Hi all

I know I dont tend to post on here very often and tend to wall flower more.

I've followed Cyb's Max Ion tek a number of times with MH from different sources and still consistently getting low results, normally about .8g from 100g of material. I'm at a bit of a loss of where I am going wrong.

I'm more than happy to write in detail on the extraction if it would be useful, I am wondering though if it could be the acid base part of the extraction. I am using vinegar to acidify but only managing to get the solution down to about ph3.4, is this enough.

I am thinking about using phosphoric acid next time, does anyone foresee an issue with this or should I be trying a different acid?

Grateful for any thoughts, I am at a loss.

Thanks
Kate xx

How often you pull whit wich solvent

Are you use shreeded or pulverized bark

Better tell us step by step so we can help you

Not the acid, I've only ever used 5% white vinegar and gotten between 1.5-2% yields from both ACRB and MHRB.

I always disliked teks, where you don't know how much goodies is in the bark before you finish the extraction. It's hard to identify where is a problem, without this information. Therefore I do classic STB and after pulling, I do back-salting by HCl. Not just back-salting, but proper titration (easy). This tells me exactly hom much is in this pull and whether I need to do another pull. After all pulls, I know exactly (+-5% if done correctly) how much spice to expect from the nonpolar solvent. So in any subsequent step in the process, I know how much to expect and if the result is not as expected I KNOW it is not a problem of weak bark and I did some mistake. This feedback helps a lot.
Moreover, with classic STB, the process is so simple, that you almost cant do any mistake when going from MHRB to nonpolar solvent.

I tried several acids including phosphoric, citric and ascorbic (vitamin C). I have not noticed any difference except when basing, you have to account for pH jumps in acids that give off multiple hydrogens (e.g. phosphoric is triprotic and gives off three hydrogens).

Acetic and HCl are monoprotic so it's easiest to use for titrations. I would stick with acetic.