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Thanks so much! Hi! Welcome back to Snooze at Home. Today, I'm going to be talking about the sacred Amazonian snuff called Rappé or Rappé.
The two names get kind of mixed. I, uh, I find that... Rapé is more popular on websites that sell the stuff and rapé is more popular of a term.
For people, there are a couple of reasons for this. I think one is difficulty pronouncing the Portuguese R sound. The other could be its similarity.
to the other word that's spelled R-A-P-E. Nevertheless, rapé is what we're talking about. Now, what is rapé? Rapé is a group of nasal snuffs, traditionally prepared in the Amazon basin that hold a sacred significance to the tribes that use it there.
It's become extremely popular among new age practitioners, and most of the content online is geared towards that audience, which is not you, or not typically you. you. Rapé is simply the Romance language root for nasal snuff, and most likely comes from the French word for ripped or grated.
Let me read you an excerpt from an explanation from one of these sellers so that you get a flavor for the current atmosphere about what this stuff is like. Ready? There are very rare, sacred, powerful, and profoundly healing and cleansing miracle medicines and are made in a very sacred and labor-intensive way.
process. Rapé is a complex blend of pulverized Amazonian medicinal plants, trees, leaves, seeds, and other sacred ingredients. Wow, it sounds very mystical, but really rapés are in their most common form a mix of tobacco, usually rustica tobacco, nicotiana rustica, but sometimes cultivars of nicotiana tobacco that are endemic to the Amazon are used, and ashes.
The ashes are sometimes from plain wood ash, but are more than often a mix of the ashes of different herbs, different spices, different plants, tree barks that are native to the Amazon. You have your more mundane or more common plants turn into ashes like cinnamon, tonka bean, whatever. But a lot of them are derived from medicinal plants that are found in the rainforest, and they're all burnt to a crisp. In the end, they're all ashes.
The ashes very likely contain none of the psychoactive properties that their original ingredients may have had. The whole idea that the ashes, uh, that they maintain the memory of the plant. It's the same kind of idea behind homeopathic medicine, almost. This is a very basic understanding of rapé medicine, but it's in principle true to the form.
I'm going to try to keep this explanation as secular as possible, but you should understand that all the hippy-dippy stuff connected to Amazonian rapé comes from a general idea of intentionality in Native American medicines. Ritual is always connected to medicine in this context, and if you were to simply mix the ingredients together, they wouldn't be as effective to a practitioner as if they were charged with a goal during the production. Some of these blends...
of ashes are pretty sophisticated and their rituals are taken very seriously. It's the difference between, let's say, manufacturing a dead battery and manufacturing a usable one, full of charge. This is also a massive generalization of the practice of medicine in the Americas.
And a lot of nations in the Americas, namely the Aztecs and the Incans, had a sophisticated understanding of European medicine in about the same period. but I do include this to give you an idea of why rapé is in the first place. Interestingly enough, the Aztecs and the Incans both smoked their tobacco. It also isn't strictly true that all rapés produced today follow this form. Many include raw material that is minimally processed, and they're either used for the aforementioned psychoactive properties, but they're more typically used for flavoring.
And this is used in much the same way as oils and extracts are used in European snuffs. It's for taste first and for... Most tobaccos are selected for taste and strength and the whole thing is reminiscent of you know general European snuff blending practices in general. Take for example a hoppe from a site called sacred connection called Katukina Rappé Blonde, which is a very elegant looking snuff made of dark molly and fermented pigtail tobacco flavored with eucalyptus.
It's gotta have the same flavor as Prussel's Darker Menthols. At least that's what I'm thinking. That's what it calls to mind. It's probably a very good snuff.
Some of the rare herbs and spices are also really mundane kitchen cupboard tier flavorings disguised under a different name. Take for example a snuff called Paiwana Picshuri, which is made with a rare herb called Picshuri to give special character. Picchuri is just the Puyallup word for nutmeg.
What I believe the Amazonians stumbled upon with these ashes is a rudimentary understanding of alkalization of tobacco to increase its potency. Ashes are valuable still to this day because they contain a base, potassium carbonate, or more commonly known as potash, which can raise the pH of the tobacco, and that makes the nicotine more available to the human body. This process is called the Puyallup.
of alkalization has some other effects too like it changes the smell and it releases ammonia Which can give the snuff some punch. And in a pre-elemental understanding of the world, this process would seem very much like the ashes were acting upon the tobacco leaves in a magical way. That they were unlocking, that they were leasing the true potential of the tobacco. The ratios of ash to tobacco are pretty high in favor of the ashes. Usually one to one from what I can see online.
Because ash only contains a relatively small amount of potassium carbonate. as a percentage of its weight, but ashes do also contain different fully oxidized salts and chemicals that will also increase the potency and character of the rapé. So, if Amazonian rapé is almost indistinguishable from snuffs made in the European tradition, why is there such a barrier between those who use European-style snuff and people who use rapé?
