A friend (seriously, I do A/B's) recently did a STB under my supervision.

For some reason the naphtha turned red and recrystalization and sodium carb washes are not getting rid of it.

We used naphtha and only naphtha as the solvent.

After I left he tried a heptane recrystalization (hot) and the bestine turned red as well. He has tried both freeze precipitation and slow evap recrystalizations with red crystals forming each time.

It does not appear to be silt (we used powdered RB), but rather something that has dissolved in the naphtha. It's very strange and I've never seen anything like it with MHRB.

Last night he added room temperature heptane and dissolved all the spice. I told him to let it sit overnight to see if any of the red would fall out. If it does, it probably was just silt, but if not (and I don't think it's gonna) then I have no idea what's going on. I mean the crystals are brownish-red. It's not like there is a pile of red onthe bottom and xtals growing on top.


Any idea's on how to get the red out?

Whoa, is it really spice? How does it smell? At what temperature does it vaporise? Does it leave any nasty residue if vaporised?

Or, is the plant material really MHRB? Did it look/smell/feel/behave like MHRB when purchased?

It does sound pretty strange. Assuming that it is MHRB and the extract is supposed to be spice, then the red impurity seems to have very similar physical properties with spice.

SWIM has never really heard of something similar!

I have read a few other people in other forums having the same problem. Getting red spice when using naphtha. Sounds very strange...

Yeah, I believe it is MHRB. It was purchased from a reputable vendor in Mexico.

It smells like mimosa, looks like mimosa, and acts like mimosa. My friend just informed me that he let the bestine sit for 24 hours and it is still red. Doesn't sound like particles to me. The crystals that form are certinaly s smell like spice. Neither of us have the equipment to find it's melting point, and I don't wanna smoke his brown/red spice without knowing what's going on with it...so yeah. I dunno.

Were the other reports using STB teks or were A/B teks also being affected like this?

Weird, he showed me the spice laden bestine. Whatever is in there is in solution. This is not silt, it is perfectly transparent, no cloudiness whatsoever. It's just rust colored (no metal was used in the processing of the mimosa).

Very bizzare. I am hoping that an A/B isn't going to pulls this red stuff as well...if that is the case, this might not be Mimosa Hostilis but another dmt containing mimosa species...just speculating of course.

DoingKermit, have you read of a fix for this problem? Every pull this guy has had was red execpt the first which was only in contact with the basic mimosa for 10-15 minutes.

i'm bringing this link back from the dead as swim is having this exact same problem right now. this will be swim's 4th extraction. Swim has gotten pure white crystals and great light yellow crystals, all smoke very well. swim has done two extractions shredding the bark himself, one with preshredded and this one which was powdered.
swim picked it up from celestial. swim threw about 380 grams into a gallon jug, added lye beads to the water, let cool and added the clear base liquid to the jug. Shook
the jug for a while and it was quite hot. Swim might not have waited long enough to let the basic cool to a suggested temperature. The first pull had nice clear naphtha as it wasn't heated. The crystals that crashed out where clear and nice, but there was a slight bit of waxy fat or something that didn't let the crystals fall off the bottom of my freezer glass like usual.

This is where swim is stuck, the second pull(about 5 hours later had red/brown naphtha. (Normally clear or light yellow colored naphtha quickly rises to the top of the solution, this is so dark it's almost impossible to see against the basic tea).It isn't solution either as swim separated it from the basic tea using the seperatory funnel. swim added more fresh basic water and the dark brown/red naphtha separated from the new basic solution. Swim is totally confused and has no idea how to get this red/brown fat stuff out of my naphtha. Swim would hate to have to toss almost 400 grams of mhrb. as the first pull was quite strong and very clean. I"d love any suggestions to tell swim as to how to get the jug back on track. Swim just did a STB.

*Swim did freezer precip this and it is like gravy on the bottom of the glass. So the spicy crystals are lost in the mush

I had left my naphtha in the soup (shaking once in a while) for literally months. It was sitting next to my heater for most of the time and so when i pulled it last night i had very murky brown/red looking naphtha. I read the other day someone put the jar in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to allow the oils and gunk to settle and stick to the bottom and then just decant the naphtha into a new container.

