This is just a thought, and fully expect responses to give me reasons to not pursue this idea, but I can't shake this obsession of wanting to justify doing experiment using Soxhlet extractor (partly because I've never used soxhlet before)

After searching for "soxhlet" I've only found posts that deter its' usage for MHRB extraction, but for A/B tek (Vovin's Tek is one I've successfully used), it's a good bit of time to reduce multiple collections of the acid water after extracting from MHRB and filtering, and also to maintain pH4 takes some attention as water is evaporating.

While it certainly works, my idea below is theoretically lower time/involvement to do acid pull of MHRB, if it can work - and this is where I hope the experienced can give me a quick "yes it's worth trying" or "no it won't work because xyz"

The idea: use a 1000mL soxhlet extractor with 3000mL flask, and with a high enough wattage heater be able to heat acid water adequately in the flask, then be cooled enough by condenser (top section of soxhlet) that the MHRB wouldn't see undesirable/damaging temps by time acid water drips on MHRB (not sure appropriate quantity for this), and then let it reflux for several hours, possibly unattended.

After this, perhaps reduction of acid water not necessary and can go straight to next step (to base) and then FASA.

I understand soxhlet usually used with solvents and not water, but is it possible to use in the manner I've described?

You might want to try starting with a significantly smaller set up first - just to ensure you don't ruin a huge batch of bark if anything goes wrong. Also check out the following:

It strikes me that the amount of bark that would fill a 1000mL Soxhlet exceeds the suggested upper size limit for an extraction. Of course, it would still be a viable way of producing a good amount of stock 'tea' with good keeping properties that could be extracted in sensibly-sized batches over a period of time - not wishing entirely to be a party pooper.

- except the extract would then be boiled in the RBF for several hours once the Soxhlet had completed its first syphon cycle. Maybe that's still better than boiling the whole bark - the insoluble components will remain in the Soxhlet body which reduces the amount of things that could produce side-reactions under boiling.

The main idea is that Soxhlet extractors provide a near quantitative extraction of things with fairly poor solubility. It could be argued that DMT salts are too soluble for this method to be justified in using.

DFZ, a smaller setup makes sense to start - I was just surprised at low cost of the large soxhlet apparatus; it's not far off from cost of smaller one. But I suppose if I screw up a large batch, it will make it a very expensive mistake.

Good point about the boiling of product after first syphon cycle - I didn't think it far enough through. My mind now veers off into wondering about feasibility of partial vacuum for lower boiling point to overcome this...

Please understand where I'm coming from is engineering minded at the core, not for monetary profit. As a jack of many trades, I tend to jump in deep in whatever the subject and make things more complicated and usually benefit in some obscure ways, at least learning extra along the way (even if it's sometimes learning KISS really is the better way in some situations).

I mean no harm here nor do I wish to go against intents of this site or community. I saw the BLAB tek mentions 450g of spice at one time and didn't think this was too far off from that range. I'm only interested in making enough to last me long time since it seems to be rare that I can dedicate time and space to doing smaller extractions.

That being said, if I'm touching on something problematic to be here on the forums for fear of it being used in some large scale use that the Nexus is understandably against, by all means remove this post entirely and I'll take no offense.

No worries, it's just my job to make sure people know this stuff - I have to to remind myself to behave sometimes too

While the idea of reduced pressure seems appealing, what actually starts to happen is that foaming and bumping become more of a problem.

Here's a thread that has something interesting to say about cooking mimosa, however - minus the soxhlet (not to mention, dispensing with any further extraction steps entirely):
Mimosa's secrets - keeping a lid on it!

I understand what you're saying, but I'm going to have to get my hands dirty with this setup (perhaps without MHRB to start), using vacuum from water driven syphon to regulate boiling point and use boiling stones to help mitigate foaming/bumping. I may fail miserably but I'll get to use soxhlet and learn what I can.


Nice reference!

Thank you for your input.

Oh, it'll be great if it works nicely, for sure. No real reason why it shouldn't to some extent or other.

What size condenser do you have for this? A pretty beefy one would be highly desirable otherwise you'll either be waiting forever for it to cycle through, or be losing vapour out the top of the condenser like crazy.

Show us pics of the apparatus once it's set up, I love a bit of glassware pr0n.

Ø5cm x 38cm tall, Allihn, and have 10°C water to feed through.

Part of the experiment here is to see how efficient or not this condenser is - I imagine there will be some vapor loss. In addition I would like to add a coil or Dimroth condenser to ameliorate, but the top of my current Allihn has Ø16mm OD glass tube, not a ground joint.

I'm an amateur at this, just experimenting. Regardless, things might quickly get out of hand with torch and flameworking some glass...

Sounds nice, I hope you have fun with it - but you're right to have a coil or/and a Dimroth on your wish list

The glass tube is of course pretty much standard for reflux condensers.

I finally got around to setting up the Soxhlet, it's a bit cumbersome given the size, but I tested it just running a cycle with H20 to get feel of it, and it worked great. I measured out 2L of water, put the round flask into temperature controlled silicone oil bath and set oil temp to 155°C and it produced bump-free boil. I tried cranking oil up to 190°C, although still bump-free boil and slightly increased evaporation rate, the silicone oil began to smoke so I turned it back down.

Once boiling commenced, it took 2 hours to reflux. After everything cooled down, I measured the volume of water and was exactly 2L, so no vapor loss

I'd feel safer running it with heating mantle, but the one I have is 450 watts and it's just not enough to boil water. The silicone oil bath has advantages of adequate, regulated, uniform heat (no bumping) and after reflux the cooler water dropping down came back to boiling in just a minute or two because of thermal mass of the oil. Major disadvantage though is the safety factor - if water were to drop into oil at that temperature

Current plans are to shield the silicone oil the best I can, put raw cotton at bottom of extractor, then roll some fine mesh 304SS screen to make a tube structure that'll fit nicely in extractor, and some larger cotton tea bags with MHRB inside.

Comments welcome here, but I think it's best for me to transition my future posts about this to the A/B Extraction section. If there was a way to journal on dmt-nexus (like on shroomery.org), I would go that route, but I'm not aware of a way to do that here.

Thanks for the update, looking forward to the next one.

This whole thread has now been transferred to the A/B extraction section as per request.

That sounds good to me, seems like best place for it