Jackoval Trades wrote:Swim placed Fifty grams of mhrb (powderized) into a large Mason jar, then 750ml of water, then 50 g lye, and finally an unmeasured amount of naptha, swim mixed the solution with a spoon on multiple occasions, siphoned the top layer of naptha with a turkey baster and placed into a glass cooking dish, covered with lid, and placed in freezer for 24 hours. The result was less than enough spice for a breakthrough dose, swim has done three more pulls off the solution and each yieald has been higher than the last, the most recent resulting in โ80mg, about 150mg in total
The spice has been off white, a little yellow
Im sure you have had your question answered by now, but for anyone that is curious, these are a few things that have helped me increase my yields in the past.
The biggest thing that has affected my yields in the past has been my powdering method. If i powder it, but dont use it all, i have noticed that it has a much shorter shelf life and my yields decrease significantly, even within a month of powdering. The other thing is the powdering method itself.
I'm not super experienced with extractions, but the method i have developed thus far is basically to start by freezing the bark for at least 4-12 hours in a freezer that is as cold as you can get it. Then take it out, and you can either go straight to the blender, or, if you are like me and want to save your blender some wear and tear, you can start breaking it up by hand while it is still frozen, taking small handfulls out of the freezer at a time, breaking them up, and putting them back in the freezer while you continue this rotation until complete.
Then you go to the blender. Take small amounts of the frozen bark at a time and start blending. The thing that causes most blenders to fail is the super fine powder this creates, so every once in a while, stop blending, let it settle for a few minutes, and carefully open it up, trying to disturb the air inside as little as possible, and dump any powder that has accumulated into a collection vessel of your choice. Be careful with this, as in the past, being impatient, i opened the blender before it fully settled a few times and i noticed that my total weight of bark had ben decreased by about 5-10%, which i attribute to that.
Continue with this, adding more frozen bark as needed, until you have a little tumble weed inside, a ball of unblendable fibers. You can either throw those back in the freezer and chop them up more when they freeze, or just add them to the soup as is when that step comes.
I find that blending it this way increased my yield by about .5%. Where previously i had only 1% yield, i now had a 1.5% yield.
Another thing that has helped me is getting ph paper instead of relying on ratios of lye to water. They can get you into the ballpark, but the main point of having that ratio in the first place is to bring the pH level in the water up to at least 13(if you are doing an STB tek), so why not just cut out the middle man and measure your own pH levels to make sure you are hitting a high enough level?
Mixing it with a spoon could have also affected things. Unlikely, but you never know. Maybe if the spoon was made of aluminum, or if it had something on it from the dishwasher or wasnt 100% clean and had a bunch of other stuff on it, idk. It's probably not that big of a deal, but most chemists either use a glass stirring rod or just swirl it carefully to mix solution.
Also, make sure that you are using as little naptha as you can manage to use. The less there is, the easier it is to freeze precipitate your spice.
Try using heat on your last few pulls as well. Dont do it right away, since it tends to draw out the plant fats, which causes a less pure product, but its a good way to squeeze that last little bit of spice out of your bark. Just place your extraction vessel into a warm(not hot) water bath as you do your last few pulls.
If your freezer does not freeze ice cream HARD, that may also be contributing to a low yield.
One last thing that i have found has increased my yields quite a bit has been the discovery that emulsions are not that much of an issue with mhrb. When i first started extractions, i was under the impression that emulsions were really easy to get, really hard to get rid of, and it didnt matter what kind of bark you had. So i just really carefully stirred my jar. But i found out later that this isnt as much of a concern with mhrb, and my yield increased dramatically when i begain shaking the jar instead of just carefully swirling and flipping the jar, trying not to let it splash around. Now i just give it a good shakie shake and it separates within 15 minutes, although on the last shake before i pull the naptha, i usually wait 1-3 hours for it to fully separate in case there are any smaller bubbles still making their way up to the top layer.
Anyway, i know this was long, and its been a minute since the original post, but i hope it helps you are anyone reading. Like i said, im no expert, im just passionate about science lol
I come from a place beyond the clouds. Only Shponglese is spoken there, and that is my native language. I am only just learning english, so if i say anything strange, it is probably a miscommunication on my part and i apologize. I sdsrrrbablenta to all of you and i ghope tjat you can forgive any miscommunications.
May the Elves ever be in your favor,
~~~Shnuffles