by Keith | Feb 18, 2009 | Products
This is perhaps the #1 question we get when new Kratom customers find their way to us. You want to know which type or strain of Kratom to buy, and which form; crushed leaf, powder, extract, resin, or in capsules. Well, we truly are the Kratom Experts here at ShamansGarden, partly because we’ve been importing Kratom for over 12 years, and have filled literally well several million orders over that time. We only want you to benefit from that expertise.
Kratom Forms
By far, the easiest way to work with Kratom is when it’s placed into capsules. Although capsules are not meant for consumption, each capsule has exactly 300mg of Kratom extract in them, or 500mg of Kratom powder in them. For those without a scale, it makes it a snap to measure the exact amount of Kratom powder you want to work with, whether it’s a powdered leaf or an extracted product.
Also, unlike leaf, extracts are a concentrated form of Kratom, requiring far less material to work with whenever you choose to work with it. So, the next best thing to working with capsules, at least in terms of ease of use, would be Kratom extracts. And, if you don’t mind a little work, it is possible to extract Kratom from powdered or crushed leaf yourself, saving you the expense of extracts. It’s not as difficult as you might think, and personally, the rewards from working with a plant directly, shaping it into the exact form I want to work with; it doesn’t ever feel like work. With some lemon juice and water or alcohol, making your own safe and effective Kratom extract is not that difficult at all. And, with a multitude of uses, such as a number of ritual preparations or incense, you’ll always have a fresh supply on hand.
Surprisingly enough, though, despite the ease of use that extracts have, the Top Seller here remains plain old Kratom powders or crushed leaf. We may never know why that is, but plain Bali Leaf or Maeng Da leaf outsells all of our other forms of Kratom combined.
Kratom Sources
As the popularity of Kratom has grown, so have the claims in relation to the origin of the Kratom grown as well. We’ve seen Kratom from Thailand (most is not), Bali, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Borneo, and a few other places. Although there is some leaf that does indeed come from these regions, our Certificate of Analysis have proven otherwise. We purchased a number of Kratom products from a number of suppliers. Many products didn’t have any mitragynine in them whatsoever. This was especially true of the Borneo leaf, which consistently showed as a completely different strain than mitragyna speciosa. Most showed up as Mitragynine latifolia, a related species, but one without the mitragynine alkaloid that everyone is in search of.
The same happened with the Vietnam strains. These showed alkaloid content, but the chemical fingerprint looked identical to the Bali strain that these websites were also offering. Or, there were subtle variations in the leaf, but they all looked very distinctly like Bali Kratom leaf. As always, I’m sure there are just a few bad apples out there, and I’m sure that most people offering more exotic locales as sources for their Kratom are doing so with the best of intentions. More often than not, it’s the Kratom suppliers and Kratom wholesalers who know they’re selling a product that’s different than what they’re advertising.
With both IAmShaman and ShamansGarden, you know that the product you’re getting has been sent out for 3rd party verification. You know that it’s manufactured in an FDA-complaint facility. you know that the same care that’s taken in consumable dietary supplements is being taken with this botanical, regardless of the end use of it. We don’t call ourselves the Kratom Experts lightly. We call ourselves the Kratom Experts because we have the science, the history, and the testimonials to back it up. We’re not going anywhere. We keep your orders and your credit card information ultra secure. We never sell your information, we never rent our customer lists to 3rd party vendors, no matter what.
All of that matters when choosing who to buy your Kratom from. We truly do care, and we want you to come back to us, time and time again for future purchases. Our goal isn’t to cash in with the latest trend or fad; we’re here for the long haul, working hard to get you the best prices and the highest quality Kratom leaf, extracts, resins, and capsules at the best price, and faster than anyone else. We take great pride in that and feel it shows in every order we send out.
Peacefulness,
Bodhi (Keith)
by Keith | Feb 12, 2009 | Articles
Another Top Question we get here at ShamansGarden is “How Do I Extract Kratom?” We’re happy to answer this here as this botanical can be a fun plant to practice extracting with. And, Kratom Extract follows standard extraction procedures, which can be applied to a wide range of plants you wish to extract. Kratom is such a hot topic, I simply chose my plant material to be Kratom leaf, but you can apply this formula to any herb you want to extract for research purposes.
There are many benefits of making a Kratom extract as it’s much less plant material to work with once its extracted, it takes up far less space if traveling, and it can be ground into a fine powder so it easily blends with anything you wish to blend it with. The below steps will turn anyone into a Kratom Extraction Expert after your first try! The wonderful thing about working with botanicals is if you don’t get it right the first time, you can change and modify and adjust your procedure until you get the extract extract you’re looking for. Some like very resin-y extracts, some like to defat their Kratom extracts and have a product that contains more mitragynine than anything else. It’s really up to you and how you want to adjust the below technique.
