Extraction - Alcohol Based Kava-Kava Extraction

[0utrider]

SWIM found this, hope some people are interested in that

I thought I would submit a report on kava kava just because there seems to be a lot of confusion relating to how to prepare it, eat it, and so on. I’ll be the first to tell you that Kava Kava can trigger the upchuck reflex, especially the first few times you try it. It is almost enough to say hell with it. As most of you probably have read there are 4 or 5 ingredients in kava kava that produce the various effects. A couple are lipid (fat) soluble and the others are water-soluble. All of them are alcohol soluble, or at least the important ones. Some things you might want to know before doing this. It takes a fair amount of time, it is slightly messy, and it needs to be monitored. The last thing, you get only active ingredients (maybe a few other things but not much) so it is super powerful. Start with small doses. Anyways enough talk here is my tried and true method to prepare the stuff. Stuff you need:
1. Isopropyl Alcohol (rubbing alcohol)
2. Kava Kava
3. Glass pot
4. Metal pot that the glass pot can fit inside but not tip-over in.
6. Strainer
1. Go to the store and buy isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol). I have been using 91% isopropyl 9 % water medical grade stuff. It is really cheap (1.29 for 16 OZ) and you can buy it at almost any store. This is going to be your solvent.
2. You need Kava Kava, if you have ground up root great, it saves you a step. If you have the actual root it is time to grind that stuff up into the finest mush you possible can.
3. Set your stove on low and bring a pot of water up to about 120 degrees F. This does not need to be exact, I have boiled the water a few times on accident. While the water is heating dump your ground kava into the glass pot, now put in half again as much isopropyl alcohol (i.e., put in 1 cup of kava kava, put 1 1/2 cup of Isopropyl). You just need to make sure the mixture is liquidy not sludgy.
4. Test your water that you have been heating, it should be just cool enough to touch but too hot to leave your hand in. Place the Glass Pot with the kava kava and isopropyl alcohol into the metal pot. NOTE: DO NOT DUMP KAVA KAVA AND ALCOHOL INTO METAL POT. You are only placing the glass pot (kava and alcohol) into the other metal pot (water). The reason for doing this is you do not want to directly heat the isopropyl alcohol since it would be quite easy to accidentally overheat it.
5.This step smells bad, the alcohol will be vaporizing if you have anything like a fume hood use it. Now you get to wait, at least a half an hour just let your mix warm, stir every few minutes. The reason for this is to dissolve the Kavatones (active ingredients) into the alcohol. The only part about this step that is important is to not get water into your mixture of kava and alcohol and to not let the water get too hot resulting in boiling your mixture. If it boils though, don’t worry, it will all still work.
6. Time to get out the strainer, into a separate pot strain your mixture. What you should have is a golden/brownish color alcohol smelling liquid in the bottom of whatever you strained the stuff into. In the strainer you have ground kava junk, it still has a lot of alcohol with kavatones dissolved into it so you are going to want to pour more isopropyl alcohol through the strainer over the kava (this isn’t essential but you will get more stuff at the end if you do it). What this will do is wash the rest of the important stuff into your mixture.
7. Now wash out the glass pot, it should just have a little junk in it. Once you have washed it out and DRIED it (semi important) pour your isopropyl /kava mix into the glass pot.
8. Put the glass pot back into the metal pot to heat again. Now we are evaporating the isopropyl alcohol so what you will have left is basically pure kavatones. The ideal way to do this is to get your water up to about 160-180 degrees. This part takes a few hours depending on how much liquid you have to evaporate. It is all right if the alcohol boils but it is safest if you keep it just under the boiling point or where it is a very slow boil. Normally isopropyl boils around 101 degrees F but since it has a solute in it, it boils much closer to 160-180.
9.Keep checking on your evaporating liquid, making sure it is not boiling too hard and also make sure not all of you water has evaporated, put in more water as needed. Near the end your mixture will be very sludgy, this is good.
10. Once you have reached the sludgy point you want to turn the stove down and bring the water temperature down to around 120 again. The reason for this is to keep from burning whatever you have left in the pot. Once you reach the sludgy stage you should be 5-15 minutes from being done. Eventually it will dry all the way out. Once it does this, remove it from the water bath and let it cool. You should probably let it sit for a couple of hours to make sure all the remaining alcohol evaporates.
11. Once it is dry and cool, it is ready to be eaten. An alternative to this is to scrape some of the kava into a high proof drinking alcohol (like vodka) letting it dissolve and doing a shot. A couple of thing to be careful about though; What you have left should be 70-95% pure kavatones, which is very potent. It really does not take much to feel it. So be careful and do small amounts until you get a feel for what you really have. Now you are done and do not have to deal with the horrible tasting kava again.
To give you all an idea of how extremely potent what you have left is let me relate a little story. Some friends came over and we were sitting around playing cards, smoking joints. I decided I wanted to try out my newly ‘distilled’ Kava so I took two pinky finger tips worth of kava (I am sorry I don’t have numbers for you guys). Within 15 minutes I was having amazing auditory hallucinations, I felt like a bit of a crack head since we were just sitting around playing cards, very relaxed, in a dim lit room, and here I was hearing things. I had only taken 3 or 4 hits from the joint so I was not very high when I took the kava. After about an hour of hearing things I decided it would be intresting to see how alcohol mixed with all this. So we cracked open the Corona and I had two beers in the space of about a half an hour. During that time we smoked another small bowl. After I finished the beer I got up to walk to the bathroom and found my legs didn’t work to well. In fact all my limbs weren’t working very well. I was still hearing things through out this whole time. I was feeling very relaxed, comfortable and mildly euphoric. The whole experience was very…comfortable (best way to describe it). I went to sleep about 15 minutes later and slept like a baby waking up feeling very rested. Normally a bowl and a half and two beers would hardly touch me. The kava definitely made everything stronger. It would be easy to over do it if you aren’t careful. Anyways I hope this helped.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	nice thanks
	nice tut man

