This is my first extraction tek on the Nexus, so please don't be too critical. I got bored one day, and after seeing the picture of Phlux's a/b Kratom extraction, I wanted to try my own. Although I didn't replicate what Phlux has, I definitely got something active. So, hopefully this tek works out for people and they can enjoy these crystals the same way that I have. It should be noted though... Kratom has a lot of different alkaloids, so I honestly have no idea which ones I have on my hands.

What you will need: Distilled water, Kratom leaf/powder, vinegar, potassium hydroxide(KOH), toluene, glass eyedropper, flat glass tray or other tray for evaporation purposes, fan, crackproof glass container

Overview of procedure:
1) Blend kratom leaves
2) Freeze kratom leaves
3) Acid/water cook leaves
4) Basify solution
5) Pull with toluene
6) Repeat step 5, four more times
7) Evaporate toluene
8 ) Scrape up crystals
9) Clean
10) Enjoy


Pictorial:
Blend desired amount of Kratom leaf. (Powder is probably better, but I was using what I had)

Freeze kratom leaf (This step is probably not necessary, but I had better results when I did this)

Boil enough vinegar to cover your Kratom leaf, then pour it into your container with the leaf. Let sit for about 20 minutes while stirring periodically.

Add an equal amount of hot distilled water to your container with the vinegar/leaf in it. Stir fequently and let the solution sit for at least an hour. Make sure to keep solution warm the whole time. This can be done by a couple different methods. For people that don't have alcohol or bunsen burners you could simply do the acid/water cook in a stainless steel pot, then when you're ready for the pulls, just pour off into a crack-proof glass container. Another method is to do a hot water bath, making sure to change out the water constantly to maintain hot temperatures. A hot water bath is a good method to use because it will be used later in this tek. Below is an example.

Hot water bath example

Basify solution with KOH (Potassium hydroxide) It can be purchased at many hydroponic stores as pH up. Make sure to get pH up where Potassium Hydroxide is the base. I'm sure Sodium Hydroxide is just as effective if not more, however I hate using it. Use about 1 ml per gram of kratom leaf. (i.e. 40 grams leaf = 35-40ml KOH. You want your pH above 13.



Add toluene. Use about 1 ml toluene per gram of leaf used. Now add this to your warm/hot basified leaf solution and stir well. If you have been using bunsen burners or alcohol flames to keep the solution warm, make sure to have them extinguished before you even open the bottle of toluene. Toluene vapors are HIGHLY flammable. Do not become a statistic. Instead, use the hot water bath method mentioned above. Once you have stirred the toluene into the warm/hot solution for about 5-10 minutes, let it then separate.

This is not a very good picture of the layer separation, but my camera sucks. I'm sure you get the idea. Once you have two distinct layers, pull off the top layer (toluene) with a glass eyedropper. Your solution in the eyedropper should look yellow, almost like flat Mountain Dew.

Note the yellow color. Should look even more yellow, but, once again, my camera sucks.

Decant your toluene pulls into a flat glass tray. You will use this to collect your pulls, and evaporate off the toluene.


Repeat the pulling process four more times, for a total of five pulls.

Evaporate toluene off in front of a fan. It is preferred to do this outside, but not all living situations can accommodate this. If you have to do it inside, make sure you are not near any outlets. It is also CRUCIAL to have adequate ventilation by opening up any windows or doors that can provide air exchange.

Once the toluene evaporates, you will be left with an orange/yellow layer on the bottom of the tray that smells very floral.

Take a razor blade and scrape up all the material, and you will end up with this...





At this point, I did one acetone wash and evaporated in a flat pyrex tray to get this below....


I then scraped this up, to get my final product...




After a 40 gram extraction, I ended up with roughly 390mg of these Kratom crystals. I am pretty sure there is still more to get out of the jar too, because my solvent was still a strong yellow on the fifth pull.