The Kratom Extract Recipe:
- 100 grams of powdered Kratom leaf
- 8 ounces of water
- 1 lemon or lime
- 1 muslin cloth of bag
- 1 pot to boil it in
- 1 pot to strain it into
The Method:
01. The 100 grams that this recipe calls for is just a random number to make everything neat and tidy. The more powdered the leaf, the better it is for extracting. If you have crushed leaf as a starting point, I highly recommend further grinding that leaf in a coffee grinder as you will get a much better finished product. In short; the more surface area you present to the water and the lemon, the more alkaloids will be presented to that water or lemon.
02. Put the 100 grams of powdered Kratom leaf into a pot with the 8 ounces of water. Before adding any heat, let this mixture soak in for at least 1 hour, stirring at least every 20 minutes. If you’re lucky enough to have a lab stirrer, stirring the mixture for at least 20 minutes really helps with the extraction.
03. Once the Kratom seems to be thoroughly and evenly soaked by the water, it’s time to add 1/2 of the lemon juice. You will be boiling twice, so you’ll use 1/2 of the lemon each boil. By the time you get to the final product, the juice from the lemon will be completely evaporated, so there will be little juice residue left in the final material. Stir thoroughly and turn on the heat.
04. Bring to a gentle boil. You want to slowly bring the water up to the boiling point as this will further ease the alkaloids out of the powdered leaf material. Since mitragynine has a melting temperature well above the boiling point of water, you cannot break down the alkaloids by boiling too hard or too long, so fret not. Once you’re at an even, gentle boil, let this boil for 30 minutes. You may need to stir along the way to stop powdered leaf from sticking to the edges. But, a careful eye will ensure as much of the powder is gently rolling in the boil.
05. Great. You’ve boiled your powdered Kratom leaf and now need to strain the Kratom. This is where a muslin bag makes it so easy to proceed. If you’ve got a muslin bag, simply pout the liquid and powdered Kratom leaf mixture through the muslin bag. Make sure you do it slowly and carefully, as the mixture is still going to be scalding hot. I highly recommend using safety gloves, work gloves, or something to protect your hands from any accidents.
06. Once it cools enough, work the material inside the muslin bag like clay. Knead the powdered leaf until you’ve squeezed all the liquid out that you can. You should be left with a good size lump of powdered leaf that should easily come out of the muslin bag by turning the bag inside out. Turn it inside out into the pot the powdered Kratom leaf was originally boiling in.
At this point, you should have one pot that has only liquid in it from your first boil. The second pot will have the powdered leaf mass in it, ready for a second boil. Add enough water to cover all of the material, and stir it until it’s thoroughly soaked again. Don’t be shy with the water; you can add up to 8 ounces for this second boil. Then, add the other half of that lemon or lime, and start the above steps all over again.
07. You should now have added the liquid from the second boiling to the liquid from the firs boiling. At this point you can discard the muddy, clay-like material that used to be powdered Kratom leaf. It doesn’t serve much purpose at this point as all of the alkaloids are suspended in the water.
08. Take this second pot and now bring this liquid to a boil. CRITICAL POINT: Do not leave this boiling unattended. You are working to get to the exact moment all of the water boils away, but BEFORE the point where the resin extract burns on the bottom of the pot. The resin that forms at the bottom of the pot will turn thick like molasses when it’s ready to removed from the heat. Again, don’t dry it out too much and don’t let it burn.
09. Pour the liquid out onto a plate, preferably a Pyrex container that has been treated to withstand heat. This step isn’t required, but it does make it easier to collect the resin and to work with it if you’ve removed it from the pot before it completely dries. You might think it would be easy to remove the resin from the pot after its dried, but it’s actually a scraping nightmare, so save yourself the trouble, and get it out of the pot while it’s still a warm, thick liquid. This is definitely an acquired skill, so have patience as you’re working with this material, knowing that it will take several times to get it just right.
10. If you want to put the resin under a heat lamp, or even just an incandescent bulb, this will help it dry out. When it gets to a consistency you like, simply roll it up into whatever size chunks you want to work with for your research project. If you want to have a powdered resin that’s soluble in water, then let it throughly dry. Gather the crumbly pieces from the Pyrex container, and drop them into a coffee grinder. Whichever method you choose, you’ll have about 14-18 grams of material. This ends up being about a true 5x material, which is likely very close to the 20x materials that you see advertised on the internet.
Enjoy!
This is perhaps the #1 question we get when new Kratom customers find their way to us. You want to know which type or strain of Kratom to buy, and which form; crushed leaf, powder, extract, resin, or in capsules. Well, we truly are the Kratom Experts here at ShamansGarden, partly because we’ve been importing Kratom for over 12 years, and have filled literally well several million orders over that time. We only want you to benefit from that expertise.
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