Quote Originally Posted by inhiding View Post
When I make my gear I do it a little different

I take a small sauce pan with about 2 inches of water in it and start it to boil.

Then I take a 150 ml beaker and put my powder in it. Then I add my ba and bb to the powder in the beaker, and place the beaker in the boiling water. I heat the powder until it is liquid. Continually stiring the mixture, either by picking up the beaker and swirling it, or using a glass stir rod. The mixture will melt and if you look close you will see swirls in the mixture. Keep heating it till the mixture is clear with no swirls in it. Then I measure out my oil in a large syringe and I just add it to the beaker. You never take it off the heat, time it so that when your mixture has no swirls you can add the oil. You will again now see swirls in your mixture, continue heating again till there are no swirls. This whole process up to this point will take about 10 minutes of heating. Now that the oil is added and there are no swirls let it cool. Draw it all up into a large syringe (I use a 60ml) and run it through a whatman .45um filter. If you ever have tried this your forearm will be killing you after about 10mls. A trick to filtering is to put the 60ml syringe into a caulk gun. Dont squeeze to hard though because you will blow out the whatman. But the caulk gun works real well.

The oven thing is over kill in my opinion. The ba and bb will sterilize the solution as well as preserve it in the vial. The whatman will take out any impurities also. I have done this several dozen times and never had a problem.

You can get filtered oils but you will pay more for them, and why your going to filter it yourself with the whatman anyway. My buddy who taught me to brew uses olive oil from the supermarket. I personally use grape seed. You can get everything you need from Medical and Lab Supplies | Research Laboratory Supply Inc.

This is just the way I do it not trying to say your way is wrong just my way.
you mentioned that bb will sterilize the solution, this is incorrect....bb only hold the compound together. ba is the sterilizer.

another thing is you have to make sure your solution never goes above, say....275 degrees....if you use the process you mentioned.

besides those 2 things....it is a very effective way to homebrew.