Hey All,
Its probably been mentioned here multiple times but I thought I would share my experience. I have had terrible troubles with goo over the years. I am working with Acacia Acuminata bark that is almost 10 years old now. I would do 3 boils of powdered bark, the base out with an excess of Lye to shoot for a high PH and then extract with Shellite (Naptha). I would then perform a mini A/B on this and still get loads of goo that I had to try and clean up resulting in loss of a lot of our beautiful molecule. I had put this down to it being old bark that must have lots of oils or DMT oxide etc.
I have just done an extraction and it turned out beautifully. I made a few changes. I will first outline what I did and what I think made the difference.
I used 500g of bark here (Yes I know that's a lot but I was virtually getting nothing out of my 10 year old bark after trying to clean up masses of goo over multiple mini A/Bs and recrystallizations.
- Shredded 500g of Acacia Acuminata bark. Shredded not powdered. I believe this to be a huge factor in the success of this extraction. I even went as far as to remove the dust from the shredded material before cooking.
- Did 3 times 2 hour cook with 1 liter of vinegar and 3 liters water in a stainless steel pressure cooker. The third cook was significantly lighter in red color than the previous two so I assumed I got most of what I wanted out of the material.
- Combined cooks and reduced to a bit over 2 liters. I let this sit overnight and then strained this through a very fine mesh filter to remove sludge.
- I divided this into two HDPE bottles and added 50 grams of salt to each and dissolved. This seemed to crash out more sludge which I filtered off. From now on I will refer only to one bottle as the process was the same in each.
- I slowly added 50grams of NaOH to 200mls of water and let cool to room temperature. Once at room temperature I added this to the bottle.
- I added 100ml of Shellite and put the bottle onto a sous vide water bath at 40 Deg C (104 F) for a couple of hours. Every 10 to 15 mins I would take it out and GENTLY roll it back and forth for around a minute. It would separate very quickly with no emulsion and I noticed the Shellite was still clear. I also noticed that the bark soup was thin and very liquid with no sludge.
- I separated the Shellite and let evaporate naturally (no fan) over a day until when I blew on it it would instantly turn the whole lot cloudy. This went into the freezer for 24 Hours.
- I did the second and 3rd pulls same method using 80ml and 60ml of Shellite but ran the Sous Vide at 50 Deg C (122F). This time I noticed the Shellite was more yellow in color.
- The first pull came of beautiful and white crystals. The second and third combined was still crystals but definitely with some oils but not straight up goo.
I have NEVER had white crystals from this bark first pull without mini A/B and extensive clean-up. What do I think made the difference?
- Shredded bark and not powdered. I have done the same thing many times with powdered bark and the sludge in my opinion releases A LOT more oils into the soup. These can easily be picked up and once they are they seem hard to get rid of even with a mini A/B. I think this was the single biggest factor in this extraction's success.
- Less NaOH. In my previous extractions I have probably gone way too heavy on the Caustic Soda. I have no idea if that has caused problems or not but it MAY be a factor.
- Controlled temperature. I could definitely see a big difference in color of the Shellite and the resulting spice between 40 Deg C (104F) and 50 Deg C (122F). It may require more pulls to get all the goodies but I'm happy to do that rather than spend time cleaning up. I also think that by controlling temperature you could control how clear or yellow you want your spice. Some like it a bit more yellow with plant oils. There was a tiny patch of yellow in the first pull and I think 35 Deg C would have made it even cleaner. The difference in scraping up the first pull to the second pull was massive with the first pull drying quickly and cleanly and the second pull taking a lot longer for the slight amount of oils in them to dry.
I have attached pics of the difference in color of Shellite between first pull and second pull and resulting spice.
Like I said I know all this info has been put here before but I have put it all down here as it made a massive difference for me. Hope it helps someone.
Cheers.
Edit: I ended up with 6.1g of Nice DMT. Pics attached of 3.1g really clean first pull and 3g of yellower and waxy but still very nice DMT from second and third pulls combined.
sillysyban attached the following image(s):
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(96kb) downloaded 36 time(s).THERE ARE 10 KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
THOSE THAT KNOW THE BINARY SYSTEM AND THOSE THAT DONT.