Good evening Nexus,

My brother's cat's imaginary friend had a few questions about the Hippie Salad tek.

hippie salad oil tek

During the pull phase, they were having problems in that the MHRB/Sodium Carbinate mix was absorbing all of the oil from the 1st/2nd pull attempt. I guess this was due to overmixing,as stated in the discussion, but can this be corrected or fixed? Would you think that additional (heated) pulls could grab any alkaloids, or if the oil is clumped to the materiel, is there any way to recover it?

Secondly, when a "heated pull" is mentioned, do they mean that the actual solvent is heated then added? In this case heated oil added to the mixture, or maybe adding oil and letting it sit in a hot water bath? Perhaps both are acceptable.


Thanks for all responses.

You have two options; you can add moar carb and/or you can dry it out in the oven a bit on the lowest setting with the door cracked open.

If you add moar carb go for the consistency of cookie dough or play dough, just barely malleable but truly solid material that is easy to separate from the liquid.

If you choose the oven you can either try to get it to a moar solid consistency by drying and adding moar carb or just dry it out completely and powder the mixture. If you do the latter it will be impossible to separate the powdered material from the oil and this can give a smaller yield and make things more difficult so I'd recommend just adding moar base if possible.

The oil that's trapped in the plant-goo isn't really going to come out, you should be able to recover some when you add moar base but for the most part it will stay in there, you make up for that by multiple pulls with the oil so any that is stuck inside is just minimal amounts. Put moar simply, just don't worry about getting it all; it'll be okay.

As far as heating, I think using a heated water bath or adding hot oil are both acceptable approaches. Last time I just set the jar with the oil and plant-dough mixture on a coffee pot warmer while it sat to pull and that worked out well.

Thanks for your reply.

I think the best bet is to try to rebase it. The plant/oil is pretty soild right now with a oily texture. Hopefully a few heated pulls will get most out if it. It is the first attempt at this tek and first attempt at an extraction so it is a learning process!


There was also another question: at any point is it possible to suspend the extraction for a long time? that is either before/after the pulls I'm guess that having plant matter sit in sodium carbonate or just having the oil from the pulls in a covered container shouldn't matter much.

Yeah you should be able to suspend the tek at any time really just seal up what you have and put aside till you are ready to work with it again.

What was done: more Carb was added and mixed through the plant mass and left covered overnight. The next morining it appeared to be a bit dryer, with a lumpy but still moist consistency. Hopefully this helps it along, but dont' see the harm of doing additional pulls.

thanks again!

Sounds good!

Looking forward to hearing your results.

Please do let me know if you have any more questions

Thanks, it is always nice to have a bit of guidance when trying things out for the first time.

A bit of an update: after it was rebased, fresh sunflower oil was added until it just covered the plant mass (about 150ml) as a note, 50 g of well powdered MHRB was used.

after an hour, an attempt to pour off the oil was made. Although a little came out, the plant material was pretty much mixed in and suspended in the oil. (it was solid, moist (but not wet) mass before ) It was left overnight to see if it could settle more.

In the am another attempt to pull off the oil was made, but the same thing happened. So systematically spoon by spoon of oil was pressed throgh the tea strainer to recover most of the oil and dry up the plant material again. The lump was pressed together again in a solid lump and another pull is in progress, (stilling in a warm water bath with a bit less oil)

From reading the original tek, it sounds like the oil should just pour off pretty easily, assuming the right texture.

If this continues, is there an harm to rebasing after each pull attempt to try to correct for texture, or perhaps it is better just to suck it up and press the oil through the strainer if needed for each pull? Well for this attempt anyway

It sounds like your material was too thin from the get go, the dough should remain solid and the liquid oil should pour easily off of it.

Sounds like separating the two was quite tedious for you, ingenious method however. I see no reason why you can't add more base between pulls and attempt to get a better consistency, though it might not work so well with the oil already in there.

I am in the process of revising and re-writing the tek in a much more clear manner with pictures. I'll go ahead and attach some pics of what the dough looks like before and after adding the oil and mixing.

Image 1: The dough (it should be solid like this, more or less the consistency of cookie dough)

Image 2: The dough in the oil

Image 3: The dough after being mixed into the oil (notice it did break down into a kind of course sandy texture but is still solid and the liquid can easily be poured off.

Thanks for the quick response.

