I have maybe 5 or 6 extractions under my belt now and I've had varied yields, but averaging .2-.7% on MHRB. I've used all variations of Marsofolds with more sophisticated gear like sep. funnels and sometimes defats, or re-crystalizing but I'm also interested in q21q21's tek. There seem to be so many different A/B teks out there and conflicting information I was wondering if I could get straight answers on a few foundational things so I have a better understanding of how I'm affecting my yields:
1. Acid Soak - can spice break down if it's too hot (say, unstirred for 30 mins on HI in crockpot)? would folks recommend a low-temp or room temp multi-day soak as per panoramix tek? what about taking the acetic acid and MHRB and putting it all on a blender together before/during soak? (my new expensive blender gets really really hot when grinding dry MHRB and blending the mix seems like it'd ensure thorough stirring). Also, what if I use less water and higher vinegar:water ratio? Is it just that the MHRB needs to be covered w/ water or is that 3qt water + 1qt vin some magic number?
2. Defat - the one time I used xylene to defat (only thing i'd done differently) I ended up with 1.2g from 450g spice, any possibility this was the culprit?
3. Non-polar Solvent pulls - Marsofolds recommends filling up the rest of the gallon container w/ water, is this just to prevent the tiny bubbles/emulsions from forming during the pull-shaking or because there needs to be that extra amt of water? Also, I want to use my sep. funnels with q21q21's tek so I don't have the mess of pouring off the naptha - any ideas? I like the idea cause I feel like I'm losing some by throwing away all that fiber and then the settled powder... I want to make sure i'm freebasing then pulling EVERYTHING.

There just seems to be such disparity in yields, times, temps w/ different teks I'm wondering does anyone really know why it's varying so we can build better teks or are folks just kinda wingin' it and publishing their lab notes when they get good results??

1. Acid Soak ... what about taking the acetic acid and MHRB and putting it all on a blender together before/during soak?

Also, what if I use less water and higher vinegar:water ratio? Is it just that the MHRB needs to be covered w/ water or is that 3qt water + 1qt vin some magic number?

1. Acid Soak - can spice break down if it's too hot (say, unstirred for 30 mins on HI in crockpot)? would folks recommend a low-temp or room temp multi-day soak as per panoramix tek? what about taking the acetic acid and MHRB and putting it all on a blender together before/during soak? (my new expensive blender gets really really hot when grinding dry MHRB and blending the mix seems like it'd ensure thorough stirring). Also, what if I use less water and higher vinegar:water ratio? Is it just that the MHRB needs to be covered w/ water or is that 3qt water + 1qt vin some magic number?

2. Defat - the one time I used xylene to defat (only thing i'd done differently) I ended up with 1.2g from 450g spice, any possibility this was the culprit?

Forget all those questions and do a BLAB. You'll never look back.

Pokey