Hello, and thanks for reading. I have had two sucscessful extractions doing an acid base tek with MHRB. I had some psychotria viridis laying around for a couple years, and decided to see what kind of yield I could get out of it. I did the same extraction technique, however I decided to do a couple extra washes before freeze precip. Normally i would just freeze the naptha with a sealed lid and once it crystalized I would pour off the naptha and let it dry out. Well with the psychotria it never crystalized. However I left it in my freezer. A month or two later (tonight) I happened to look at the jar and it appears that it finally crystalized. I poured off the naptha and was letting it evap. I noticed the little globes had slid down the side of the jar. so i went to scoop them out and realized they were about as hard as a rock.

So i'm just wondering is it because i'm a total noob at this, or is it the psychotria, or the extra washes that made this spice turn hard. Will there be a differenct quality to it because of the hardness? should I rewash it? thanks again for reading.

What exactly do you mean by hard? If you were to apply (even small) pressure to it, does it crumble? Is it just in chunks as opposed to a powder?

What I mean by hard, is they are like rock candies, or some sort of home grown crystal experiment. The largest of the globes broke, but when it broke it did not crumble, it merely broke into two or three pieces.

It appears that the crystals formed much larger and dense. I don't know if this is because of such a long period of time in the freezer, or if it's because there is some other compound from the psychotria which is left over and causing this density.

Some of the smaller globes are actually quite hard to break, they end up shooting across my work area when I apply sufficent pressure.

Just for the audio analogy, if I drop them onto the table top, they will sound like a rock hitting it.

Well it turned out, that after drying out all night, it became a little softer and easier to crush it up. More of a granual salt than a powder.

Thanks for your input.

It seems to me that the crystal clusters (as opposed to more powdery and dispersed) feel more potent by weight than if you were to break it up (which goes contrary to what I would expect with a larger, more uniform surface area of powders.