Excellent work Trickster.  I have switched my focus to sonication.  I purchased a converter/horn and a 750 watt power supply for a very good price, but they were mismatched components..  After fooling around with it for a couple weeks to make the mismatched converter work with the supply I am able to get very high energy delivery to my samples.

The point is in this process I too have discovered with the help of Benzyme that elegance of not over acidifying my extractions.  Using just 3 ml of 8% vinegar in ~500 ml of water to process 100 grams of MHRB I sonicted for about 1 hour (1/2 hour per 250 ml),  I did gross filtering and decanting, and then basified to about pH = 13 using 5 grams of NaOH.  It is good to conserve chemicals.. I could have used a lot less lye.  I got a modest yield of about 0.6% using Pentane/Hexane PE doing several (8) pulls in my separation funnel.  The result was my usual snow white powder.