First strip it in thinner layers with your hands, then cut the thin layers into smaller squares with good scissors, then blend them in small few-seconds sessions

....I dont mean to hijack your thread OP but one figured this might be a good place to pose this question...

is powder necessary for the transfer of alks during the acid boils of an A/B?

or would the smaller squares (as per endlessness's post) suffice?

-logically powder would seem to transfer alks (from bark to the acidic water) more effectively, because of the increased surface area, but one is just curious if anyone has bothered to try an A/B extraction without first powdering the material?
- and if there was any deviation from normal procedure

Thanks,

The Dude

Thanks man, will give this a shot.

You could also use a mortar+pestle to powder it by hand. Nice and oldschool. It takes a lot of energy tho, cutting and blending it is a lot faster. A mix of all three methods is perfect. Especially if you have a really weak blender.

mortar and pestle huh? I never thought of that.

A friend of swim's did a STB a little while ago with whole bark chips. To process the chips (around an inch by an inch or two across) he was saying he broke up the chips by breaking them in half, putting force on the backside of the chip effectively cracking the outside part of the chip then tearing apart. Once torn apart the half inch or less sized pieces were easily shredded/powdered in a simply black and decker coffee grinder..(the blender took too long and was quite ineffective) It took him a couple hours to do the hand breaking and about an hour to do the coffee grinder bit.

To DudeMeetTyler, doing just that would be fine. Assuming the your small squares are nice and small, you would probably only have to compensate by boiling for ~15 minutes extra. Even if you don't, I don't expect there to be much of a discernible difference in yield.

I use a cheapo little coffee bean grinder. It works, but it takes a while as you can only do small small quantities at a time.

Hmmm, might write in to this guy and ask him about MH

i have had amazing results with coffee grinders, just shred then chop with scissors as endlessness mentioned, then toss in the grinder.
works much better than a blender, but lots less room (blenders tend to tear it into fibers, wrap those fibers around the blades, which could potentially cause damage to the blender)

This probably not the best idea, you will be at it for a while, even thinking about it i feel you couldn't powder bark with a pestle but idk.

Best bet use a blender, have your pieces small, this should do too much damage, if not go buy a cheap little blender good luck

Sorry to resurrect an ancient thread!

I was wondering about instead of powdering it prior to soaking, what if you hydrated it and then blended it? I did think that in liquid it might not get very small as the bark would hit the blades less as it is in the liquid.

I'm wondering if this would work alright? Either in a liquid or drained? And if you were to do a freeze/thaw would you do this before or after?

Is this advisable at all or should I give it a miss?

Freeze/thaw it first a couple times so the cell walls are already broken, then the material should be more easily busted up by the blender.

I found it more efficient to blender it with about 1:1 ratio of liquid and bark rather than dried or moist bark alone. Otherwise you have to shake like hell to get non-blended pieces near the blades.

Hope it helps!

SWIM uses a Blendtec blender to process about 50g of bark and blend it at half speed for 40-50 sec. Blendtec blenders aren't cheap but they do an amazing job.

Any good blenders/grinders for cheap money in europe?

will this do:
https://geizhals.de/grun...erer-weiss-a1270451.html

?

Looks like it might survive one grinding attempt long enough to get most of the job done.

You might be better off with something like this:
https://www.ebay.ie/itm/...c0878:g:tKwAAOSwdgRiuYit
for around five times the price

Combining threads?
root bark grinder recommendations

Your link on the last post is unavailable, Jees.

I found the 750g one though. Not too shabby for 80 bucks. They make a 300g and 150g for a little cheaper, but the best bang for the buck is the 750g.

750g Grinder

Those links are indeed temporal. But a search on "cgoldenwall 700gr grinder" should deliver. So we have from the same family of grinders