Plant Fats on Surface of Acacia Brew?

[CheeseCat]

Hi everyone, I recently brewed 75grams of dried phyllodes 3x, resulting in about 6 litres of extracted phyllode water. I let it sit for about 3 days (lid on) due to not having time to reduce and refrigerate. Now there is a strange gooey substance floating on the surface. I'm not too worried about it as I'm assuming it will join the main body of water when heated. My thought is, it is probably plant fats but I'm not entirely sure? The other possibility is that it might be the result of contamination as there may have been a few small pieces of bark and foreign matter amongst the phyllodes. I've never experienced this gooey stuff before but I've also never let a brew sit for 3 days either. It seems easy enough to scrape off but I don't really want to omit anything from the brew if I can help it.

I plan to reduce the brew down to about 80ml accompanied with Syrian rue.

Grateful for any advice

 

[CheeseCat]

Something that I’ve realised is that before the last wash I put the phyllodes in a blender to break open the plant material more. Prior to doing this the water washes were clean and clear but very red. I think what has happened is by blending the phyllodes I’ve introduced other plant constituents into the wash, hence all the goop now on the surface.

My question now is, is blending plant material really necessary? My thought is, for a purer water wash it would be better not to blend plant material at all. I’m not sure extracting DMT requires plant material to be excessively torn open to be released. I think DMT is likely released freely when introduced to hot water and breaking the phyllodes open with a blender probably only collects a marginal amount of alkaloids but a substantial amount of other things - sediment, fats etc. These additional factors probably impact the experience more negatively too, making the brew harder to digest for example.

I’ll definitely filter the brew once its reduced, which should eliminate any remaining undesirables.

 

[CheeseCat]

UPDATE:

After reducing the brew down to 500ml, all the blobby goops have completely gone and the brew looks good! The reduction took a few hours, during which time the brew has become homogenised - fat particles being distributed evenly throughout. This was an interesting experiment

 

[acacian]

If I see waxy stuff floating on the surface while the brew is still acidic I usually try and skim it off. But if boiling further destroyed it then great! Omitting any insolubles during acidic phase is highly preferable imo.. that way you can be more sure that whatever is in your final extract is just alkaloids. Plus a clean solution makes extraction easier (less chance of emulsion, less other precipitates when basic, less contaminates overall etc). Or are you drinking it?

 

[CheeseCat]

Thanks for those good points, Acacian.

But if boiling further destroyed it then great!

I'm not sure the goopy stuff has been destroyed but rather broken down into smaller parts and spread out. Similar to homogenised milk, heat breaks up the fat, preventing the milk fat from settling on the surface and consequently exists uniformly throughout. I could be wrong, seems legit though :lol:

My method is quite slow, using my slow cooker on low it never quite reaches simmering point. I do the washes over about 2 days. I'll be drinking it this time as i think its probably the most conclusive way to test if my floribunda is active. My freebase extraction method(s) require a bit more time and refinement still.

Btw, these little phyllodes are from the nursery floribunda I bought about 4 yrs ago. It dropped heaps of leaves heading into summer, as it did last season; maybe trying to conserve energy?

Come to think of it, I should have probably put this in the Acacia floribunda - Workspace and Information, as it's probably more relevant there...

 

[acacian]

Very interested in whether the nursery floribunda there is good! Keep us posted

 

[CheeseCat]

I'm intrigued as well. Will do :thumb_up: