SO I decided to give a pressure cooker a try with my new extraction and unfortunately the jar exploded while inside. I had the jar about half filled with tin foil over the top, not too tight. The water in the PC was filled about 1/3 of the way up. The pressure cooker I am using has low / high pressure option and I used high, and it has a low / medium / high temp and I used high for that as well.

Do you think I just should have used low or just a shitty jar? Also, all of the liquid is now in the pressure cooker bucket, mixed with the tap water that was in there. Should I consider this batch a waste or can it be salvaged given that it is now in tap?

Also, can I just put it in without the jar? The bucket is all stainless steel, so no aluminum.

Cheers

At what point did it break? Could have been a cracked jar or cooled too quickly depending on the temps you’re talking about.
Similar situation happened to me once and I still salvaged most of the extraction, just had to dump it in a new vessel and restart the process after evaporating some water I think.

no idea, it was just broke when I opened it. It is the second time I used the jar though and the first time it was fine. The only difference was that the temperature was on medium that time.

But if you keep it, isn't that the same as doing th process with tap water from the start? Isn't that no good?

Tap water is not a problem. Any reason you think it would be?

I've never seen a jar break like that. Was it a jar designed for use in a PC (e.g. mason canning jar)?

Is this an electronic pressure cooker? Did the instructions say anything about how to use jars/canning?

I don't know, but I think canners (both pressure and regular) use baskets or racks (like a perforated plate with feet) to reduce temperature fluctuations (i.e. conduction). If the jar was sitting directly on the base, it's a likely issue.

I assumed tap was no good since all the tek I see says to use distilled water. The jar I was using was on the same shelf as all the mason jars in the store, but it is bigger and doesn't have a screw on top, so idk. If I can just do it without a jar, I think that would be easier. I will try to recover what I have, but it's been sitting in this water overnight now and needs to be boiled down a LOT. I also did have it on a rack, so not directly on the bottom.

Edit: The jar does have the work "MASON" on hit, so I guess it is.

It should be fine, nothing lost just diluted with water which is easy enough to remedy. Good luck!

The only use for distilled water I'm aware of is to try to make the freeze/thaw more efficient at breaking down plant material (larger osmotic pressure difference to increase plant swelling). I'm not sure how much of a real difference this makes (or even if it is significant: at most I would expect a small yield loss), but either way you are not at this freeze step. Did you already do a freeze step? If yes the deionized water has already served its purpose as I understand it.

Beware that MASON makes decorative jars. They have a different kind of lid and are marked "not suitable for canning" in the instructions (example). Not sure if that explains your issue but it may.

Cheers and good luck.

Yeah, that is the exact jar I had! lol. I continued the rest of the boils direct in the PC with no jar and then boiled down the combined amount to 500ml. I will pick up some real mason jars next time I go to the store. I just picked that one because it was bigger. The other ones are small, but I guess I can put a few of them in at a time and split the bark up between them. Thnks for that.