaves have a midrib that thins dramatically along its length, and we want to begin at the point where the midrib is thick enough to tear out of the leaf. Break the midrib at that starting point with your fingernail, and pull it down and away from the lamina and the top of the leaf. The process is very reminiscent of dehulling beans.
Stop only when you have at least 200g of lamina. Your supple tobacco has a lot of water weight, and during the drying process we can expect it to lose a great deal of this. Excess is good here - falling short is annoying.
Drying the Tobacco
Drying our tobacco is essential to the snusmaking process for a couple of important reasons. Primarily, it allows us to keep our recipes consistent by making sure that our tobacco is more or less only tobacco; as stated in the prior section, tobacco that hasn’t been dried out yet contains a considerable amount of water weight. Even if tobacco feels dry, if you personally haven’t undertaken the drying process with a given batch of raw tobacco, there are no guarantees.
The quickest way to dry tobacco out is in the oven. If you have an oven with a convection setting (also sometimes called “quick cook” or some variant thereof), it’s as simple as popping it in the oven set at 170°F/75°C for 20 minutes. Tobacco dries extremely quickly compared to other vegetable products, and after “toasting” your tobacco in this way, you should end up with leaves that crumble at slight pressure. I would not recommend setting your temperature any higher than this, and if you can tolerate it, setting it lower for longer preserves more of the flavors in the tobacco.
Alternatively, if you have a food dehydrator, then you can carefully place the tobacco leaves on the bottom grill of the dehydrator, and then dry the leaves out at 100°F/35°C overnight. Don’t try to dry the leaves out by laying them on each individual grates as you would other vegetables - tobacco doesn’t have any hard to clean juices like tomatoes do, and we’re drying volumes here, so the minutes you would save by making sure the space between the leaves is equidistant is not worth the ease of just chucking them all in. I find that my oven does a much better job of drying tobacco out, and I’ve noticed no discernible difference between the flavor of snus made with tobacco dried in a convection oven and tobacco dried out using a dehydrator, so if you have both, still consider using the convection oven.
If you have none of these, putting your tobacco leaves in front of a regular fan overnight will dry them out. This method only works if you really are using pure, raw tobacco, though; roll your own tobacco or pipe tobacco has humectants in it, and it will take a couple more days to get those bone dry (and even then, it will never really be quite as dry as regular tobacco).
Grinding the Tobacco
You would be surprised at how difficult it is to grind dry leaves into a consistent powder. Tobacco, like coffee or spices, can be broken down to dust with any number of common household kitchen appliances, but dry leaves have much less moisture than either one of those, and the relatively high weight of coffee in particular mean that it circulates itself throughout its grinder. Tobacco just kinda flies around.
I have found an ordinary kitchen blender to be the best solution here. Load it loosely with your dry tobacco leaves, and run the blender on high speed. You may notice that nothing may be happening, because the tobacco leaves are hanging on to the walls of the blender. Pick the machine up carefully with hands firmly placed on the bottom and the lid, and shake it. With enough shaking and blending, your tobacco will grind down. We’re looking for a consistency somewhat like the grain size of cornmeal. Don’t overload your blender - pour the ground tobacco into a bowl, add fresh leaves into it, and repeat the process until all the tobacco is powdered.
If you’re worried about waste, you can also grind down your midribs using this process. Keep in mind that tobacco midrib is a fair bit stiffer than tobacco lamina, so grinding will take more time. Midrib has much less nicotine than lamina to boot, so if you’re going to use it, only add it back as a percentage of the total tobacco flour, and not as the majority of the blend.
Coffee grinders also make a great grinder for tobacco, albeit a much slower one owing to their small size. To grind tobacco with one, load and shake in the same way as the blender. Be careful here - they do a much quicker job of turning the tobacco to dust than a blender, and the grain size you end up with might be far too fine for a good snus if you let it grind for too long. Remember, cornmeal - not espresso.
If you are lucky enough to have a home tobacco shredder (looks somewhat like a barebones pasta maker), you can make excellent snus with the unique quality of a coarse, stringy cut much like American dipping tobacco. If you’re going to use this, shred the tobacco before drying it. Once it’s dry, crunch it with your hands until it is reduced.