I have since bioassayed by vaporization and insufflation. Slight effects were noticed while vaporizing 20 mg of material. A bit of mental cloudiness, and that's about it. Larger doses will probably be more active. Insufflation seems more effective. 40 mg were insufflated and the effects are felt within 30 seconds. First, a slight shift in the head, then it slowly starts to spread a very nice tingling sensation throughout the body. Felt like it was coca's third cousin or something. Similar effect to a sense, but definitely not the same. I'm planning to take some orally, but I have to wait a few days because I have been working with harmalas and I don't want to mix the two. I also have no idea how much to take orally. Any feedback is appreciated.

hehe thanks a lot; awesome pictorial much appreciated. will carry out this tek right when i get together some money

Could one make a salt to precipitate out and then freebase it back for insulation/vaporizing purposes?


Love this, blazing new trails!

I will be trying this soon. I'm also going to experiment with a food-grade version of the tek too. Replacing KOH with lime, and toluene with d-limonene. Not sure if it will work the same, but I'll find out when I get my d-limonene in.

Also, on another note. I pulled the jar again that I had done the pictorial on. Three more pulls, and still getting product. This time, instead of evaporating the toluene, I salted out with vinegar then evaporated. I did three vinegar pulls on the toluene. It worked just the same without the hassle and horrendous smell of evaporating toluene.

Here's a picture of the material I got from pulls 6-8. This was also salted out with vinegar, rather than letting the toluene evaporate. As you can see, the crystals are more yellow than orange this time around. Not sure if they're yellow because of the vinegar salting, or because the the concentration of alkaloids is not as strong. Or, maybe they are totally different alkaloids all together. As mentioned before, Kratom has a lot of different alkaloids.
Here's the picture

Thanks, nice tek! Just two questions about it:
what do you think about using DCM instead of Toulene? Phlux did it with nice yield, but an opinion of your would be nice.
Also, do you think it may work at lower pH? 13 seems a bit aggressive to me.

Also, what about using not only acidic water but some ethilic alcool too?

Again, thanks!

edit: you didn't filter the solution, how comes?

Hello and thanks to the OP.
HP, have you had any breaking news since then ? did you use d-limo yet ?

Trying this tomorrow! Got like 5 pounds of Kratyum I can use to play with thank you for all the info! I was wondering also how active this is and what your doses were? If you ever come back to this post lol

Any news on this? How did it turn out?

Ended up trying this with 50g of yellow horn. Up to pull #3 now. Salted all of the pulls with vinegar. Got super fine bright yellow xtals but 100mg on an empty stomach didnt seem like quite high enough a dosage. Gonna try 150mg next time.

Would freebase be better? Hcl?

Another thing worth mentioning that I find very strange is that when drying the extract with a fan at the very end I notice that it traps a decent amount of moisture under a layer of dried xtal on top and if you go to scrape it before its truly completely dry the whole thing turns into goop instantly. The xtals are mixed with a minute degree of a yellow wax/goop which if dried completely will form a dust like powder with the xtals mixed in, im hoping a wash can be done in order to remove this plant wax/fat material and turn the alks into a pure white form. I was also considering that maybe an hcl form would reduce or possibly remove the wax/fat?

The alks themselves have a lot of trouble dissolving in water even if it is near boiling hot which makes me confident in and of itself that the extraction was done properly since its a pretty common fact that mitragynine and presumably the rest of kratoms alks arent very water soluble.

It seems to come out best when dried on a completely level surface with just air and no heat, gotta make sure that its completely 100% dry though, its much more deceiving in that regard than other extractions.

So would the nomans Dmt tech work the same way? Say I put 100 gs of powder with a 50g lye solution. Then use naphtha instead of touline to do the pulls. Freeze pulls then drain excess naphtha… will I have safe edible kratom extract at the end?

Very interesting stuff! I may give this a shot, a it is becoming difficult to continuously take the kratom slurry. Gagging on it on a weekly basis is just becoming taxing and unbearable.