The first pick is the jar with the gunk stuck to the bottom and the second pic is my separated naphtha.

I got a bad batch of naptha a couple of times .
I think they put some kind of rust inhibitor in it .
The smell was wrong and it had s redish tint to it .
The naptha may be the problem

My naphtha is all good (ronsonol) and i am pretty sure the heat was causing the nasties to get pulled. That is definitely something to look out for though, Felnik. Was it a brand of naphtha you had used in the past?

Thanks for the replies guys, it really is frustrating for swim to look at that big ol jug with no means to separate the brown/red fat. I know it's not the naphtha Felnik because this is the same 1 gallon can that swim has been using been using with perfect results. Doing Kermit: Changing the temp(freezing for 5-10 min. or heating in hot water bath) doesn't work either as the whole red naphtha becomes clowdy in cold(instead of crashing down) and doesn't separate in heat, so pouring off doesn't work like usual.

My only guess is that i pulled the fats somehow by adding the lye while it was really hot to touch into the jug. As i've never had this with previous batches.

pic 1) ok this pic shows the base liquid swim added to the red/brown nappy then separated once settled.

pic 2) this is just the red nappy

pic 3) this shows how dark the nappy is in the jug. it is nappy halfway down the pic but it is impossible to see

pic 4) this is how swims nappy usually looks, light yellow or even clear if not heated.

bumping for hope someone can help in separating red/brown fat. I've never done an A/B, so if i would do an A/B i'd do correctly from the start, not in the middle to fix a problem. i've only done STB and i've had great results everytime till now. Does anyone have any idea how i can either attempt to separate the red/brown fat from the basic soup or the red/brown from the naphtha pulls.

thanks

oh and btw by "i" i mean swim

i used to use a tek that utilized the heat from basification to heat the solvent and pull almost 100% of the alkaloids in 10min or so. it ALWAYS came of red/orange/brown. it is infact a symptom of having added all your stuff while the water is still cloudy. all i can think is its just heat or the off gassing alters solubility. just freeze precip then slowly warm with clean naph. simple re-x will work wonders.

thanks landofoz, so freeze precip the red nap and which i've done before and all the fat comes with it, then add fresh nap to the crashed fat and crystals, let sit and pour off the new nap and precip again?

If that still doesn't work you can perform a "mini A/B", which should definitely clean it up. This is what it says in the wiki:

"Mix the separated dark (red) solvent with vinegar 3x, separating the vinegar and discarding the solvent. Then basify the vinegar by adding lye, and pull with fresh solvent."

I hope this helps.

thanks doing kermit, that does help! i'll give the mini a try as i can't seem to get the fat separated by heat and freezing drops both the fat and crystals into the same blob.

Hey sorry for being a bit off-topic, but this reminded me of something I've been wondering about for some time now and I get the feeling you know a thing or two about certain things or the other...

You mention "silt" here and in other places in this same thread. There was also somewhere in this thread (that I can't find now for some reason) where you seemed to emphasize that this wasn't "silt" or other run-of-the-mill left-over crap by saying that the liquid is completely clear, with no floaty particles or cloudiness. My question is when one is (re-)dissolving the spice in solvent (same one you mentioned) for recrystallization, should s/he add until the solution goes completely clear? I've heard before that true solutions should never be cloudy because it's always the undissolved particles in there that are scattering the light and giving it the appearance in question (cloudy).

A friend's girlfriend asked me about this because she knows I enjoy 'sciencey-type' stuff but I wasn't sure. She said that (starting from a dry state) the main crystally globs will dissolve away seemingly quite quickly (ie. with little solvent), but that there will still be cloudy/particles floating around in there, which will go away eventually, leaving the liquid completely clear, but we're talking like 3 or more times the solvent. Which is the right way to do it?

Also, can you give me a figure (or point me to one) for spice's solubility in ~boiling heptne? I think I remember seeing 1g into 25ml in one of the ext. guides(?) but actually knowing the answer would help on a number of fronts (from rounding up enough solv to estimating yeild/purity, etc.).

Thanks a lot.