A final heated pull is being done and will proceed with the oil collected to see if some sort of yield can be recovered. The source material will be saved in the event this proves successful.

I can say that the bark/oil ect never looked like the pics that you posted. Actually it is pretty much black..like jet black. The process from the start:

50 g well powdered MHRB mixed with 50g sodium carbonate (baked baking soda 1-1.5 hrs at 200f stirring half way) - appearance was pink with no white/red spots.

150ml of water was slowly added to the solids while mixing. here is where it stated to take on a blackish tint. Also of note, the mason jar seemed to be warming as it was mixed. It was let to sit overnight.

From then the oil was added, (as described in the earlier posts) pulls remain to be quite dark. The source MHRB is about 1.5 years old, but was stored in a double ziplock bag and kept out of sunlight/heat/cold. not sure this has anything to do with it but who knows.

perhaps not enough water was added in step one, as much of the oil from the first pull was absorbed into the plant mass..

Oh yeah sorry I should mention that's phalaris grass not mhrb. hehe

The process and everything should be the same. Actually when I do it on mimosa it turns grey for me with CaOH.

As long as your oil is pulling color it sounds like it should be doing what it needs to do. Proceed to salt well in small batches with the vinegar. Evap that, base again, and pull into alcohol and you should be good to go.

I read through the version 2.0 very nice to have the pics as aid. It is also cool to see how each material can very through the process.

Just a bit of an update in the case that there are other members following it.

The vinegar reduction has been finished, now just waiting for the material to evaporate a bit more to add the carb.

Other than the general newb concerns of "is this going how it should" and the probs with the oil on the initial pull, things have gone pretty well. Some this I've learned just from doing it once.

On smaller amounts maybe it is better to use a thin tall container. That way if the oil from the pulls don't come out so easily, a spatula or spoon should be enough to hold the material back while it drains. Of course if the initial carb mixture was a bit better perhaps this is of no matter

Also don't be super-obsessed with getting all the oils/separation in the earlier steps. A small measuring spoon worked for me in absence of a pipette/baster. (although a big straw was attempted but this proved to be cumbersome)

Stil got a couple of steps to go, but the product is quite orange with some red particles forming..not sure if this is lefover plant material (as it was filtered quite a bit) but will update as it unfolds.

Results:

first pic: Final evap


Second: Final product. (not the best picture)

It has yet to be bio-assayed, but does it look good?

Final question since this comes from MHRB, can it be expected that this will be a full-spectrum product?

Thanks for all the help

Looks good

Thanks for trying the tek, I'm very happy to see others having success with it.

I'm not sure on the selectivity of veg oil yet, but I expect it to be similar to limonine, so I believe that it is a full spectrum product.

Thanks for a non-intimidating food safe tek

there seems to be a bit of oil left as when trying to collect it, it all mushed together. So it is a bit hard to determine yield at this point. Considering another 99%ipa dissolve/filter.

Trying to get an idea of potency before it is made into changa, so might have to give it a test spin soon!

Everything was evaporated and dryed out. It was a bit surprising to see how sticky the end product was, when scraping it up it managed to come completely together.

The yield was a bit low, but maybe that could be to a number of factors: only doing 4 or 5 hour long pulls that were heated only by an initial boiling water bath, problems with the initial consistency, over filtering, or perhaps the starting material that is 1.5 year old MHRB that was sitting in a double ziplock bag in a closet.


Love the idea of a food safe tek with easy to find material, so think more experimentation is needed with it.

Some ideas:

1) q21q21 style vinegar wash to start (as mentioned by I believe Jamie in the original Hippie salad thread)

2) splitting the material in two jars of equal material for the washing step instead one big one. Just thinking that more surface area can be exposed to the oil.

3) Heating it for an hour on the stove in a water bath, stirring everynow and again, then leaving the pulls in for longer time. (not really anything that is groundbreaking, just something that wasn't done the first go)

4) being a bit less hardcore about skimming off oil layers knowing that filtering will catch most of it.

5) being more patient when wating for the final product to evap. Admittedly when it looked like it was dry there was still a bit of moisture to it. Not thinking, it was transferred to a notebook where most of the wetness (keep in mind it wasn't a lot, but still some) was absorbed by the paper. Rookie mistake maybe.

That yield does indeed look quite low for 50g mhrb. It could be due to all sorts of factors however as you mention.

In any case thanks for giving the tek a go and for your insights.