Mixing and Cooking
A basic recipe for snus is as follows:
Ingredients:
100g Dry Tobacco Flour
90g Warm Water
7g Table Salt
Process:
Gather your mixing bowl, your cooking vessel (the pan that goes into your Instant Pot, or Pressure Cooker), your kitchen scale, your milligram scale, a regular mug, and a large spoon for mixing.
Place your mixing bowl on the kitchen scale. Set it to tare.
Measure out your 100g of dry tobacco flour into the mixing bowl. Set it aside.
Set your mug on your scale. Set scale to tare.
Pour 90g of warm water into the mug.
Measure out 7g of table salt using your milligram scale. Dissolve salt into warm water well.
Pour saltwater solution evenly onto tobacco.
Mix hard, pressing the tobacco down often to make sure water enters the dry tobacco completely. Add any herbs and spices meant to cook with the snus at this step, and mix them in well.
Transfer uncooked snus to cooking vessel. Press snus into cooking vessel firmly, with no space between the grains, but don’t overdo it.
Load trivet into Instant Pot/pressure
Pour water to half the height of your trivet. We want enough water in there to steam pasteurize the tobacco, but we don’t want it touching the cooking vessel.
Load cooking vessel into Instant Pot/pressure cooker. Close lid.
If using Instant Pot, set to cook on high pressure for 3 hours. If using pressure cooker, cook at the highest pressure setting for the same.
If you’re using a pressure cooker, common sense dictates that you should remain near the pressure cooker during the cooking stage. Instant Pots and other automatic pressure cookers have safety stops built into their design, and I leave mine running while I go to work. When the cook is done though either avenue, don’t release pressure immediately, but allow it to remain at pressure for another two hours or so. Release pressure in a room where windows can be opened - this is a fairly smelly step!
It goes without saying as well, but manual pressure cookers are all different. If you aren’t confident that your pressure cooker can safely tolerate three hours of cooking at pressure, don’t do this process. As with any kind of kitchen goings-on, you are responsible for your own safety here.
Postcook Process
At this point, our snus is technically usable - albeit without much nicotine, lacking in proper texture, and perhaps seeming a bit altogether “off”. The postcook process is all about those important finishing steps that make sure that our snus is on par with the manufactured stuff.
When you first take your cooking vessel out of the pressure cooker, you should do some quick checks to make sure everything went right. How’s the color? It should be nearly black at this point, although some translucent, shiny dark brown twinkles are excusable under strong light. Large, dry, brown portions mean that our snus did not cook properly.
How’s it smell? The aroma here should be close to finished snus, though with a somewhat bittersweet and vegetal edge not unlike burnt carrots. If the snus smells raw and too vegetal, it probably is, and didn’t cook properly. If the snus smells like burnt toast and isn’t moist, it probably is indeed burnt.
How’s it feel? Snus fresh out of the cooker doesn’t have to bake into a perfect prilla, but it should be pinchable and stay held together with some pressing from the fingers. If it’s too crumbly, or too muddy, adjust the water on following cooks. Well made snus at this stage will release a small amount of brown staining on the fingers when squeezed.
Alkalizing
As stated in the beginning of our guide, alkalizing our snus is what allows the nicotine in snus to become bioavailable, but it is also responsible for subtle changes in flavor and mouthfeel that make snus feel “real”. To add your alkalizer, dissolve 4g-8g (less for mild, more for strong) of the alkalizer you have on hand in around 10g of warm water. Stir vigorously; at first, the solution will appear powdery and milky, which may lead you to believe that nothing being dissolved at all, but these are simply small air bubbles trapped on the surface of the alkalizer being released into the water. In around thirty seconds to a minute, your solution should clear up, and it is ready to add to your snus.
Go outside, go to your garage, go anywhere smelly things are permitted. A lot of ammonia will be released at this step. With your snus in your mixing bowl (don’t do this directly in the cooking container, because we want a very even mix and are going to stir very hard, and snus will go flying everywhere), drizzle the solution evenly onto the surface of the snus and fold it in quickly. Continue stirring and pressing with your spoon for about a minute until you are confident that the alkalizer has been evenly distributed throughout your snus. Once it is, put it into a ziplock bag or other resealable container, and clean your tools well.
