extractions, etc.

[Mr.P]

Another batch of spikenard extract in the works, I've been puttering about and not watching closely but I believe it's on cycle 4 now. Device works flawlessly! 2L boiling flask is en route so I can take advantage of the large mantle and have a little wider margin for how much solvent I can put in. 🙂

One nice thing about this mantle is that it has a thermostat with a PID controller and a metal temperature probe. It will switch the mantle on and off automatically to maintain a particular temperature on the probe,
So I can set the mantle to be not too much hotter than the boiling point of the solvent.

 

[Mr.P]

Just ran a batch of Lysimachia (rei-ryoko). I am working through some old Japanese incense ingredients that I've had on hand but never got around to actually making into incense. Has a very distinct a rumor that smells like a facet of Japanese incense mixtures for sure.

The resulting extract is not as impressive as the spikenard, but it does have a good aroma - it's not dominated by dull generic cooked plant notes or anything like that - the smokey, phenolic-medicinal and herbal pungent qualities of the dried herb come through clearly. Next week I will be concentrating all of these tinctures down under vacuum (if packages arrive on time) to get them to an oil or near oil state.

 

[Shiningrobes]

I would love it if you were able to distill all the classic Japanese incense ingredients and make a true incense perfume! Gosh, sounds so easy right?

 

[Mr.P]

I would love it if you were able to distill all the classic Japanese incense ingredients and make a true incense perfume! Gosh, sounds so easy right?

That's definitely an idea that I could get excited about, and I have some steps on the way completed due to my own past dabbling. Distilling I like leaving to the experts (for the time being at the very least) just because of the quantity of materials involved.

What would need to be on that list of items? Of course many ingredients can be purchased as essential oils are absolute, but for my own extracts i have strong tinctures of benzoin siam and sumatra, oud wood, ambergris, musk, spikenard, kunroku, kaempferia, rei ryoko, saffron, myrrh, musk root, borneo camphor, frankincense and a few others that i am forgetting about.

Again, I'm curious what you would want to see in that set of ingredients

 

[Shiningrobes]

Cinnamon, clove, sandalwood, star anise, cedar?

 

[Mr.P]

Extracting haisoko today! This stuff is so fibrous, my little grinder will not begin to handle it. This is one I'm going to chop up with scissors and will have to run for extra cycles because the material will not be ground to a powder. I have no idea how to describe this aroma - it is not particularly strong or definitive; the roots are a little dusty and earthy smelling, there's a mild pungent sweetness maybe a little anise like, soil-like, with a slight medicinal vibe. This is a low impact material - as I am chopping it up I'm becoming hesitant to set up the extraction because I worry it might be a waste of time. I could never understand the contribution of this material to incense mixtures either, probably because I did not process or blend it properly.

 

[Shiningrobes]

I wonder if any of these have corresponding uses in Traditional Chinese (and by extension Japanese) Medicine. I once made the mistake of telling a friend my stomach was bothering me and she gave me some herbs prescribed to her by a TCM practitioner. To her, not me. X-rays and exams and finally a three day course of laxatives.

 

[Mr.P]

I wonder if any of these have corresponding uses in Traditional Chinese (and by extension Japanese) Medicine. I once made the mistake of telling a friend my stomach was bothering me and she gave me some herbs prescribed to her by a TCM practitioner. To her, not me. X-rays and exams and finally a three day course of laxatives.

They certainly do, and when I was first researching incense making with a fervor back in the late 90s early 2000s, I could find many of the classic ingredients in Japanese incense if I visited enough traditional Chinese medicine dispensaries. There was one shop that used to be in the bay area, long gone now, that was epic - literally any ingredient you could think of unbelievable sculpture quality agarwood and their medicinal stuff was sinking grade (I bought a big chunk, still have it). Ambergris, musk pods, borneo camphor, etc..

 

[Shiningrobes]

They certainly do, and when I was first researching incense making with a fervor back in the late 90s early 2000s, I could find many of the classic ingredients in Japanese incense if I visited enough traditional Chinese medicine dispensaries. There was one shop that used to be in the bay area, long gone now, that was epic - literally any ingredient you could think of unbelievable sculpture quality agarwood and their medicinal stuff was sinking grade (I bought a big chunk, still have it). Ambergris, musk pods, borneo camphor, etc..

😳😳😳 I left Oakland in 1995. I wish then me knew what now me knows.

 

[Mr.P]

😳😳😳 I left Oakland in 1995. I wish then me knew what now me knows.

I would've scooped up a lot more of what that guy had if I had the perspective I had now myself. I really didn't know enough to appreciate what I was seeing there especially with the large sculptural agarwood and musk pods dated from 1975 that the owner brought over from Hong Kong along with all the rest of the inventory when they moved to the US.

I made a couple of good purchases, and then when he tried to resupply his agarwood he was sent garbage. I remember him showing me the pieces that he had received, they were obviously painted, the guy was clearly unhappy especially since it was intended for medicinal use. I remember him asking me what kind of lowlife you have to be to sell someone something like this

 

[Mr.P]

Grinding up some kunroku resin to extract in the soxhlet. This is the next in a series of Japanese incense herbs I am working through. I recently made Kaempferia, Nardostachys, and Lysimachia extracts. I have a handful of others I may try, this resin seems like it would be likely to yield something interesting and in some kind of quantity. This pestle with the skirt is really nice it actually forms enough of a seal that there's a slight vacuum when you lift it up after each hit - makes a suction "fwoop" sound and it also reflects how good this thing is it keeping material trapped. The skirt seals on the rim on the down stroke and on the return air rushes in from the perimeter drawing things back into the middle. Pretty clever design.

