SWIM was wondering how much return other bee's get when grilling with good old' red? Include your best return you have gotten back. I seem to only get about 50% on average.

it appears that 50% to 60% is the average for the equipment being widely used in this home bake synth--word is that to raise that percentage one must have the right tools to fine tune it to a better quantity--in the birch --80% to 90% is not unknown--one must wonder what actually happens to it--from study done it appears that other products are created during the reduction--so advice would be--get better at your skills--get finer equipment--and your education never finishes--always look for newer and better ways--good luck

SWIM agrees entirely that having a good set up and along with super clean products is a must when red is involved. Seems like there is a lot of factors involved that can hiner ones final product. Birchin' allows for errors way more than red does. In my neck of the woods, every wannabe cook birches only cause their too lazy and cheap to do red. Not to knock any annie people out there, but I just wish I knew of a really good red cooker.

[This message has been edited by Uncle Bill (edited 08-02-2003).]

50% is considered normal for the I2/RP/E method sometimes one can get a bit better return. SWIM once seen 100 grams of E return 56 grams of goodies. SWIM dont know why this is but the average has always been that you could figure on half the weight of your E in end product. SWIM would be very interested in knowing any ways to possibly improve this.

when reading this pages messages,it beggars the question of why you would do it the red phos iodine way--commonsense explains that if you cant get annie and sodium/lithium, then you run with what you can get--but i stumble at comprehending why you cant get it--can someone explain why you do the reduction getting back 50%-60% when doofus can get 65% return and the experienced bircher can average 92% - 94%??

quote:Originally posted by morgan:

when reading this pages messages,it beggars the question of why you would do it the red phos iodine way--commonsense explains that if you cant get annie and sodium/lithium, then you run with what you can get--but i stumble at comprehending why you cant get it--can someone explain why you do the reduction getting back 50%-60% when doofus can get 65% return and the experienced bircher can average 92% - 94%??

SWIM is in Alaska and has no access to annie. SWIM says he dont have the balls to make his own lol and besides it only cost around 400 to 500 bucks to get that 56 grams and its not a commercial enterprise for SWIM strictly recreation for him and a few of his roaddogs so he sticks with what works.