MFH - Experiments & Materials

[MaxFromHolland]

I made a resinoid of "sweet fern" I collected from the woods around my father's house… it had a distinct strawberry aroma in its top and middle notes, with a dry down like labdanum of all things... surprising stuff. It's not literally a fern, that's just the common name.

Sounds interesting, Its not common in Europe, dont know if it is sold for gardens (yet). We do have sweet gale, which is also fruity/resinous but i dont know if that would be a feasible substitute (yet🙂).

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Birchbark into amyris
Hydro, 20hr soak, 12hr run

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Infusing oil with an oak moss 'ethanolic-concrète'. This time I evaporated all of the ethanol before adding oil.
Just trying to figure out which method gives the most true scent..

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Scent is the result of the technique applied
Here: slow evaporation with just enough heat supplied to compensate the cooling down

1L autumn oak leaves tincture @ 50ml/hr

 

[Mr.P]

Scent is the result of the technique applied
Here: slow evaporation with just enough heat supplied to compensate the cooling down
View attachment 53414

1L autumn oak leaves tincture @ 50ml/hr

If you don't mind sharing, 1 liter of alcohol with how many grams of leaves? and 50mL per hour is the rate of evaporation?

 

[MaxFromHolland]

If you don't mind sharing, 1 liter of alcohol with how many grams of leaves? and 50mL per hour is the rate of evaporation?

I used the folk method of filling a 1,8L jar with dried and schredded leaves and topped it off.
Since starting the tincture i've learned that the folk method is not ideal as one risks that the alcohol becomes saturated already before fully penetrating and extracting whatever is deep inside the plant matrix. So next time i would weigh the dry matter and use a 1:4 ratio.

As i understand it you need to judge how easy or hard it it for the solvent to penetrate the specimen and adjust the ratio for that. Oak leaves are though, so 1:4 or 1:5 seems appropriate.

I roughly calculated evaporation rate to be 50ml per hour. Mainly to know if there is enough in the bowl to leave it running while sleeping. Juggling work sleep and experiments 🤹 that is.

If you gradually up the speed of the magnetic stirrer starting from zero there is a sweetspot with some kind of ripple visible on the surface. Its different for each bowl and not very fast in general. At sweetspot the evaporation seems optimal because the ripple enlarges the surface area because its just enough to break up the surface layer which would otherwise be mostly oils, waxes.
Opting for natural evaporation (w/o vacuum or heating) doesn't mean you cant optimize the conditions 🙂 or so i figured until deeper understanding enters brain.

 

[MaxFromHolland]

To expand on motif for trying passive evaporation while having a vacuum setup

I was chatting with my teacher (AI) about what would the the best method to concentrate a tincture if optimized for quality of scent.

The general consensus on 'optimal' distillation/ extraction/ whatever seems to be biased by economics.
A is better than B because its cheaper or faster or the process can be controlled by a relatively low skilled worker etc.

Digging deeper into the pros and cons of vacuum evaporation, it mentioned that the boiling (at 30°) and vacuum would
- Reduce the boiling point of everything, not just the ethanol
- The boiling of the ethanol acts similar to bubbling with an inert gas, stripping molecules from of the liquid
- Never reach liquid-headspace equilibrium because what turns into gas phase gets removed by the pump

As an aside i learned that the volatiles are much slower to condensate than the ethanol, which explains why they do not all end up in the recovered alcohol (in case of using a rotovap) most of them are removed into the atmosphere by the vacuumpump. Which also explains why in my reflux distillation setup, so many didn't end up in the receiver but in the air..

All which doesn't mean that this attempt to do a more natural evaporation is better per definition. There still never is an equilibrium and the prolonged exposure to air will have its effect as well. While the vacuum method could be done slower with less deep vacuum to avoid the bubbling effect.
I dont have bottles to fill and sales to make, so i can just experiment and find out what to me feels like resulting in the best quality.

