Salute,

with the kind support from the mighty wizards of Nexus, SWIM successfully extracted a ISHO (In SWIMs Humble Opinion) very clean Asena F/B (Essene Therapeutate).

Encouraged with his success, he decided to replicate the process (based on Manske and knowledge from endlessnesss "Harmalas Extraction and Separation Guide" and Phlux-s "Swims Peganum Harmala Extraction" thread) but this time on a larger quantity (300g) of the sacred material from a different vendor.


DAY 1
SWIM used an old manual Burr grinder (as the motor of his freshly acquired semi-professional automatic coffee Burr grinder unfortunately gave up his filthy smelling spirit after just a few seconds of Esphand grinding after merely 4 successful previous usages ).

Therefore SWIM ground the 300g of seeds from the Burning Bush of Moses rather finely, put them in a large jar and covered them with 1200 ml of AAS (=3% Acetic Acid Solution) as 3x300g of AAS as suggested by Manske did not seem to be enough.


DAY 4
After 3 days SWIM used a rather fine plastic sieve to filter out about 700g of plant material to which he added 900ml of AAS, labeled the container EX2 and put it in the fridge.

He heatened up the remaining 800ml of fluid and added 120ml of SSS (=saturaded NaCl solution to it), labeled it EX1, let it cool down slowly to room temp and then put it in the fridge.

DAY 5
SWIM used the same sieve to filter out plant material from EX2. SWIM added 1260ml of AAS and boiled it for cca. 1,5 hours, filtered out any plant materials with the sieve, reduced the volume to 500ml, sieve filtered again and labeled the fluid EX3.

In parallel he filtered EX1 and EX2 as well with standard coffee filters. Filtering out EX2 was a pain, but filtering EX1 was INSANE, nothing like what he ever experienced before in his previous extractions.

A larger part of the precipitates did not settle but remained floating, decanting was thus impossible. The 'gunk' was very soft and clogged the filter almost immediately, making it only drop just once per several seconds! It was glowing insanely in UVA, and reminded SWIM strongly of the mess that is left in the filter after filtering CWE of Argyreia Nervosa (HBWR) with added olive oil -- a material so soft its almost impossible to squeze any liquid out of it. SWIM suspects the problem might be too much oil/fat from the seeds somehow binding to the gunk.

After many hours and many filters, SWIM got most of EX1 through the filter, separated some reasonable salty gunk and poured the unfiltrable rest of half-gunk-half-fluid into filtered EX2 and sieved EX3 (it contained way too much magic to just throw it away).

Swim redissolved what he filtered out from EX1 in AAS and put it back into the EX1 container. The remaining fluid still glowing under UVA a lot he labeled R1.

He then heated up the fluid from EX1, added 24g of NaCl and 300ml of SSS, put it back to EX1, let it cool down to room temp and put it in the fridge. He repeated the same for EX2, EX3 and R1.


DAY 6 - TODAY

Thus he now has:

EX1: First extract, washed with NaCl once, 1500ml light colored fluid (mostly yellow with a slightly brown-red coloring ) with lighter yellow precipitates (look a bit like xtals but feel soft, organic, a bit better than before but still a pain).

EX2: Second extract, not washed but paper filtered, 1500ml light colored fluid (mostly yellow with a slightly more brown-red coloring than EX1) with lighter yellow precipitates (these look more like floating gunk, similar to what he had in EX1 before previous filtration).

EX3: Third extract, not washed, only sieve filtered, top 2/3 has red/brown coloring, the bottom is yellow, looks a bit sandy (has tiny particles).

R1: Remaining Fluid from first wash of EX1. Glows pretty much but nothing seems to precipitate anymore.


SWIM has ordered a large amount of seeds lately (several kg), he needs to know whether their quality is appropriate and the yield is sufficient by the end of the week, in order to be able to either send them back to the seller or transfer money to his account.

SWIM thus requires to get a reasonably representative yield, to assess the potency of the material. But he fears that filtering this way might take weeks or even months to complete -- if it ever will.

He is progressively acquiring and enhancing his alchemical equipment and would like to acquire some vacuum filtration, but he did not have the time yet to find a supplier, choose a suitable product etc. The time is pressing and SWIM is not sure how to proceed best to finish at least 3 salt and 1 soda washes till end of the week and to not screw up the extraction, not get a deceivingly small unrepresentative yield.


Can the mighty wise wizards of Nexus please guide SWIM with their precious advice so that he may learn from his mistakes, comprehend the causes of the problem, improve his skills and especially meet his goals by the end of the week?


Could it be that the new seeds SWIM used were perhaps fresher, less dried and thus more oily?

SWIM also wonders - could the manual grinding (probably finer than the automatic grinding he used before) have had caused such a big difference?

SWIM measured the temp in his fridge and found out its just 10 grade Celsius right now and he is unable to lower it any further. Is this sufficiently low or perhaps hardening precipitation too much?

Is there some way to remove fat from magic teas (already containing salt and acetic acid)? Might boiling with activated charcoal or something else perhaps help?

Is there some other way to make the material filterable?

Could SWIM somehow enhance his filtering system (simple paper coffee filters, 2 simple plastic filter-cones) or acquire/build a better one fast? (choosing, buying and shipping professional lab equipment would take way too much time that SWIM does not currently have).

What should SWIM do in the future, to avoid producing such a mess?



Sincerest Regards,

from a Humble Nexus Apprentice