Hawk in tree
Rising Star
Hawk had been using this method to make Kratom tincture and decided to try it out on some Mexican Mimosa that he had in his herb draw. I know people usually do an acid extraction first, but Hawk did a methanol extraction first. He has a homemade reflux extraction device made from an old pressure cooker with a cooper condenser on the top. He has a thread on a Kratom site that tell you how to make them. I'm not sure if posting links to other forums is allowed, but I can pm them to anyone who is interested. So - this is what he did 1.extract in methanol - reflux for 3 hours 2.recover methanol (under reduced pressure is best as you can recover it all) 3.disolve residue in distilled vinegar. 4. de-fat with a little naphtha. (not sure if this was necessary as solvent was pretty clear) 5.basify with 4g sodium hydroxide per 100ml vinegar (there was about 300ml) 6.extract with naphtha three times 7.reduce combined naphtha under reduced pressure (recovered 175ml leaving 125ml) 8. placed remaining extract in freezer for a couple of days. 9.poured of naphtha and left spice to dry for a day. He actually tried to dry the spice over a radiator the first time and was horrified to find that it all turned to a mush! But, re dissolved the mush in the naphtha and put it back in the freezer and all was well. He has also reduced the left over naphtha to 40ml and put that in the freezer. So far, very little has precipitated out - he tells me! He ended up with 980mg of Spice.
I wonder however if all that steps are necessary.