 

[Mr.P]

Made a small upgrade to the extractor, the last piece needed arrived today. Looks the same as last time but the flask on the bottom has twice the capacity (and there is a small glass collar acting as an adapter between the large flask and the "receiver" for the extractor). I could not find a large flask with the right sized joint, I've been waiting for that adapter.

Now the question is, what to extract? I'm saving the sandalwood for a special occasion, in part because I don't have a grinder capable of milling a couple hundred grams of hard wood.

I don't have enough cultivated kinam to load the receiver... this is something I am working on 🙂

I have a bunch of 20 year old patchouly leaf from Yamada Matsu but from what I've read patchouly does not make a good tincture - it was used at one time as a coloring agent and not for aroma.

I mainly have haisoko (Agastsche rugosa roots), myrrh, and sandalwood. Costus is in the mail. I might do the haisoko since I have this in abundance. I'm going to have to start getting a regular stream of dried plant matter coming my way to run through this thing, I'm open to suggestions and if you have something that you want extracted let me know.

 

[Shiningrobes]

I’ve suggested them a lot lately in reference to incense, but Scents of Earth has a good selection of plant material and resins, woods and powders. Piñon? Conifers in general? spices in general? SAFFRON!!!! Oh, and saffron!

 

[Mr.P]

There are definitely a few things I fantasize about putting in there, I think saffron needs to be on that list, even if it turns out to be partially imaginary. 🙂

One realistic thing on my list: i am going to get a bunch of cultivated Kinam and make a really nice thick sticky kinam resinoid. I'm working on that CK order now - getting a few hundred grams.

 

[Mr.P]

Doing a small experimental extraction of some pre-processed CK wood. I have a large batch of wood and performed a straight extraction last time, it came out very nicely as far as I was concerned - a nice mild oud fixative. I'm going to try a variety of pre-extraction treatments to see how they alter the aroma of the extract... the premise being that there's a whole lot of aromatic potential locked in this material that is simply not realized with simple distillation or extraction.

Fortunately for me I had a bunch of marbles. Yes! I have not lost my marbles, so I was able to use them to occupy some space in the receiver of the extractor. Thank you @Loulikesoud for the suggestion! The extractor works in cycles, each cycle requiring a receiver to fill with liquid (that is being distilled into it, drop by drop) and then drain into a flask beneath. I just wanted to do a smaller batch of wood and it would take a long to complete a single extraction cycle (not to mention 5 or 6) if I had to fill all of that space above it with alcohol each cycle. If I were doing a full batch, that whole space would be filled with ground up wood.

having it take a longer time to fill is not necessarily a bad thing and it certainly gives the wood more time to sit in each charge of alcohol, but by constantly refreshing the contents of the receiver, you make sure that the wood never spends a lot of times sitting in alcohol that's already saturated with extract and this speeds up the whole process tremendously.

 

[Mr.P]

This Valerian plant started growing last summer, right up against the foundation of my house so I was conflicted about pulling it… I'm glad I gave it a year, as it has developed a pretty decent sized root mass. Smells sweet snd musky, just like green spikenard - it hasn't developed a strong valeric acid note yet, but there is enough to give it that same peculiar funk that sets the green spikenard oil apart from the brown.

I'm going to trim off most of the vegetation but leave a bit of the base of each shoot because I noticed this is how the Yamada Matsu spikenard was processed. I plan to dry this and then extract it as soon as it has been dehydrated with 200 proof alcohol. I believe (hope, really) that this will produce rich musky and Spikenard-like aroma and avoid overblown valeric acid notes. From what I have read those develop over extended time in the presence of water. My guess is that this will be an oil that ages like cheese lol and will get funkier with time.

 

[Mr.P]

Getting ready to pound some kinam chips to soften them up a bit for my small grinder... this seems to work pretty well and I can make pretty short work of chips this way. This will be experimental extraction number three, I'm going to try to tweak the process to produce another variation. Variation number one is kinamic / balsamic / herbal. Variation number two is kinamic / sugary / confectionery. we will see what comes out of this one. The basic parameters available to manipulate (other than raw material or pre-treatment) are basically temperature and time...

 

[Mr.P]

Another batch of green kinam resinoid in the works! In the close-up you can see the line of extracted resin as the alcohol first makes its way through the column packed with wood. This wood has no inoculant - just mechanically stimulated to produce resin.

 

[Mr.P]

First pass extract beginning to move into the siphon tube. When it reaches the top of that narrow tube it hits a U-turn, and once it starts flowing down, it drains all of the extract out of the larger cylinder where the wood is soaking. this leave the chamber ready to receive a fresh batch of alcohol for the second pass extract. The first pass extract is heated in a flask at the bottom of the device, and the evaporated alcohol goes up to the top where condenses and drips back down through the wood forming the second pass extract. This can be repeated as many times as necessary. All of the different "passes" end up combined in the bottom when the process is done. Then it goes into the rotary evaporator to remove the alcohol under vacuum and concentrate the extract.

 

[Mr.P]

Usually I move the extract directly from the extractor to the evaporator. Last night it was getting late however so I left the extract in the flask it collected in overnight, and I'm going to remove the alcohol today.

when I poured the tincture into the evaporator, there was a heavy residue left in the flask.

I poured some alcohol to try to remove the residue from the bottom and it formed a cloudy milky liquid. I heated this up a little bit to try to speed up dissolving, and paradoxically this cleared the liquid and caused the sediment to clump up. I interpret this as meaning there was some kind of polymer that was suspended in solution and when I heated it it melted and kind of clumped up which caused it to precipitate and clear the liquid.

Heating it was clearly a mistake though because it caused it to become gooey and sticky and now I've got quite the cleanup task. It would've been easier to remove the sediment if it had not been heated.

* Update… coarse rock salt cleaned that flask up in no time. for any of you who might be getting into extractions, make a note of that. The rock salt trick is a lifesaver.