I have made three different changa / enhanced leaf blends, one of which is Pau D'arco. I find with this one that it is difficult to get the bowl to "cherry" and I am often left with a small amount of gooy spice at the bottom of the bowl after a couple of hits. This means I dont get the full dose I measured. One of the other two is enhanced caapi leaf, calea and blue lotus. It cherries with a single lick of the lighter, and the whole dose burns to ash in one long hit. I can breakthrough on as little as 20mg with this, but it takes more like 30-35 with the D'arco.

My question is, is there any way to salvage the spice in the D'arco mix, and re-use it in a new blend? If I re-soak it in IPA and fish out the majority of the D'arco, will I be losing most of the spice, or will it migrate back into the IPA, as it is not as absorbent as other herbs. Has anyone ever attempted this and has a method I could use?

Ive never tried this, but there should be no reason for it not to work, a possible second soak should get all the goodies out.

If you find that you cant pull all the spice then just enhance the Pau again and keep it for a rainy day

Let us know how it goes.

Salvaging may be possible, but pau d'arco is such a nice herb to work with...
You could just mix blends together. Calea and pau work wonderfully together in my experience.

Also, a dash of non-infused peppermint on a packed blend will make cherrying of any herb a very simple matter.

Thanks gamma and Eden. I might try and mix the D'arco and other mix together.

Out of interest, how fine do you chop the D'arco? Mine is about as fine as I could do it with a pair of sharp nail scissors, I am sure one of those electric weed grinders could have done a better job though. Could the D'arco pieces not being small enough be part of the problem?

Size could possibly be the issue...I usually just break the pieces small enough to fit in the pipe...no bigger than 1cm.

Really though, bark is simply a pain to burn...it is specifically resistant to cherrying. Good evolution, trees.

haha, I suppose you're right, I didn't think about it like that! Mine is finer than that, the biggest is prob 3mm. I'll have a think about which option to use to solve the problem and report back if I find anything of note.

I would say dry some peppermint to a crisp, and blend 50/50 with the pau d'arco. Maybe even blend it to a weaker mix, which you can put in a deep bowled tobacco pipe and pass around for a communal journey. Might be nice for on top of a mush trip or something.