Hi all,

Would appreciate any input here. Tried my first extraction yesterday using Q21Q21's Vinegar/Lime A/B extraction tek2. Followed the steps precisely, measured out everything and timed everything per the guide. I decided to go with the porridge consistency as it was labeled to be easy to work with and I didn't wanna complicate things the first time around.

Bark/white vinegar mix

Adding near boiling water to vinegar/bark mix

adding lime to bark/vinegar mix

Waited 6 hours before pull attempt

Forgot to take a photo with the initial Naphtha attempt but actually worked well from the stand point that the Naphtha stayed colorless and floated on the top. I mixed for 2-3m every 5m for 40m swapping the water out every 5m as well with boiling (the water in bottom bowl). When not mixing I let the bark/naphtha bowl sit in the heated water bowl per instructions. The issue came after 40m I was only able to pour off 4ml of naphtha from the 100ml I had initially poured in (over 90% loss). I popped that 4ml of Naphtha into the freezer and 6 hours later it is crystalizing - this obviously wont yield a significant amount.

Crystals in 4ml nahptha

I tried adding about another 75g of lime and 300 ml of water and mixed in an attempt to bring the naphtha to the top (while intermittently warming using the double bowl boiling water method). No luck and the consistency has gone from porridge to soupy with the mush mostly sitting at the bottom and water seems to be sitting at the top with the naphtha (too much water?). I poured it off the bowl into a narrow glass container and let it sit for 4 hours and the mush separated from the naphtha and water. I decided to siphon this separation off using a turkey baster into another mason jar and ended up with 113ml of this mix - this tells me that I definitely got water and naphtha but could not really differentiate the two as the liquid is a murky brown/orange now. I put the jar with this mixture into the freezer and the water seems to have frozen while the naphtha sits at the top and is still viscous

Frozen water/nahptha mix

I poured the bark mush in the narrow glass container back into the bowl and let it sit for 4 hours and I'm seeing water/naphtha rise to the top of the mixture again. Not really sure how to attempt another pull here. Do I just add more nahptha and us the double bowl reheat method? Should I try to strain the liquid out of the bark mush and heat the bark in the oven? I've read several ways to try to proceed from here and I'm not sure what is best.

Current situation with bark mush and nahptha

Still have another 100g of powdered bark left if I need to start over, thanks for any advice.

I managed to correct the situation somewhat so incase anyone else has these problems this is what I did.

I took the top liquid layer shown in photo of my last post and dumped it. I spread out the bark mush on a baking pan for 2 hours @ 170 degrees intermittently checking it (I was looking to go for the dry/crumbly consistency mentioned in the tek 2). Once I got it right I prepared another boiling bath bowl and used a smaller bowl to hold all the bark crumbles and tried to break up any large clumps.

I used 100ml of naphtha and poured it into the mixture (100000x times easier to separate with this consistency) rotating the bowl at an angle to have the naphtha contact as much of the bark as possible every 5 minutes for 2 minutes (placing the bark mush into the heat bath bowl when not rotating). After 45m I was able to pour off 30ml of naphtha (big improvement over 4ml lol!). Only 3 hours in the freezer and I'm already seeing significant crystallization.

I'm gonna play around a bit with the duration of the pull and how I heat it to see if I can retain more naphtha. Does anyone know if frequently swapping out the water will evap too much? or is most of it getting absorbed by the bark?

I'll post a photo in another 6 hours of crystals