[krazykungfu]

has anyone else tried this? - good explanation but no feedback... SWIM is trying it now...

[0utrider]

well it works!

Reputation Comments on this post:

Please don't beg for reputation points.

[krazykungfu]

Originally Posted by outriderx

well it works!

I guess what I'm getting at is that SWIM is a seasoned kava drinker - who drinks almost every day in the traditional manner - who has recently had liver function tests on an unrelated matter showing no signs of damage... everybody raves about extracts and the harm that is possible.... Does the above method also magnify anything that is harmful to the body - because SWIM knows from experience that kava is definitely not damaging in it's traditional form... and also anyone who is familiar with the effects of both methods - how do they compare?

[0utrider]

swim never heard from reliable sources that extracts are dangerous to the liver, nor is the normal kava.. might be the conclusion that if (in case of bad informaiton or revious liver problems) kava is toxix then an extract is even more toxic, but swim doesnt think so
btw
if swiy would try that, some picture would be nice, since SWIM didnt have those

[krazykungfu]

update - SWIM evaporated the rubbing alcohol until 2am - still not finished - had to shelve until the next day - does anyone know if leaving in alcohol solution at room temperature for 16 - 18 hours is bad?

[0utrider]

no shouldnt have any negative effects, apart from dissolving more substances

[krazykungfu]

next update - SWIM has gone to the end of the instructions but it isn't fully dried out yet - it's a thick paste that still smells of alcohol - SWIM thinks it might be a good idea to blast it with the hairdryer for a while tonight until it's dry and doesn't smell of alcohol. As a side note swim used a product called isocol as the rubbing alcohol which says it's 645ml/L isopropyl alcohol - SWIM would like to know what the rest is - as there is no other ingredients listed at all SWIM guesses it's just water but SWIM really has no idea - is anyone familiar with this product? Wiki states it's not good to ingest this stuff...

[Felix Guattari]

SWiM has tried a smiliar extraction, and it does indeed work. Its mad easy to overdo it though unless you've some experience with it. SWiM overshot the first few times and ended up with some intense, interesting, not-unpleasant, but-not-exactly-pleasant-either effects. The high is subjectively a lot different than that of an etoh extract.

[krazykungfu]

thanks for the info - how much did SWIY have? pea size? and how many times? SWIM is not going to try his batch as it smells like perfume - SWIM knows where to get proper iso alcohol now...

krazykungfu added 20 Minutes and 22 Seconds later...

further to previous what's an etoh extract?

[0utrider]

ethanol

[Synesthesiac]

Swims giving this ago, but his surgical spirit (rubbing alcohol) is not water and ethanol, its ethanol and methanol as he lives in the UK. Swim has read around on the forums about methanol for extactions and apparently it shouldn't cause a problem and should behave very similarly to the ethanol, but would definately like this verified by someone here first. Whats annoying is that the bottle does not specify the percentage of each, just says "Boots surgical spirit contains: Ethanol and Methanol"

[Felix Guattari]

Methanol works just fine, in fact, its one of the primary solvents used in industrial production of kava extracts.

[Synesthesiac]

thanks for the quick reply, ahead swim goes then.

I wonder what happened to krazykunfu and his final update here. Hate it when people say "Yeah, i'm just going to try this substance I extracted, I'll update later" never to be seen again. Makes you wonder.

Anyway, Swim has no strainer. Would just running the mixture through a J cloth be OK? Cant think that theres anything in a J-cloth that would cause any trouble, though it may tear. Might wait till tomorrow and borrow strainer from neighbour.

[Felix Guattari]

I'm not totally clear on what a j-cloth is exactly, but it sounds like its absorbant, which would be bad as it would tend to soak up some of the actives in solution. You could test it though and see how much of the plain solvent it absorbs. I'd go with a shirt or some other thinly woven bit of fabric. Doesn't matter what it is as long as it doesn't dissolve, catches all the pieces and doesn't absorb too much.

[Synesthesiac]

It seemed to work fine, swim just wrung it out and ended up with pretty much just as much as he put in. He made sure he didn't apply too much pressure, can never bo too sure with solvents like this. One minute your squeezing liquid out, the next KABOOM!

Swim is left with a nice golden liquid and at the bottom a small amount of fatty/oily looking stuff. Swim tells me he is in the process of separating them now with a pipette, as he presumes the goodies are in the liquid, and the oil will contain more impurities. Though he will evap both to see what happens anyway and compare, using the shulgin incrimental method for under-resrearched drugs. Many thanks.

