I see those big percolators on ebay where you can brew 40 cups of coffee at once. Would one of these be good for a caapi extraction? I don't really know how these machines work, but I think I would put the plant material on the top, fill the rest with a solvent like water or Everclear and heat it up for a few days. Would the water just keep on recirculating and passing through the plant matter? This could be good for cactus or syrian rue too. Would this be an effective way of extracting and would it work as I described?

I already looked into this.

It looks attractive, but it’s less effective than boiling the plant matter in a pot. Basically it re-circulates the used extraction water over and over. It boils the water at the base. When the water comes to a boil, it rises up a little tube and is dispensed above the coffee grounds in an upper chamber. Used extraction water then drips down through the grounds, and then drips back down into the base. Once the water is saturated it no longer extracts anything from the plant matter.

A Soxhlet is similar, but instead of re-circulating used extraction water, it circulates fresh distilled water. That’s many times more efficient than the percolator. After many hours, the percolator’s water becomes saturated and can no longer extract anything from the coffee. This doesn’t happen in a Soxhlet. In a Soxhlet, the water that circulates is distilled water and not saturated so it can endlessly extract from the coffee until every last bit of what’s in the coffee is extracted.

You are better off boiling it, then straining, and then boiling again in new water. With boiling, the plant matter bounces all around and this constant movement causes extraction efficiency to go up dramatically.

Basically the only difference between boiling the plant matter in a pot and using a percolator is that the percolator takes much longer to extract the same amount. Both use the same extraction method: boiling water. Boiling in a pot, the plant matter is completely surrounded with the water. In the percolator, the water is just dripping through it, and it cools down while this happens, so not only is the plant matter not surrounded by water, it’s also not at the boiling point. Efficiency is lost, more power is needed to run it, but you don’t need to watch it. The trade off is convenience over efficiency.

It’s definitely much more convenient to use a percolator.

When extracting something like caapi which is very tough to extract, it’s going to take a long time in the percolator, and cost a lot of electricity to keep it running. But it’s very convenient and will work.

I think the main drawback to using a percolator, even a 100 cup version, is that it doesn’t hold much plant matter. You can put a lot more plant matter in a large pot. A 100 cup percolator can hold about 6 cups of crushed herbs and will take about 2 hours to extract the same amount of coffee that would take only 20 minutes on a stove top in a large pot of water.

It’s going to take about 6 times as long as boiling in a pot of water. So consider that. You could run it overnight IF it doesn’t have auto-shutoff. Most of them do have an auto-shutoff feature and it can’t be bypassed to allow it to run more than the preset auto-shutoff time (normally 100-200 minutes for a 100 cup machine). So be aware of that. It's best to get the cheap manual ones with NO automatic circuits of any kind. Make sure you check the specs. Just because the ad doesn’t mention auto-shutoff, doesn’t mean it lacks this feature. Many have this feature.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Is there a soxhlet that you can recommend? Do these accommodate larger amounts of plant matter and are their purchases suspicious or watched?

There are several places that sell Soxhlets. There are some really huge ones that can extract more than the peculators available. The large percolators are about 100 cups. They hold 6.25 cups of coffee grounds which is 1478 ml. A 50 cup percolator holds about 739 ml of grounds.

The typical size glass Soxhlet used for plant extraction is 1000 ml. When more than 1000 ml is needed, most operations use more than 1 Soxhlet. But there are larger Soxhlets.

A glass Soxhlet is normally found at a lab glass store. They are pricey. Expect to spend several hundred dollars getting a whole setup. A percolator is MUCH CHEAPER. Soxhlets are not watched because they have little to do with most illicit drug labs. Their main use is to extract herbs, fats, oil, etc., and they are normally not used to make heroin, cocaine, meth, etc. But even so, you should get one from a small store that needs the money, because they are much less likely to report anyone.

A steel Soxhlet is designed specifically for herbal extraction and not at all a suspicious purchase. These are found at some herb supply stores. They are also pricey. These are much larger than the glass Soxhlets and can be used to extract several pounds of herbs at a time. They are safer, easier to clean. They are basically just a large steel pot with a large wire basket at the top that holds the herbs. The water boils at the bottom of the pot, vaporizes, and rises to the top of the pot. The lid has a coolant system in it which condenses the water vapor causing the distilled water to drip down into the herbs under the lid. The coolant used is running water, and the cooling system is just a coil of brass wrapped around the lid. The lid is inverted so that the center of the lid points down towards the herbs, so that the water drips down to the center of the herbs.

A steel Soxhlet system can be made easily. You just need a large pot with an invertible lid, a suspended basket to hold the herbs above the water in the pot, some copper tubing to attach to the inverted lid in a coil for running water to pass through as the coolant, and you need some adaptors to connect the copper tubing to a faucet. One end of the copper tubing connects to a running faucet while the other end goes to a drain. The middle of the copper tubing is wrapped in a coil all around the inside of the inverted lid (which is now the top of the lid). When the water runs through the copper tubing, it cools down the lid causing the lid to condense the water vapor when the vapor touches it.

You can make your own steel Soxhlet for under $50.

Cool. I'll see if I can get a steel one locally. If not, maybe I'll attempt your tek to build one. Thanks.

homemade - http://forums.mycotopia....y-soxhlet-extractor.html

Phlux-, nice link.

Those pictures give you an idea of how it can be done. If you want a large scale version, it's better to use all steel, and not glass.

Glass is only good for small extractions. Once you get to a certain size, you've got to use steel or something else.

Imagine lugging around a 20 quart glass Soxhlet! My God! It will be very heavy and easily broken!

I recently bought a soxhlet online and have yet to try it. It will arrive tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it. It's not as big as mentioned here, but it will be an interesting piece of kit to experiment with.

Meanwhile, I was shopping today and saw this

If one was to load the water reservoir with distilled water and add acetic or citric acid, and then powder, say for example, Diplopterys Cabrerana and pack that tightly into the filter basket, would the resulting brew be as strong as an "expresso" ? I've read a lot about the Herbal Peculator, would this device be more efficient and concentrate the brew in just a few mugs?

We have one of these espresso machines at work and it never crossed my mind up until now to experiment with. With coffee, by the time your first mug is full, the water is already looking very clear when processing the ground coffee beans. Would the metal cup be affected by the acidic water if used as mentioned above? I was just cleaning my kettle the other day with a citric acid water solution that worked very well on cleaning the metal heating element - would this affect the filter basket on an espresso machine?