Hi all, long time no spice!

A friend of mine recently picked up some bark. HE usually gets it in powdered form, but accidentally ordered strips of bark. A lot.
What's the best way to do this? Should he use the blender? Food processor? Rent a piece of equipment?

Beat the crap out of it with a hammer.

Try a pepper mill

Not really. Most SWIYs use a cheap coffee grinder.

The way I used to do it is to get a pair of shears or other cutting device and cut the strips into 1-2" long pieces. Then slowly add the pieces to a blender and blend them in small batches.

Be careful, mimiosa dust can really mess up your sinuses.

Break it into relatively small pieces and put it in a GLASS blender with a metal on metal rotating device. If you use plastic, the bark will put little scratches in your blender and get small amounts of plastic in your powder. You don't want that.
Also, wear a mask unless you like picking purple boogers out of you nose for three days.

SWIM was considering trying a cinnamon grater, but he usually uses coffee grinders after breaking it up with his hands.

Yeah, you really want to avoid inhaling it or getting any into any cuts you might have, it can lead to serious infection.

This is exactly how SWIM does it. Just dont inhale the dust. You have to actually TRY to inhale it. Dont sniff after blend.

swim uses a regular mouth quart jar. the threading on regular mouth quart and pint jars is just the right size for most common blender fixtures.

It just screws right on and then you blend up your material. Considering the entire jar is self contained, this helps reduce getting a blast of astringent mimosa which can easily happen with top loading blender.

⠀

You guys might check out the Magic Bullet blender. Those things grind anything pretty fast and won't get stuck.

Why not just get one a good one from walmart for under 20 bucks?

SWIM just chews it up and spits it into a pile of lye...but seriously a cheap coffee should last about two kilos or more if SWIY's careful about how he uses it. SWIM would be scared to use a magic bullet and have it burn out, since it's a little pricey. He'd really like to try something manually operated, like a grater or a grinder with a crank.



That looks pretty handy, but has SWIY ever had a blender burn out?

coffee grinder. http://www.amazon.com/Kr...ee-Grinder/dp/B00004SPEU dont pay 60 for one though. they will last forever if you use them correctly. when powdering, pulse the grinder rather than keeping it on continuously. if the motor begins to heat up which it will after powdering a bit of bark, let it cool off for alittle.

self powdering seems to give swim better product. dont know if thats a factor of oxygen exposure or the quality of what is in pre-powdered bark.

short answer: no

long answer:
SWIM's found that as long as you watch the temperature of the blender base and put it in the refridgerator/freezer for 15-30 minutes whenever it starts to get noticeably warm that it shouldn't burn out. One could let it cool down naturally, but SWIM finds keeping it colder really prevents tear and ware.

the real trick is to make sure the jar/blade fixture is properly connected to the base and to add a little bit of downward pressure while blending. Due to the jar being more compact, it can rattle and get thrown off balance if left unattended.

SWIM also takes off the jar and shakes it periodically during the blending session to try and move remaining large pieces toward the blade. If you're leaving the blender on to grind it down constantly, that's disaster waiting to happen.

SWIM does all of this, and he's gone through his fair share of kilos, and they always burn out.


If you ask SWIM, the amount of caution he uses when grinding (certainly not enough, but he tries) vs. the expedience of his methods vs. price all balance out. Losing a $20- grinder to $300 worth of bark isn't so bad when one considers risking a $60+ grinder (that simply isn't meant to grind bark) while spending days upon days grinding and cooling.

It would behoove anyone using a coffee grinder to do so within a five gallon bucket. This way, there should be very little powder loss, as coffee grinders do leak a lot of powder. Plus, all of the powder could simply be poured directly into the bucket.

SWIM has never had this really come up. SWIM doesnt need to blend beyond 1-2 mins TOPS before everything is nice and ground up. SWIM admits taking about 250G and breaking it into 3 different grinding sessions but seriously 2-3 mins each max.

SWIM also cuts the back strips into 1-2 inch long pieces FIRST which makes grinding much easier. SWIM also takes this time to reflect and focus on the spice in the bark and treats this much like praying over the communion (sp?) christ chex. lol dane cook.

SWIM usually assembles a team of specialists to pound through a kilo of bark within an hour or two

I have always had best results going from frozen whole bark into a garden shredder then in to a blender. This expands the cells and ruptures them as watter expands when it freezes, aiding in the extraction process. Freezing can be done before the shredder or the blender, in other words, you may want to freeze the bark after the shredder so you can fit more shredded bark in the freezer.. If the bark is already dry it can be rehydrated in water overnight before being frozen and put through shredder or blender.

So, from garden shredder -> water soak -> 1-2 day freeze -> blender while frozen mixed with water -> recycle some water with a sieve back in to blender for new batch.

Alternatively, you can do it all dry and use a flour sieve, but this is messy and you breath in a lot of dust.


From my experience slightly shredded bark will still work but not as good as powdered or as close to as possible.

Pressure cookers have higher temps and allow you to lyse the cell more which can help in the situation.

Not the quickest or the easiest method. But I find with strips of mhrb, the bark is usually easy to break into small pieces by hand & twist down into fibers.
Some tougher pieces remain (usually only a centimeter or two in size).
If you have a halfway decent blender (mine was ~$40 at Wal-Mart) it powders into a find dust & some small fibers this way in a matter of a minute or two.

It requires no extra equipment to be bought & 50g can be broken down by hand in 45minutes or so. You honestly shouldn't need to break down a whole kilo of bark at once, it stores much better whole & if it is of any quality, 50g will provide 1g dmt or very close, which when vaped correctly should last quite a while.

With acacia, this is MUCH harder, as most of the bark I have encountered from confusa has been thick & woody.