doing Q21Q21's Vinegar/Lime A/B Extraction Tek, can a person use HCI water instead of vinegar? Cannot find any good vinegar here, and chem shop acetic acid is pretty dirty.

Any reason why not? What would be the ideal PH for this side of things? using calcium hydroxide as base on powdered bark.

Appreciate your thoughts

What kind of vinegar do you find ?

How is chem shop acetic acid dirty ?

Where do you plan to procure the HCl ?

The vinegar here has lots of impurities in it when it dried, as in visible things though i don't know what.

same with the acetic acid.

I plan to get the HCI from the chemical supply stores, i live in the east, its a lot different when it comes to buying things. I have pretty much any chemical, within reason, available. Its just finding the clean ones, and the HCI is very clean.

It should work fine in q21's tek though right? I am only asking because he mentions to use calcium hydroxide only (not another source like lye presumably), so was wondering if the acid can be swapped or not.

if q21q21 tek is a normal a/b tek. then even the impure vinegar will pass, you will just need to add more i guess cause its impure and diluted. but if this tek is normal a/b tek and does not involve salting of alkaloids, then you freebase your final product anyway and extract it as freebase. the vinegar does not matter anymore at this point.


edit : vinegar smells, but hcl smells even more when it evaporates and its more corrosive acid.

I honestly cannot see the point in using HCl instead of acetic acid, unless for some reason you wanted to salt out the freebase in the end to obtain DMT chlorhydrate instead of DMT acetate.

I've used white vinegar purchased in a grocery store with excellent results. HCl is more smelly, corrosive and overall dangerous than acetic acid in any form. Also, whether it has some impurities or not is not relevant, as far as I know, considering its function in the tek.

I would save efforts and invest them in procuring a good pulling NP solvent.

my thoughts exactly..

great thanks guys. good to know.

I want white crystals in the end, preferably freebase but this is for comparative extractions so the DMT type is not so important, it just needs to be consistent with other groups of extractions. So the vinegars impurities are ok for this? not worried so much about food safe ingredients as much as pure end product.

the naptha here is very clean. that end is all good. have very pure calcium hydroxide, the dirty acid was the only hangup.


Could you perhaps elaborate a little or tell me where i can read about what you mean. What i think you are meaning is that the vinegar is used early on and not pulled into the naptha (and its impurities are not either)...correct?

thanks for the assistance folks

Then you need to use a pretty specific solvent, either for pulling, or for re-crystallizing what you obtained when pulling. Hexane is a good option in my experience. Avoid using xylene or toluene. In any case, clean-evapping naphtha (which is generally a mix of several petroleum distillates) works good for most people.



The purpose in the acidifying step is obtaining a solution of DMT salt in water, DMT acetate if you use acetic acid. This is as far as vinegar goes. Then you de-protonate that solution to obtain DMT freebase by raising the pH of the mix, and then you pull the freebase molecules using a non polar solvent.

I figure that if by chance you use a vinegar that happened to have lots of other plant fats and impurities, you could perform a non-polar naphtha wash of the acidic solution before basifying, but using plain white vinegar doesn't seem to need this de-fatting step. If I had to use apple or wine vinegar instead of alcohol vinegar, I maybe would make two extraction batches and perform this non-polar wash in one of them to see if there's any differences in the end. But again, doesn't seem to be necessary with alcohol vinegar. And in any case, if you are concerned about the purity of the final product, a final re-crystallization seems a better option to me.

Just take some time to read the
Extraction Overview in the wiki, and you will be fine.

Can you post the ingredients list of the vinegar ?

Thank you very much for explaining that, it all becomes more clear.

Have tried toluene, and it got really yellow. seems to pull a lot of other stuff.

Which do you think is the ideal solvent? you mention hexane, any other really good ones? some of the very pure ones i have gotten are naptha, toluene, hexane, heptane, xylene, limolene. but there are many more, my only obstacle is my own ignorance.

thanks for the link. I am guilty of only reading the teks, didnt even realize there was a whole other treasure trove of info there.


The ingredients seem fine, although im in Asia so its not in English or even letters. Its when i filtered some and dried it i noticed it. visible impurities. Would charcoal be a dumb idea?

Ordering more solvent Tuesday, so should arrive end of this week, then experiments begin full scale


EDIT: would i be able to get ph around say 2.5-3 with the vinegar, then defat with toluene? ditch at then change solvents? Is this possible or risk mixing up solvents? what if dried in between solvent swap? I only ask because when i tried a side by side with toluene, heptane, xylene and naptha, toluene was one of the dirtiest (yellows) so i thought it might be great to strip the powder of fats/oils.

