Hello there,


I wanted to try out Salvia Divinorum tincture, so I needed to decide to either buy 1L/0,26 Gallon 96% ABV ethanol which is around $30 or make it myself. I already got a T500 from Still Spirits which is a distillation boiler, this got a reflux that makes it possible to turn 25L/6.60Gallon 10-20% wash (basically a type of wine) into 3L of 92%. I run calculations regarding the electricity costs, which were around $8. It took some weeks before the wash completed its fermentation process. A few days ago, I did the distillation. Besides the Salvia Divinorum tincture, I also had another application for ethanol. Which was the extraction of harmala alkaloids with alcohol, I have done Manske before. But wanted to test this method out as a friend of mine told me how to make it.

However, in the meantime, I also made two jars with 40gr seeds and placed 92% alcohol in them. In the beginning, I did not powder the seeds, which resulted in the fact that the liquid did not turn red. Which I found odd, so after some time I placed the seeds in a blender, once back in the jar the liquid turned red. Today, I decided to test the jars out,
I also did a alcohol extraction before and created resin. But I found that the overall yield was not high, so it would be a waste of resources to continue that method. Although I did not use acid and did not shake the bottles 3 times a day for 3 weeks. So the yield could have been higher if I did so.

So today I decided to test another method, which was cooking the alcohol to evaporate it and thus removing the ethanol from the liquid, I added water into the pan to dilute its content, I made sure to test the percentage by using an alcohol meter which indicated 30% which was fine. After some time the liquid (quantity) was reduced to 11%. The reason I wanted to test this out was the fact, that with alcohol a different spectrum of chemicals is to be extracted compared to extractions with H2o. I wanted to know if this would produce a different experience. In alchemy, water is assigned to earth and water. While alcohol is attributed to water and air, which in theory should make alcohol extractions superior (on a energetic & elemental bases)