Rundar
Rising Star
Hello Nexus! I'm Rundar. I thought I'd introduce myself by way of a discussion of several summers worth of attempted Phalaris brachystachys extractions, and hopefully shake out some personal details along the way. I assume there are other threads for specific discussion of such teks so I'll have to look around for those. At any rate, here we go!
I first met Dmitri under "not-Nexus-approved circumstances", and immediately I realized the wonderful gift that the universe had given me - and began a quest to pay off that debt. I want to understand this experience, I want to heal and grow as a person. I want to take this seriously and integrate my experiences. And, as a student of chemistry, I yearn for the satisfaction of a job well done and a system working in harmony.
So I got some P. brachystachys seeds and grew them up big and strong. The stuff's invasive (at least where I live) so it has no problem getting situated, especially in a pot in a growth chamber. The first picture I have attached is of the two current plants, the one that's flowering is about 6 weeks older than the other. you can see the huge difference in the shape and size of the leaves (probably partially due to over-enthusiasm on the part of the harvester) in the younger and older plants, I find that the biggest leaves come just a week or two before the flowers. I really like these plants, they keep me company. I tell people they're my roommates.
So when the time comes to harvest I drought-starve them for a day or so and sometimes gently rasp the bases of stems with a safety razor. Then I wait for "civil twilight" and harvest one to two cereal bowls stuffed full (yeah, lack of accurate measurement is a running theme here. It's pretty cringeworthy, I know), which are then vacuum-sealed and frozen. After four such harvests I thaw the grass and push it through a wheatgrass juicer. It's really tough and stringy so I have to use some distilled water to get it moving – but only a little! About a cup or so. All told I'm left with maybe a cup of thick green juice and a dry mass of leftover fibers about the size of a small prescription bottle, which then gets refrozen for a day.
The thawed juice gets mixed with an equal amount of 5% white vinegar and thrown in a little 1-quart Crockpot for a couple days, heating for periods of 8-18 hours at a time with occasional stirring. I do acid pulls from the dry mass as well, double-boiling it in a small beaker inside the Crockpot. Saves space! A thick dark amber liquid comes out and goes through a coffee filter which picks up all the chlorophyll and gunk. After it settles a little I might do another filtration – the longer it boils for, the easier it is to filter. Once the liquid is cool, I add NaOH pellets until the solution turns dark red (eyeballing it at probably 30-40g). pH paper confirms we're in business as does a beautiful tan precipitate that begins to crash out. It's my favorite part of the whole process, I regret not taking a picture.
The whole bottle smells like spice. Now I do pulls with heptane – heating the liquid in a double-boiler setup, or heating the heptane, or both – and set the heptane out on a plate to deposit a uniform sheet of waxy crystals (this is the second picture that I have attached). I get about a gram or so of this stuff, but it seems much much denser than the fluffy crystals I've seen around the site. These smell like spice but won't melt, instead just puff up like burnt marshmallows and fade away. Very sad! Now, I've tried sandwiching this between some cannabis and I got some okay effects – just above baseline, no oevs, no chrysanthemum. I also recently tried recrystallization with double-boiled heptane and that didn't really redissolve it – maybe I didn't get it hot enough? That can't be it, it was bubbling. Okay, so the super-cloudy hot heptane is decanted, leaving gross orange goo (which is my third picture) behind. Evaporation under a heat lamp yields a meager amount of whiter crystals, still very waxy and still not melting. They don't even really smell anymore.
So that's where I am right now. I'm currently gearing up for some 100g ACRB extractions using basically the same routine, but with more attention to getting solvents hot and saturated. I think that should be a lot easier than the grass (I don't see a lot of threads on here of Phalaris success stories, but maybe I'm not looking in the right places). I would love to get this tek to work though – I have enough seeds to become totally independent if I can just get the spice flowing all the way through. My current hypothesis is that the alkaloids are being broken down because of all the time spent sitting in the freezer (sometimes for a month!). I should get a big jar and some ethanol for future harvests, probably.
