Hi There,

I'm still new to extracting. I happened upon some shredded bark that I'd like to powder or refine for extracting. I've read the posts about using a various blenders, (wish I could afford a vitamix or blendtek) and various ways to make it easier, like freezing.

I have a simple spice grinder, a cheap one. I don't want to burn it out powdering my bark. Would it be work to soak it, say over night or for a couple of days to soften then grind little by little? Or maybe even soak with water and a little lemon? maybe heat it up a little? Or just stick to freezing it then grinding?

Thanks in advance for any advise.

the reason it is so hard to grind is because of how fibrous it is.

wetting it strengthens the fibers (as it makes them more flexible - hence freeing, to easier snap through the fibers)

as long as your grinder doesn't seem to be on its' last legs you should be fine (You can always stop it if it isn't working and you suspect it may be causing damage).

what probably would help is if you get some shears and cut the bark (going against the grain of the fibers, to make them as short as possible) down into smaller chunks.

Dry then wet, second blending shreds softer but not hard fibers when they are very small. Which is just dandy for teas. So I find.

I have always had best results going dry. When I tried freezing it would go warm to quickly because of the friction. I went from garden shredder -> blender -> coffee grinder -> flour sieve -> coffee grinder









From my experience slightly shredded bark will still work but not as good as powdered or as close to as possible.

Pressure cookers have higher temps and allow you to lyse the cell more which can help in the situation.

In either case I find that it is best to use a flour sieve to seperate the powder from the shredded fibre and cook the fibrous stuff in the pressure cooker.

P.S. I go from blender on 1 minute then put all of that into a coffee grinder for 30 seconds and you end up in the clear, make sure you have good blenders and grinders though because they can go out the window quick!

I've had very good luck using my girlfriends nutribullet and they're pretty cheap to. Also a cheaper knock off would probably work as well. you can extract from shredded bark so any amount of pulverizing will help for now. It doesn't really work that we'll if you soak it ime. Peace

Don't worry about grinding it. Soak your shredded bark in a small amount of acid solution (dilute vinegar, HCl etc) for a couple hours then freeze overnight. Thaw the bark ice block then add about 750mL of dilute per 100g of bark. Allow the resulting mixture (about 1L per 100g by now) to simme for 4 hours or so. You can then filter the bark out, and base the acid solution (or skip the filtering and base the mixture with bark left in). From here, extract as usual (nps pulls, a mini a/b cleanup if you want, and finally freeze precip/evap).

A good long acid soak with at least one freeze and one boil step should thoroughly lyse the cells and liberate all the alkaloids as water soluble salts.

Interesting that freezing lyses the cells also, whenever I tried to freeze and blend it... it would melt it too fast because of the friction and the bark would become more resistant to grinding and tough and stringy, so I just went dry and always got the best powder.

That's why you should soak it first and freeze it with that solution (which should result in a barksicle). The reason this works is because the excess water penetrates the cells and expands upon freezing, tearing the cell walls like a full beer can in the freezer. Once thawed, the bark mixture can be boiled to increase solubility and further break down the structure.