Fogle’s Guide To Making (a Sort Of) Laudanum, (A step by step pictorial) Options

[Fogle]

Fogle’s guide to making (a sort of) Laudanum
(A step by step pictorial)

Part 1

Introduction:
Real Laudanum was made with opium and many other ingredients. Among which were henbane, nutmeg and lots of others. My type of Laudanum is actually an alcoholic extract of concentrated poppy tea. That is why I wouldn’t label my bottles Laudanum but the made up name: Laudrum.
There are numerous ways to make such a concoction. I don’t claim mine is the best or even any good. But the result of the following is a nice tasting liqueur with a good opiate buzz. And the best thing: no chemicals or fancy equipment needed.
The pictures are actually of two batches being made. You can see that several of the steps take place at the same time. So don’t get confused by this!

To make two litres of Laudrum you need:

Ingredients:
1) dried poppies (ca. 2.3 kg with seeds = 1.0 kg without the seeds)
2) alcohol (1 litre 80%)
3) aniseed, star anise and/or fennel
4) sugar and dextrose (=glucose)
5) water

Materials:
1) several big pans
2) filter cloth (old t-shirt)
3) several plastic buckets
4) several glass jars
5) stove
6) water bath
7) some cutlery, spatula’s etc (do ask you SO!)
8) 50ml syringe or turkey blaster (optional)

1, Poppies:
This is my recipe and I don’t buy poppies. I grow poppies. So get some seeds, find a deserted plot somewhere in suburbia, and spread them. By the middle of June till July your poppies will look like this:

somniferums come in several pretty colours

Now you can either harvest them now and dry them at home, or let them dry in the field. They will be dry about one month after they bloomed. But beware: heavy rainfall will flush all goodies from your pods.
Now you have dried poppies.



the ones with stems were dried in the field while the others were harvested green and fresh
Crush them. Separate the seeds from the straw by using a kitchen sieve. Use the seeds for food or next years harvest.
You can use a blender to make the straw even finer. But you don’t want it to be too powdery as this will make it harder to filter in a later step.

this is about the coarseness you need

2, Alcohol:
Americans can use Ever-Clear. I use 80% Stroh Rum. The rum is mixed with activated charcoal, from the fish-pond-store, and left for a week or so. The rum should be clear and colourless after this, with no smell other than that of alcohol. This I call “reclaimed rum”.

3, and on:
“Look around and thou wilt find”

Okay now we have everything we need. Let’s get started.


Step 1,
Get a pan that holds your poppies, maybe 10 litres. Or get several pans. Put your poppy straw (1kg) in the pan(s) and cover with water (about 7 litres). Bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes max.



these bits are pretty coarse, smaller would be better

End of part 1

[Fogle]

I was wondering the same thing...it seems like A LOT of plant material for that one bottle, unless that bottle is unbelievably potent.

Bueller, Bueller, Bueller?

The answer is in the original post, see step 11.

Step 11,
Mix the 80%, 40% and 20% extracts together. Now we have about 1.5 litres of dark brown liquid, which should contain the best part of 1 litre of 80% alcohol. All we have to do is add some flavour and dilute it in the end to 2 litres of 40% papaver liqueur.

This was only one of four similar bottles.

Extracts can be very potent. Ab made an extract from the residue that collects at the bottom of the buckets we use while harvesting. This extract was extremely potent. A small amount of only 10 ml send me of spinning. And I had to take an anti-histamine to combat the nausea.
The method came down to collecting the milky latex upon a small piece of cloth until it gets soaked and dark brown. Next: boiling that cloth in water and boiling the resulting "tea" down. Yes, the best things are very simple. The boiled down goo was mixed with alcohol to preserve it. Dosing is done by a small pipette. Too bad we can only make this during the harvesting. Laudrum on the other hand can be made any time of the year.

[supkit1122]

Fogle, lemme say that the first thing I wanted to do (after greetings, it ended up being the second oops) was say how amazingly impressive your work to put up that picto-narrative-instructional (hypothetical) guide is. I live in the desert southwest of America, and you've inspired me to, should I be blessed by the powers that be, put up a hot-zone photo narrative of my (california or other legal) poppies this year. Thanks Fogle! I hope you're going to put out some more great work for us to drool over. Beautiful!

-Kit

[Rhenardine]

Some woman I met read this thread a hundred times, and even did a scaled down version of the stuff. The results were quite impressive.Still she wonders ; cannot the first steps be eliminated and the extraction be done with grain alchohol right from the start? She has read that a water extraction leaves behind some unwanted material, but she is no chemist and wonder why the hell not to just start with the achohol in the first place? Everclear is easy to get where she lives, and since she is working with such a small volume that cost is really not a mitigating factor. Eliminating all that cooking down sure simplifies the proceess, as everclear on its own evaporates quite quickly, so reducing to the desired volume is a snap. I keep telling her to stop messing with this stuff, but, hey, you know how women are....

[denm]

I think the water extraction is to leave some of the stuff behind that you don't want that the alcohol will suck out of the material. Plus water is great for extraction of the goodies you do want.

Then after using alcohol to extract from the tea is to get a more pure goodies from all the other stuff that might be in the tea. That is my understanding correct me if I am wrong.

My wooden headed friend probably wont try this.

[Somatic]

You can always make a vaccum and then the water will boil at a very low temperature.

Search on this site, there is a guy who made a vaccum very easily. Lower the internal pressure of a container will lower the pressure needed for liquid water to become gaseous.

When you thought chemistry was just a class, SHAME ON YOU!

Very nice. I still make my tea the old fashioned way. Material, water, mix, strain, drink.
My friend makes laudanum like fogle does. Good read!

This post has been edited by Somatic: Sep 22 2008, 10:17 AM

[Machaon]

wow..super Tutorial....Thanks uncle Thomas r.i.p.

[Lightwish]

One of the best recipee's on here. Bump for a good read

[DopeQueen]

thanks! i enjoyed it. very edutaining.

thanks uncle thomas and fogle. im sure uncle thomas is in heaven cooking up a storm.

[laudanum28]

Fogle,

I can't wait to make this next spring! One question: Won't boiling destroy alkoloids?