If you like, you can have a test pinch of your snus. There is nothing quite like freshly alkalized snus - the head rush is vicious, and the mouthfeel is deceptively mild. Don’t worry about flavors at this stage, as they’re bound to change quite a bit after the next step.
Mellowing the Snus
Snus is hardly ever consumed immediately after alkalizing by consumers. An important intermediary stage almost always follows, where the snus is allowed to rest for a couple of days to complete the alkalizing process and release any remaining ammonia. Tasting your snus right after you’ve alkalized it is a good way to witness this change in your own snus.
Package your snus in a ziplock bag, a tupperware, a lightly sealed mason jar, or other reusable container, and just let it rest somewhere for two days. You can leave it out on a table if you don’t want it in your fridge, but consider putting it somewhere cold for reasons of food safety. Your snus will continue to be a little fresh after two days, but it will lose most of its rough edges during this time and can be used freely.
Kneading the Snus
Kneading our snus is optional, but is a highly recommended step that makes our snus identical to manufactured snus. To do this, you’ll need your snus and your kneading bag, and that’s it.
To knead, move your snus from its current container into your kneading bag, seal it, and begin by kneading it with both hands on a sturdy surface. We only do this for around five minutes to break up the snus grains and groom them for longer kneading, which can be done by hand like a large stress ball. I find that after twenty minutes of kneading by hand, the snus is to my liking and is practically equivalent with the quality of manufactured snus, but check the texture of your snus frequently to make sure it’s as you like it.
After kneading is a good opportunity to flavor your snus, if you wish. Follow the directions in section 3 for details on flavoring.
Storage
Storing your snus is just as important as making it; without knowing how to store snus properly, or by storing it as you would other tobacco products, we both compromise its safety and its quality.
The best container for your snus in storage is the common ziplock bag. Because snus is somewhat amorphous, we don’t take up any more space than we need to, and we have a fairly reliable, non-permeable container protecting it from the other food in the fridge. Tupperware is a good second-best solution, but takes up more space than is necessary and the seal on tupperware is not quite as good as many think it is, unless you have a latch-closing model. Mason jars are an elegant and eco-friendly way to store snus, and are fairly airtight, but add to the anxieties about space the biggest drawback about jars, which is that they can fall and break. Any of these will do, though.
Homemade snus kept in the fridge will keep its quality for about three weeks, but will continue to remain usable for much longer if you can tolerate it. A better idea is to portion out your snus into different bags and keep them in the freezer, where they will remain usable almost indefinitely.
Storage During Use
The best place to store your homemade snus is, of course, a snus can. Very nice, reusable snus cans can be purchased online, but a cleaned plastic snus can that once held manufactured snus does a great job as well. Plastic lined pipe tobacco pouches are also an excellent alternative to the can, and have the added benefit of fitting well into any pants pocket. Metal tins do a good job as well, but the moist, basic nature of snus may lead to corrosion of the inner lining, and the salt in snus can cause rust in cans with less-than-good constitutions.
Portioning
The biggest difference to the snus that you have made and the snus that you are used to is that one is obviously loose. Loose snus enjoyers may be delighted by this and need no further advice, but users accustomed to the convenience of portions may want alternative materials to package their prillas in.
An obvious choice may seem like its found in empty snus portion bags that appear from time to time on snus retail pages, but to use these properly you need a snus portioner or a carved up syringe that can form nearly perfect prillas that can be injected directly into the bag. Doing this without one is a lot like trying to cram a raw hamburger into the paper sleeve of a drinking straw without getting any on the outside; technically doable, but a pain in the ass, and too long and fiddly of a process to make it worth anyone’s while.
Filter paper made for snus is the best option, because you can roll your snus up like a burrito fairly quickly and be on your way. Tea bags, cut up and emptied, make the best second option, and toilet paper works in a pinch. Avoid coffee filters and paper towels, as these are simply too coarse and too finely grained to work well for snus.
Figure a way to sell your portion tool and filt if that's feasible.