I have a few lingering questions about the Resin tek....
1. Dried v. Fresh: House and most others are apparently using fresh chunks. I have dried Torch chips. does the tek work equally well for dried vs. fresh material?
2. PH level: The amount of water and acid aren't specified in the tek, so I'm assuming the exact ph isn't important? In A/B teks, it's my understanding that the NaOH basified water assists in breaking down the cellular structure of the plant. Does the citric acid in the resin tek do the same thing? And if so, wouldn't it hold true then that the higher the acidity the better--quicker to break down the material?
3. Repeated extracts yield more?: I did my extraction as per the tek but then out of fear that some of the goodies were still in the drained pulp, I resoaked. The 2nd batch of water/lemon still tastes extremely bitter--is this indication that alkaloids are still present?
Archea over on the Nook.org wrote:
Which leads me to believe that repeat soaks/extractions might still yield additional alkaloids. Am I mistaken in this?
And finally...
4. Heat: I'm still fuzzy on critical temps during the extraction--Seems like I've read conflicting thoughts--boil the liquid vs. don't boil the liquid. Use heat to aid in evaporation vs. don't use heat. Bottom line--how sensitive are the alkaloids to heat? Is there a temp threshold that I need to stay under during the various phases of extraction?
Thanks for any help!
1. Dried v. Fresh: House and most others are apparently using fresh chunks. I have dried Torch chips. does the tek work equally well for dried vs. fresh material?
2. PH level: The amount of water and acid aren't specified in the tek, so I'm assuming the exact ph isn't important? In A/B teks, it's my understanding that the NaOH basified water assists in breaking down the cellular structure of the plant. Does the citric acid in the resin tek do the same thing? And if so, wouldn't it hold true then that the higher the acidity the better--quicker to break down the material?
3. Repeated extracts yield more?: I did my extraction as per the tek but then out of fear that some of the goodies were still in the drained pulp, I resoaked. The 2nd batch of water/lemon still tastes extremely bitter--is this indication that alkaloids are still present?
Archea over on the Nook.org wrote:
One interesting tidbit;
mescaline salts as found in the plants cross cell membranes easily in solution.
The blending/shredding/powdering of plants in my experience is often redundant and not needed, it liberates far more waxy materials and doesn't seem to provide a clear advantage.
Then again I use a simple concentration gradient method:
Say you have 1 given volume of cactus with a concentration of 1%.
You cover it with an equal volume of water with low to no TDS to begin with.
Let it sit for a time, this allows the concentration of soluble molecules, in this case an alkaloid, to reach equal concentration in the solution, heat can accelerate this but can also degrade the plant matter introducing more lipids and other junk into solution.
After sitting for a time in an equal volume of water the concentration of the plant reaches 1/2 of 1% or 0.5%.
Repeat the process and you get 0.25%
Repeat again and you get 0.125%
Again and you get 0.0625 %
If you have 4X the volume of the cactus to begin with the initial method results 75% of the soluble alkaloids in solution.
so 1% becomes 0.25% and a repeat results in 0.0625%.
The alkaloid in solution is easy to recover, I have not tried boiling filtering and freezing the solution obtained thus, but that may precipitate crystals due to the citric acid present in the cacti. However one can boil the solution to concentrate it, this results in the reverse of the process, thus if the total concentration is 0.25% by reducing the volume with boiling the concentration increases, decrease the volume by 1/2 and the concentration doubles to 0.5% and so on.
One can easily confirm this method, put a few thick slices of cactus into an equal volume of water and let them sit overnight, as long as it is not too cold you will notice the water becomes bitter with alkaloid, however there is little to no slime and very little green/brown chlorophyll.
Imagine you had 500lbs of cactus, hypothetically of course.
If you had a large barrel you could put the coarsely chopped plant material to soak, then draw off the solution after hours to a day or two and then repeat while concentrating the solution by boiling it down. When the plant and the water have no bitterness there is no need to repeat, this is easy to test, taste the water and taste the plant material. This method works well for freeze damaged material and allows large quantities of cacti to be processed.
One can take the solution obtained from the soak and boil it down into smaller volume, this volume can be placed into a single extraction vessel and extracted via normal STB and A/B methods.
This method lacks a name, but is related to osmosis and serial dilution.
Osmosis - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Serial dilution - Wikipedia
Which leads me to believe that repeat soaks/extractions might still yield additional alkaloids. Am I mistaken in this?
And finally...
4. Heat: I'm still fuzzy on critical temps during the extraction--Seems like I've read conflicting thoughts--boil the liquid vs. don't boil the liquid. Use heat to aid in evaporation vs. don't use heat. Bottom line--how sensitive are the alkaloids to heat? Is there a temp threshold that I need to stay under during the various phases of extraction?
Thanks for any help!