Sorry about this big wall of text, I hope I made it at least a little interesting. As I said before, I'm super psyched to be a part of this community and expand as a conscious being. Hopefully we can chat about this tek and help share the wisdom!
I first met Dmitri under "not-Nexus-approved circumstances", and immediately I realized the wonderful gift that the universe had given me - and began a quest to pay off that debt. I want to understand this experience, I want to heal and grow as a person. I want to take this seriously and integrate my experiences. And, as a student of chemistry, I yearn for the satisfaction of a job well done and a system working in harmony.
So I got some P. brachystachys seeds and grew them up big and strong. The stuff's invasive (at least where I live) so it has no problem getting situated, especially in a pot in a growth chamber. The first picture I have attached is of the two current plants, the one that's flowering is about 6 weeks older than the other. you can see the huge difference in the shape and size of the leaves (probably partially due to over-enthusiasm on the part of the harvester) in the younger and older plants, I find that the biggest leaves come just a week or two before the flowers. I really like these plants, they keep me company. I tell people they're my roommates.
So when the time comes to harvest I drought-starve them for a day or so and sometimes gently rasp the bases of stems with a safety razor. Then I wait for "civil twilight" and harvest one to two cereal bowls stuffed full (yeah, lack of accurate measurement is a running theme here. It's pretty cringeworthy, I know), which are then vacuum-sealed and frozen. After four such harvests I thaw the grass and push it through a wheatgrass juicer. It's really tough and stringy so I have to use some distilled water to get it moving – but only a little! About a cup or so. All told I'm left with maybe a cup of thick green juice and a dry mass of leftover fibers about the size of a small prescription bottle, which then gets refrozen for a day.
The thawed juice gets mixed with an equal amount of 5% white vinegar and thrown in a little 1-quart Crockpot for a couple days, heating for periods of 8-18 hours at a time with occasional stirring. I do acid pulls from the dry mass as well, double-boiling it in a small beaker inside the Crockpot. Saves space! A thick dark amber liquid comes out and goes through a coffee filter which picks up all the chlorophyll and gunk. After it settles a little I might do another filtration – the longer it boils for, the easier it is to filter. Once the liquid is cool, I add NaOH pellets until the solution turns dark red (eyeballing it at probably 30-40g). pH paper confirms we're in business as does a beautiful tan precipitate that begins to crash out. It's my favorite part of the whole process, I regret not taking a picture.
The whole bottle smells like spice. Now I do pulls with heptane – heating the liquid in a double-boiler setup, or heating the heptane, or both – and set the heptane out on a plate to deposit a uniform sheet of waxy crystals (this is the second picture that I have attached). I get about a gram or so of this stuff, but it seems much much denser than the fluffy crystals I've seen around the site. These smell like spice but won't melt, instead just puff up like burnt marshmallows and fade away. Very sad! Now, I've tried sandwiching this between some cannabis and I got some okay effects – just above baseline, no oevs, no chrysanthemum. I also recently tried recrystallization with double-boiled heptane and that didn't really redissolve it – maybe I didn't get it hot enough? That can't be it, it was bubbling. Okay, so the super-cloudy hot heptane is decanted, leaving gross orange goo (which is my third picture) behind. Evaporation under a heat lamp yields a meager amount of whiter crystals, still very waxy and still not melting. They don't even really smell anymore.
So that's where I am right now. I'm currently gearing up for some 100g ACRB extractions using basically the same routine, but with more attention to getting solvents hot and saturated. I think that should be a lot easier than the grass (I don't see a lot of threads on here of Phalaris success stories, but maybe I'm not looking in the right places). I would love to get this tek to work though – I have enough seeds to become totally independent if I can just get the spice flowing all the way through. My current hypothesis is that the alkaloids are being broken down because of all the time spent sitting in the freezer (sometimes for a month!). I should get a big jar and some ethanol for future harvests, probably.
Sorry about this big wall of text, I hope I made it at least a little interesting. As I said before, I'm super psyched to be a part of this community and expand as a conscious being. Hopefully we can chat about this tek and help share the wisdom!
