Hello everyone,
I did only 3 extractions from mimosa hostilis until now. Every time I get part of the substance is quite red and sticky like a resin. What is it? is it safe to smoke?
Thanks

Hey ildruido

Can you give some detail on how you did your extraction? What steps did you take, what solvents did you use, what temperatures, times, acids / bases, pH values etc?

That should help us understand what's going on.

This might be of use:
https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...her_colors_of_DMT_bad.3F

Well my exctraction is taken from this video
https://www.youtube.com/...v=hZVXVPBnBhk&t=623s
Meanly, I leave the powder mimosa in the caustic soda for an hour with the water, in a glass bottle; then I proceed with the extraction adding zippo fluid for 15/20 minutes and putting the bottle in a pan with some heat (not boiling, don't know the exact temp). I don't know about the ph values tbh...
I repeat the operation with the solvent 5/6 times and then I leave the liquid to dry for a couple of days (no freezer). the result is this:

Looks OK to me. It would be better to use a freezer if you want to avoid those gooey aggregates. It looks as though a bit of dust got in during the evaporation as well.

Thanks mate, so you would smoke the red/orange substance as well?

I'd be more likely to recrystallise it or clean it up with a mini A/B and a freeze precipitation, or one of the other methods using ethanol or acetone. Then, after the clean-up I'd probably dissolve it in some alcohol and add it dropwise to a rue brew. Or maybe vape it in an adapted mesh RDA. But that's just me, and maybe - were I to meet the red goo 'in person' - I would just stick it in a pipe, although I haven't watched (and don't particularly want to watch) the video. The exact details of the extraction might influence my decisions, as would the finesse of its execution - the main thing being that absolutely no droplets or particles of base soup made it through to the crystallisation vessel.

So, if your zippo fluid evaporates absolutely clean, and if you managed to separate it from the base soup without bringing over any droplets, the link that endlessness added should help you make up your mind about how you choose to proceed further with the coloured material.

I just watched the video, and i was positively surprised. I might actually recommend that video next time i'm asked in welcome area chat

I also think i'd separate the darker parts from the nice crystals and clean them up before smoking.

The video is age-restricted and I lost my youtube credentials (what a loser!) so I can't watch it anyhow - not without a certain level of rigmarole at least, such as borrowing someone else's device. What were the particular highlights for you? And what was the actual extraction method used?

It was a simple STB. The dude says he has a background in chemistry and did it as simple as possible on purpose. These were my highlights:
- recommendation is 75g of lye for 100g bark (i like that it's lower than 1:1)
- use of a professional pipette, the big ones with the orange ball. Also exclusive use of glass.
- use of an intermediate container with some water to pipette the naphtha into, for catching soup droplets
- he showed one pull as it should be, and another one with too much shaking which formed an emulsion, then he showed a way to get rid of the emulsion (by circular motion)
- there's a watch on the table, so people can see which steps took how long
- he mentions both freeze precip and evap, shows how to freeze precip, and shows result of both
- [EDIT] he instructs to neutralise the lye with citric before disposing of the soup.

The one thing i didn't like about it, was that he was not wearing gloves, and while he did warn of NaOH contact and said to wash for minutes if it happens, i think this is a bit reckless for a beginner tutorial.

Happy to hear that the method sounds valid to you!
In the meantime I have tried to smoke a small quantity of red substance and it is pretty good for me: the effects are there and it is not harsh for my lungs.

The only thing that I do that is not in the video is heat the bottle before extract the solvent with the pipette.

I use the evap method because I have a very annoyng wife and she doesn't want that I use the freezer for my stuff...

It's fair enough, really - unless your container seals perfectly, the whole freezer can end up stinking of naphtha. One time I converted all our ice cream to banana flavour courtesy of a small amount of butyl acetate in a jar that turned out not to have a such a great seal on the lid. Some solvents also diffuse readily through polyethylene or polypropylene containers (including, as I've found, butyl acetate while attempting to limit diffusion from the glass containers it was in).

It's definitely cheaper to evaporate the naphtha than to buy and run an additional mini-freezer...

The first extraction learned was from a chemist friend. She advised that washing with water would actually activate the problem further and start reducing flesh into soap. She advised that before adding any water to the problem to brush the skin clean as far as possible. Is that true?

Yes, it does make sense to wipe of any caustic soda solution, or brush off any solid material, before washing with water or diluted vinegar.

So I did another extraction with the same method and this time no red/sticky substance...

The only thing that I changed was the water; this time I have used mineral still water instead of tap water. I'm curios to hear from some expert if that would be the reason or not?

Also, it looks like very different from last time: instead of 'flakes' I got kind of little yellow truffles..

The kind of water can make a difference as there are different amounts of different minerals and salts in them as well as other contaminants. Distilled water removes this and this is what I always use for extraction.

This thread may help you understand why it comes out differently between different extractions.

One love