I have a couple. of different theories. The first is probably just price. This rapé stuff is really, really expensive.
It's not uncommon to go online and pay $30 for just 10 grams of rapé. This is only partially justified by its rarity. And just like in the nutmeg example, I think this is a rarity that's manufactured by the importers of the stuff to keep the prices high.
So the second is a distaste for the new age marketing of snuffs right stuff like opening your chakra grounding yourself opening your third eye and releasing negative energy strikes me as well as many other snuff users. Some kind of voodoo horseshit. Most of the users of rapé, like I mentioned before, are using rapé as part of their new age practice and their discussions are usually geared towards the sensations felt. from certain snuffs, rather than the flavor and the punch.
The vocabulary is completely different. I want you to consider stuff like sweet, uncarbonated soft drinks. Is the person who buys Kool-Aid or Sherbert the same sort of person who buys vitamin water, right? They are the same drink, you know, with very, very minor differences, but they're marketed in such a way.
They've been branded in such a way that modern consumers consider these products in totally different classes. and that they don't overlap in any way in the market. Besides that you can drink both of them, but to the average person's mind, they are completely different despite being almost identical chemically. So I think this is kind of a shame.
But the price prevents the more adventurous snuff user from diving into Amazonian Europe and a distaste for, let's call it, western tobacco habits prevents new age users from exploring European nasal snuff. And the resellers that intentionally leave certain words untranslated and hide the production of rapé behind a veil of mystery and mysticism doesn't really help that much. With that being said, it really isn't that hard to make, and it's one of the simplest snuffs that you could make at home.
Let's make some. So, just like I mentioned in the lecture, rapé is at its most basic. Basic form made with rustica tobacco. I have some here that has been dried in the oven at 190 degrees for a couple minutes so that it's fantastically crispy.
And then I have some ashes. Now I tried to make hardwood ash. I went to the store, I bought some applewood, and you would expect to burn it and receive some ash. But I kept burning and burning and burning and little to no ash.
I suspect it was from the wind and the container that I put it in, so I moved it to another container. but then the container popped. If I had a designated barbecue pit or something like that that I could make it in there, I'd probably end up with some more ashes, but I really wanted some clean ashes.
So, alternatively, I just smoked some cigars. Now, I didn't find a mention of using cigar ash as the ashes in Rappé, but it doesn't seem too far off the mark when you consider that they're using stuff like cinnamon ash. tonka bean ash or the ashes of different leaves, roots, barks. And I have tested the pH of this and the pH is absolutely phenomenal so it should get us where we need to be.
I'm gonna blend this up or grind it up. I'm gonna use my coffee grinder for this and then I'm gonna mix it together. You know, I figured that I'll just add both.
Why not? Oh, I told you that this was a simple recipe. The rustica ground down very nicely. I'm gonna... Not measure this out on the kitchen scale.
Now, the ratios that were mentioned to me both by some of my patrons and by sources that I could find kept mentioning a one-to-one ratio, and they said that both dry weight and volume is fine. I expect that since both of these are very dry, fluffy powders, they'll weigh about the same. And I might go a little less than 1 to 1. Just for my own sake, like I said, I tested the pH of this stuff and it was off the wall.
I think the pH was about 12. 13 at certain points. I'm not sure I measured the ash pH in a scientifically accurate way, but that's fine. Let's start with 3, so here we go. What I'm going to do to mix these is remove the rest of the rustica powder that's in here and save it for a future project and reintroduce the coarse blend to the coffee grinder and mix it up there both to get any final chunks of tobacco. that are a little coarser than they need to be finely ground and to fully incorporate the ash with the tobacco itself.
Now if you look online at a lot of rapes, a lot of them are very very gray, almost green-gray, and from what I'm seeing now that seems to be no different for my batch. Yeah, it's this kind of weird color so far. very gray brown. Be right back, I'm gonna get this stuff back inside and we'll blend it up for a couple more seconds. It doesn't take that long, especially when you're using super dry stuff.
We are, boys and girls, this is our Amazonian Ape. Ellie added four scoops of tobacco and three of ashes and the color is almost spot on with the stuff that I've seen online, so it shouldn't make that much of a difference. If you want this to be perfectly one-to-one, you can, but...
from what I'm seeing here, this is going to be a very ashy pinch to begin with. Let's talk about that. This stuff is usually not pinched.
This stuff is usually involved in a rapé ceremony. And what they do is an administrator will take a long straw that is bent upwards, called a tepee, and blow the snuff into the recipient's nose. And this can be quite forceful.
If you look on videos online, it really is a sudden push. of air right into the nostrils. I'm gonna pinch this stuff.