I have used hexane and heptane, and the cleanest results were obtained with hexane in my experience. I cannot speak for the others you mention.



I have no experience in de-fatting. But regarding mixing up solvents... if you use for instance a wider-spectrum solvent such as toluene to de-fat, if you don't want to mix toluene and (for instance) hexane when pulling, I guess you only have to allow any traces of toluene to evaporate after pulling the impurities, then basify.

Impurity in vinegar bothers you so you wanted to use a rather dangerous and absolutely inedible chemical that cannot come in contact with metal instead......
In the words of Mr. Spock. "Highly Illogical Captain"

If you're using naptha and Q21Q21's tek, then your final product shouldn't be affected much by vinegar impurities. Perhaps a re-x might be necessary, but that is the case regardless.

That said, if you were using the limonene version, for which the end product is DMT acetate, then impurities in the acetic acid would be present and concentrated in the final product.

I don't think most people recommend a de-fat anymore, but a more experienced member could certainly expound on that.

Honestly it really doesn't matter what acid you use in the initial cook phase of an a/b. Chances are even if your hcl/vinegar is impure it won't carry over in the NP after its basified. If your aiming for a FB freeze xtyal'd product how pure the acid you use, or what acid you use is really irrelevant. However hcl is pretty nasty imho, its reactive with metals, and the fumes that will be produced are very caustic. Vinegar will produce acetic acid fumes when reducing the acid cooks, but its not really that bad. Non-volatile acids work best imho, citric, ascorbic, maleic, and fumaric come to mind. I use fumaric as its cheap and readily available food safe at high purity.

Any grocery store should have distilled vinegar, and that shouldn't have contaminants in it. But really it doesn't matter unless your using it to salt a NP to get acetates.

very goo, thanks for clarifying that.



thats because more than likely all the DMT is getting flushed down the toilet anyway, this is for testing different material and the purity of end product is important. I was wondering if the different acid would affect the purity, which it seems not to in this AB tek. seen as the others are ok too i may try fumaric as like said above it is incredibly clean, and cheaper than vinegar.

i am aware of HCI safety issues, i use it in plant work as well (growing) so its usually around anyway. thankfully not only chemicals are cheap but also glassware, so storage and such is easier is safer bottles. anyway, i was thinking it would be cleaner, but thats a dead issue now i guess, cheers


Any idea why only limonene? with hexane or naptha this is not an issue? I don't mind what form the DMT come sin, it just needs to be the same across the board.



great thanks, added to the list. about how much did you use on 50/100g of bark? i messed up a lot using too much naptha and it would freeze out very well/big/easy to see.

im out of town til next week, so will stop by again then hopefully with the supplies all ready.

I wrote a little report for this tek, you can find it here. Keep in mind that this tek often requires a bit of extra solvent due to higher absorption - evaporation in the pulling process, and using a french press or similar has been suggested to maximize the recovery of solvent from the mix.

If you look at the Q21Q21 tek, you will see that the naptha version ("fluffy white funfest" calls for freeze precipitation of DMT freebase while the limonene version does not. This is because DMT cannot be freeze precipitated from limonene, so acetic acid is used to salt the DMT, converting it to its acidic form and making it soluble in the water layer and not the limonene.

You should know that DMT must be in the freebase form in order to be smoked, so if your product is DMT acetate then additional steps will be required unless you are planning on taking it orally with a MAOI.

dmt acetate can be smoked, through heat the acetic bond is broken; freebasing the dmt. your first hit converts the acetate to freebase, then the second hit vaporizes (if done properly) the dmt. ive used dmt acetate for 2 years instead of freebase, it also dosent oxidize and is fairly predictable. because of its conversion to freebase during smoking the end of your bowl is most potent which is great IMHO because at that point you are trying to break through, so you get slammered with the rest! however the taste is less than desireable but through a water pipe its really not bad

very good, thanks guys! Supplies have arrived and hope to start on the weekend when have more time.

I wonder what your opinion is on the most stable form if it were to be stored?

dmt if stored properly, which idealy means amber glass vial and cool/dry place will be stable for very long time in any form. even the freebase if cleaned properly and kept in freezer will be stable for years.

but if you want to have it on room conditions with varying temperatures and moisture in the air for long time, as i understand the fumarate salt form is the most stable salt form of dmt , which means you get solid crystalized substance at the end, which is not achievable with other salt forms of dmt.