Hydrolysis residue is the biomass components remaining after pretreatment and saccharification and the utilization of this material impacts the economics of a biorefinery. This material typically has a high lignin content, dependent upon the pretreatment method. Steam-explosion significantly disrupts the cell wall from the autocatalyzed breakage of lignin and carbohydrate linkages allowing lignin to rearrange in the cell wall under the high temperature processing conditions. Another method of pretreatment is mechanical ball milling using ceramic milling media in a planetary ball mill that reduces particles to the micrometer scale range. These small particles provide significant surface area for both carbohydrate hydrolysis and lignin extraction. In this study, we have attempted to establish isolated lignin streams with these two methods for biomass that is pretreated and then hydrolyzed followed by solvent extraction of the lignin. For steam-exploded aspen material, lignin was extracted from the hydrolysis residue using acetone. This treatment resulted in a simple method to isolate a highly pure technical lignin after evaporation of the acetone. When compared to the bulk of the lignin in the residue, the acetone soluble lignin had lower molar mass with a very small dispersity index and a high phenolic content. In another approach, balled milled aspen was hydrolyzed and extracted with Cyrene™ (dihydrolevoglucosenone); Cyrene™ has been shown in the literature to be an excellent solvent for technical lignin. Biomass hydrolysis residue was treated with wet Cyrene™ while a control extraction experiment used acidic dioxane. Room temperature extraction over a period of 3 days and extraction at 80 degC for two hours resulted in significant lignin yield for both of these systems using Cyrene™ when compared to acidic dioxane. Further, observations of the Cyrene™ extracted lignin suggested close interactions between solvent and lignin indicating lignin modification.