Alternatively, if you don't have a tepee and a shaman, you can always use a kuripe. This is a tool that is meant to mimic the shape and function of a tepee. It's just a, you know, two pieces of a triangle.
One goes in your mouth to blow air up into your nose. I'll post a picture on the video if you're unsure of what I'm talking about. They're fairly simple to make.
You can find guide... guides on making them out of bamboo online. All you need is bamboo, a coping saw, and some wood glue and some time. But I'm not that into it. I just want the snuff, so let's have a pinch.
I'm gonna be very... let me grab a snuff spoon. Something that can be a snuff spoon.
I'll be right back. Here we are. The old cap of the big pen.
There we go. Not gonna be much of a pinch at all, but I'm a little bit frightened about this stuff. So let's go. Whoa, oh nostril come on boy.
Oh Wow Holy shit Whoo, I'll give you some flavor notes. Just let the burn calm down. Oh Calming, calming, there's still a lot of burn there. We're calming down, we're calming down. Okay, first thing right after that, holy shit, this stuff is strong.
Nicotine-wise, you don't start feeling that really until a couple seconds after, I'd say 30 seconds after the initial pinch. That's the real nicotine. impression the stuff that you're the feeling that you get when you shoot it up your nostril when you first take a pinch is uh it's typically just the ammonia and the salts and the fineness and the you know exposed capillary is taking in whatever nicotine is there as far as that goes that that first that first entry into the nose that's hellacious that really is very very very strong Uh, what else do I have to say about it?
Wow. There is some nicotine coming on here for sure. Yeah.
Not anything kooky and crazy, just along the lines of a stronger, a stronger, finer snuff. Something like an Indian snuff, maybe. Something like a white elephant, if you're familiar with that. Not that difficult to take off the big cap, I gotta say. With those Indian snuffs, some of them are ground so fine that you really have to get your technique down pat before you even attempt to take them.
But with this stuff, it wasn't that bad. I could probably pinch this, and I very likely will after I'm done talking. Flavor-wise, a little bit sweet, a little bit... A little bit smoky, but less smoky than you might expect, actually. So, if you smell ashes, they don't really smell like anything.
And I expected cigar ashes to have a little bit of the character of the cigar, but it's completely absent. The ashes smell like the plastic Ziploc bag they're kept in. But you do get a little bit of that smokiness in the nose as the ashes sort of mix in with your with your mucosa, and it makes it smell kind of like kind of like fire cured tobacco. Not anywhere near as off the end, off the barbecue end as American scotches can be, but it's it's got a little bit of it there.
As far as other flavors go, it's almost completely Completely flavorless. So I understand why they start adding things like nutmeg and other spices and why they use the more heavily cured tobaccos that are available in Brazil like Moi or dark rustica. tail to give this stuff a little bit of additional flavor because you have to understand there's less tobacco here to begin with and rustica is really not a heavily heavily flavored tobacco it's usually air cured which doesn't introduce any additional flavors and to begin with it's not it's like it's almost paper like in flavor and smell so a little bit of a flavor like an american scotch probably from the ashes and a little bit from the tobacco but from the tobacco itself not that much so let's try a little bit more of a controlled pinch and you can tell how darn fine this stuff is i mean take a look it's got a little bit of bigger bits because I didn't see this but with super dry snuffs that you make at home there really is no need to.
You can if you want. Industry standard for this stuff seems to be 150 microns and they mentioned using a fine mesh bag to sieve it out of. So let's take a pinch of lube. Haha, oh wow.
Yeah, that's a, that's a brisk snuff. It's not a bad snuff at all. I'm getting a little bit more of that, uh, sort of sweet flavor from the, you know, fire cured aspects of the flavor profile.
Wow, yeah. I'm not gonna use all of this, of course. It's a little bit too bland for my taste. I might mix it in with some tonka bean or some cinnamon or some peak shuri to make it closer to what they would actually be using. I think a nutmeg snuff would be really good.
I'm a big fan of toque, X-mas. But as far as... any magical properties. I'm not really feeling anything besides how I typically feel after I take a strong pinch of snuff. That's it.
Very cool product. Very traditional product. Very mystical product.
I hope that I've demystified it for you. If you were to buy this stuff online, the little batch that I made here could cost you over $40, but I used maybe two leaves of rustica that cost me $20 for an entire pound, and ashes, which if you can get ashes are practically free, and if you have to make them, oh no, you have to smoke a cigar. Oh, what a tragedy. Oh boy, it's gonna ruin your day.
Yeah, this little batch probably cost me no more than, I'd say, 10 cents to make. if you already have the ashes. And if you don't, then you're going to have a lot of fun smoking the cigar. So why not just keep the ashes around? If you enjoyed this video, please be sure to like and subscribe.
I'll be back with some more cool content for you. If you like tobacco, I highly encourage you to stay tuned. I'll see you soon.