I have been meaning to write this up here but didn't want to start a new thread, here seems appropriate. I follow tek II and use a slow cooker. I achieve apple crisp consistency by heating it on low for an hour or so. To heat the naptha I simply slowly warm it up in the cooker. Sometimes it can get too hot imo, that's when I pull yellow or even brown oils and on my most recent extraction a peculiar transparent oil id not seen before as per your description that scraped up as white, floral scented powder and is getting sampled tonight!
Recently both my coffee grinder and food processor packed in: they lasted a year of MHRB each...not bad going but left me in ye lurch. I figured my shredded MHRB would still yield after a few hours soak in vinegar. The only vinegar I could procure at the time was Sainsbury's White Wine Vinegar: 6% acidity. I couldn't find any advice for or against it apart from its inclusion on the wiki so thought 'wine not' and dribbled it in. Once the water was in it looked fantastically gory and I felt cautiously optimistic. After adding the calcium hydroxide it looked like a suitable yet fibrous bed for the Newport naptha. I would stir, then wait for the sizzle of naptha then compress the bark beneath the naptha with a potato masher so that it was completely submerged. Then after a whole break it apart with a chopstick, repeat and pull. 6 pulls on 250g shredded, hand broken MHRB yielded 5.32g mostly white spice, a little over 2%, not at all unheard of for q21 but one of the best yields I've had and my current extraction is doing nearly as well, 3g on 4th pull
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I hypothesis the extra one percent acidity white wine vinegar, extended soak time and the potato masher submersion break down most of the cell walls and wonder what kind of yields I would be getting with my new approach and equipment if I started to powder my bark again!
White wine vinegar...WINE not?!
And don't fear if your blender or coffee grinder breaks, this has worked 3 times for me now with no impulse to visit Argos again any time soon! As somewhat of a Luddite I shall grind my valerian in a pestle and mortar
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Many many thanks to q21q21 for his super efficient, clean spice extraction tek that delights me more every time!