[Synesthesiac]

Eventually it will dry all the way out. Once it does this, remove it from the water bath and let it cool. You should probably let it sit for a couple of hours to make sure all the remaining alcohol evaporates.
11. Once it is dry and cool, it is ready to be eaten.

Problem here. Swim is reporting that the sludge that is left is not drying all the way out. He has had it on the heat at 60 C now for 30 hours and its still just a liquidy gunky mess at the bottom of the jar. About two shots worth, and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere at all. He just put it in the fridge to see if it needed to cool down and solidify, but that just made it more gloopy. It was still liquid. How much is it supposed to dry out? like a paste? crystals? powder?

[Felix Guattari]

Hmm... Most unfortunate.

When I've done extractions from kava root I've always gotten a fairly dry, crumbly mess that was somewhat sticky, but certainly not 'liquidy'.

The only thing I could think of is that Boots may not be just methanol and ethanol. I did some digging and the only thing I could find was a suggestion that there might be some kind of agent added to the combination for scent.

Try evaping a bit of the solvent by itself to see if it leaves a comparable gooey residue. If it does, you could check if its salvagable by checking the solubility of the 'contaminant' in other solvents in order to try to find one that can separate your goop from the actives.

It'd be a pity to waste kava.

[Jasim]

Originally Posted by Felix Guattari

Methanol works just fine, in fact, its one of the primary solvents used in industrial production of kava extracts.

Methanol is extremely toxic. Swim wouldn't want to try it. Isopropol isn't too healthy either. Use Everclear (95% EtOH and easily obtainable, at least in US liquor stores).

A very clear, pure vodka of high proof would work as well.

Be safe.

[Felix Guattari]

Jasim: None of the listed solvents are being ingested, they're just being used to dissolve actives. If anything is left in the final product that didn't come from the plant, and sufficient care was taken in evaporating the solvent(s) used (not that difficult), then it isn't the solvent.

[Synesthesiac]

Thanks. I'm not sure why its not drying, swim is in the process of getting some more boots surgical spirit to see if it evaps clean. And he's trying to find the product information and content aswell to see if there are any things added. Though he doubts it, the only ingrdients they list are ethanol and methanol, if there were extras in there I'm sure that they would legally have to say so on the bottle. But you can never be 100% sure.

Felix, swim is curious if swiy ever found that the solution had a fatty layer at the bottom after soaking the kava in the alcohol. Because swim was left with quite a lot of what looked like fatty oils at the bottom of his jar afterwards, which he decided to separate from the liquid. When left alone this dried out into a kind of oily powder, which doesn't look too appetising. Maybe this is what makes it solidify, and swim is now lacking this from his attempt?

The remaining liquid is dark brown and has the same texture as treakle. Swims gonna have to wait and see if the new stuff evaps clean before anything else happens. Swim doesn't really have a clue what he's ended up with here, hopefully everything is still in the liquid, though he's not gonna be testing anything yet until he ensures the rubbing alcohol evaporates clean.

[Synesthesiac]

I've found out that surgical spirit in the UK adds small percentages of oil to their product to avoid peoples skin going too dry when using. That will probably be why my friends extraction didn't work. He should have looked into the difference between surgical spirit and rubbing alcohol or IPA more closely. He's now going to get some proper IPA a have another go. I'll ask him how it went and report it here in a few hours.

[krazykungfu]

Hi Guys, sorry about the delay - SWIM has been busy SWIM found some pure isopropyl alcohol and followed the process from start to end - the end result obtained was dry and crumbly but SWIM may have left it on the heat too long - the isopropyl is definitely all gone when pure stuff is used, judging by the smell at least - SWIM tried earlier with isopropyl and a fragrance added and the result stayed as a sludge until left in the baking hot sun for a day, and the it dried in perfume smelling clumps. As for the effectiveness SWIM is still not sure - SWIM ingested about a pea size serve as described - nothing really of signifigance, just like a bowl of normal kava - tried again about an hour later - same result. However on New Years eve SWIM tried again but at the same time as drinking it normally all night - and by the end of the night the results were strong and typically kava - very relaxed, somewhat stumbling when trying to walk - but it is hard to contribute this the extract as a lot of kava was also drank - I will say it was definitely stronger than normal - but a new batch of kava had just been obtained - it could have been that? I know this doesn't answer too many questions but it may help in your quest....

[Synesthesiac]

Nice to hear back from U Swims ended up with a sort of solid mixture, he says its like a blob of plastecine. It like a malleable lump of hash, solid but squishy. The smell of the IPA has gone completely now. Swims not tried an oral dose yet, but is slowly smoking it and increasing the dosage to see when effects are apparent. He's on 30mg so far with minor effects. He'll be trying it orally soon and will report back.

[Leonida]

Originally Posted by Synesthesiac

I wonder what happened to krazykunfu and his final update here. Hate it when people say "Yeah, i'm just going to try this substance I extracted, I'll update later" never to be seen again. Makes you wonder.

It certainly does make you wonder...