First pull from 75g ground acrb (ran shredded bark through a bullet grinder to powder as best i can, did a pretty good job). As a way to take my mind off things, i started working my way through a bunch of bark i offered a few months ago and was waiting for something to work with. Such as the reminders I've had lately that tomorrow is not a given, i figure i in might as well at least get this figured out.

After a few 75 g extractions went further south than i planned, couple emulsions, a poor yield, I've been able to replicate the same yield with the same consistency three times.

I think the trick has been 100mls vinegar added to the bark in 400 mils water and letting that sit in front of my space heater in my room for 12 to 24 hours.

Anyway, I'm super happy with this one, this is just the first pull with 100mls to naps.

yummy
I hope you are doing well. Keep your head up and enjoy your product.
Looks great!!

I hope you have a wonderful day

well done!

i'm going for my first extraction this week and this is very inspiring to see!

enjoy that beautiful stuff

Right on Null, looks good. I just got around to getting another blender, the large pieces of bark broke the plastic pitcher of my last blender. Yesterday we went to the Value Village and found an awesome Osterizer blender with heavy duty glass pitcher for $10!! Powdered up 200 grams of bark and got to work. I just put a corningware in the freezer about an hour ago. Solvent was very cloudy. I've really loved this acacia bark.

How are you?

I had also wanted to see how much more difficult it is working with acrb as opposed to mhrb and I have to say that my preference is with acrb. Sure some nice white xtals can be obtained using a stb on mhrb, and that will likely just give goo with acrb, but the time and labor involved by adding an acidification step is really negligable. I found that there is no need for vigorous heating, multiple boil/reduce cycles, nor to strain the plant material before basing.

The addition of 100ml of boiling hot water satrurated with non-iodized salt does indeed seem to increase the yield, as well as reduce the possibility of emulsions forming.

This was all done in a fairly cold environment, and the only heat source was the same little space heater/fan I use in my room. Operating on the idea that I needed to perform multiple boil and reduce cycles in the acid stage to obtain acceptable yields and quality made extracting somewhat of a daunting prospect. Finding that it is not necessary to stink up the house nor to spend the hours of attentive simmering is freeing and lets me play with this hobby as much as I like.

Thanks for asking, I appreciateit- I'm doing okay... I am planning to update my other post this morning.

Pull 2 from same extraction: i expect a tiny weight loss as the spice hardens, but a rounded down 2g from 75g bark gives a over 2% yield, most of which i put down to quality bark. However, I've also had good acrb yield little, or nothing but goo, so i have to conclude that this method, using the 12-24hr warm acid soak and saline added just prior to basing works well with it.

I had run out of nps with this one, which i realized after the basing stage, and this one sat in base solution for over 24 hours before the first pull was done. Common knowledge would warn that that should cause a lot of fat to cross over on the first pull, and it does appear fairly yellow, but i don't think it caused to much of an issue for my taste, and the consistency is a nice sugary wax that is stable at room temp.

I've been reusing my nps, and it gets to be really bright florescent yellow after being evapped 1/2 way and freeze precip'd a couple times, but it seems to not drop out too much into the final product, or at least it's acceptable to me.