I'm sure this topic has been discussed before, but I must not know how to use the site search very well.

Would a vendor do something like acid soak the bark, or add poor quality bark for weight? If so, how common is it? The couple times I got any there weren't any noticable inferiorities, but a friend has recently acquired some that raises suspicion.

are you asking because it looks odd or because it yielded nothing?
if it yielded nothing check your friends tek against yours and make sure every step is the same, or even use some of your friends bark to do your own extraction. i would assume if you have had success multiple times and it still yields nothing it is probably bunk bark.

It looks kinda odd, feels odd when you rub it between your fingers, and since my friend is swim, his tek is identical to mine. He went with the max ion, this time to the letter practically. First couple pulls were combined, and was expecting a couple g of pretty white.. there was only like 500 mg. And was already slightly yellow. Fresh naphtha, room temp pulls. Everything from then on was like trying to milk something from spent bark, and a total yield of 3.5 g from 800 g mhrb.

There's a little bark left that I'm gonna take a closer look at. Maybe mix with distilled h2o and test ph. See if there's evidence of being more acidic than it should be. Maybe someone could do the same with their bark and tell me what ph it reads.

I'll look at it under microscope.

If I determine that it's been adulterated, would it be appropriate to drop a couple hints without naming the source?

How has this panned out? (It's entirely possible that sellers act unscrupulously when dealing with grey market materials. After all, it's an issue that's hard to complain about directly.)

Was this MHRB or ACRB? If the former, then there's a chance that the material is 'tepescohuite' instead, which is the trunk bark of MH and has about the alkaloid content that you mention and is more sawdust-like in consistency. Tepescohuite's high tannin content makes it useful in the treatment of certain skin diseases. Thus, depending on the exact description of the bark, it may be ostensibly 'correct' despite being of little use for extraction.

A nexian recently reported some measure of success with tepescohuite brews, however.

very helpful post, thx. would tannins cause a more waxy orange/yellow extract? im guessing its more trunk bark, as you mentioned. mhrb.

It's as much the low concentration that results in a relatively higher level of impurities being pulled (if, indeed, the colour and consistency are even related to impurities).