hello, i know this may seem like a simple question, but

what does "pour off" mean?

i am using lextek acid to base tek and it is telling me in step 2.2

"Place all the bark into a large saucepan and fill with the acidified water, ensuring all the bark is well covered. Four litres per cook was used here.
Bring the mixture to a light simmer and proceed to cook for a further hour.
Once complete, pour off and save the liquid. Perform this step a further two times."

It's asking you to separate the liquid from the powdered (or shredded) bark. To do this you slowly and carefully decant (the proper word for it) the reddish liquid into another container. You want to try to keep as much of the bark in the pot as you can.

If you want, you can use a double layer of cheesecloth or an old t-shirt to line a mesh colander with and decant the solution through that, using the cloth as a filter to catch any pieces carried in the solution.

After that, just cover the bark in the original tek with more acidified water and repeat the above as many times as it tells you to, collecting all of your liquid in the same container.

In general it refers to the idea that what you have in the container naturally separates into two different fractions as it lies there. If you carefully tilt the container and pour, it would be possible to pour only the top fraction while leaving the bottom fraction in the container. So, IOW, you "pour the top fraction OFF OF the bottom fraction."

In this case, you would "pour off" the liquid and leave any solids in the container. Ultimately, you don't want any solids in your acid solution, so you'll probably end up filtering that solution, or allowing it to settle overnight, and then "decanting" the solution--which means the same as "pour off": you pour away the solution and leave any contaminants behind.

thank you for your quick reply, you have answered my question, thanks again

Buy some pantyhoes or stockings, cut the feet off, put that over the rim of a large glass or jar or similar container. That will filter out 'most' of the powered bark. Then when all your acid cooks are done and you have all the filtered liquid in one container, put that in the fridge overnight or for a few hours, then take it out and slowly pour the liquid off. At the bottom will be what looks like raspberry soft-serve ice cream that you don't really want. That is the bark bits that made it through the panty hoes. After that I take a glass funnel that I made by smashing out the bottom of a San Pelligrino glass water bottle, put in 6-8 cotton balls, get them wet then jam them down into the spout nice and tight, then pour in the mhrb liquid and wait for it to filter. Works like a charm. If this was TMI, oh well.