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Revisiting some bottles
Patchouli distillate is beginning to turn into something warm and creamy, if it keeps maturing in the same direction it may even become classy

The extract, which is a totally different scent is losing a bit of the dark caramel note but its still sort of a patchouli goes gourmand sweetness

I also have a blend of both aging, But after sniffing the other two my nose refuses to make sense of it

Second oak moss extract where i evaporated all liquid before adding the oil is pretty close to the benchmark, much lighter and fresh than the first try, like it!

So far the birch bark distillate (in amyris) smells of nothing interesting at all, think i let that be and try an extract of the leaves instead

Bought a bottle of shisandra berry co2 extract, what an interesting smell, woody and spicy at first, kind of seperate notes but then it melts into a broad palette of all sorts 'oriental' and further in the drydown hard to tell its a single ingrediënt and not a perfume..

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Scent is the result of the technique applied
Here: slow evaporation with just enough heat supplied to compensate the cooling down
View attachment 53414

1L autumn oak leaves tincture @ 50ml/hr

Meh
The more concentrated the liquid gets, the slower the evaporation, pretty much to a standstill at some point.
However, that first part from 1 to ~0,25 liter i find interesting. From 0,25 to zero in the vacuumchamber should fit in an evening session.
So, semi passive bulk removal followed by vacuum finishing will be my next trial.

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Oak bark steam distillation
(plain, no carrier oil)
Running for 24 hrs now..

 

[Mr.P]

Oak bark steam distillation
(plain, no carrier oil)
Running for 24 hrs now..
View attachment 53459

curious to hear what that smells like. Any idea what type of oak?

 

[MaxFromHolland]

curious to hear what that smells like. Any idea what type of oak?

Me too, after disappointing birch..
We call it summer oak, Quercus Robur.

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Me too, after disappointing birch..
We call it summer oak, Quercus Robur.

Just did a first pull to preserve what i've got so far. If anything, it is not short on borneol and cineool. Think it can cure an elephant from a cold.
Theres some of the typical mellow oakwood scent somewhere in the background. Cant distinguish anything else yet.

 

[Mr.P]

Just did a first pull to preserve what i've got so far. If anything, it is not short on borneol and cineool. Think it can cure an elephant from a cold.
Theres some of the typical mellow oakwood scent somewhere in the background. Cant distinguish anything else yet.

borneol!!?? very cool!

 

[MaxFromHolland]

borneol!!?? very cool!

Yes. Geranol and nerol in the leaves, borneol in the bark, makes you wonder what that tree is hiding in its acorns. Pity i didn't collect any..

 

[Mr.P]

Yes. Geranol and nerol in the leaves, borneol in the bark, makes you wonder what that tree is hiding in its acorns. Pity i didn't collect any..

i've definitely smelled something like borneol / patchoulol in leaf mulch, bamboo in particular.

 

[MaxFromHolland]

i've definitely smelled something like borneol / patchoulol in leaf mulch, bamboo in particular.

Its interesting to study the different stages of decay as they have different profiles. Enzym stage often leads to a temporary increase of some volatiles like alcohols. Fungi stage brings more damp earthy notes. Im sure there's a lot more to it and it probably is different from one plant to another.
Not enough hours in the day im afraid.. but doesnt harm to keep a notebook writing down what you harvested, moist or dry, level of decay etc. Just in case something is surprisingly nice, you know what to look for next time.

 

[MaxFromHolland]

Some muddy looking boilerwater from the oak bark distillation.
Pleasant fragrance, dry woody, some sweetness. Want to do a liquid-liquid extract of it, but this time i try to add the oil and evap the water as opposed to shake and separate.
This way i end up with a mix of oil and solids that can further macerate a while. Curiosity and such..

 

[Eleusis]

What oil are you going tu use ?

 

[MaxFromHolland]

What oil are you going tu use ?

Jojoba. It has perfect characteristics to absorb the scent being a wax with looong chain molecules.