Hello all. I'm a young gardener/alchemist/philosopher/country music aficionado who's cruised the forums for a while. I've been extracting substances, from Lemon Balm to Kratom, for some years now and am piqued at this strange and mysterious world of spice.

I join today because I need advice. The teks that exist, while helpful and awesome, all seem to need to be adapted for one reason or another. So I have unabashedly plagiarized them all, to create my own Tek. Obviously, everything is entirely hypothetical, something of a thought experiment.

The bare bones are as follows. My question for you is: would it work? Are there any areas in which it needs to be cleaned up, that don't involve esoteric and difficult-to-procure reagents and such? Thanks in advance for feedback.

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Materiel list
MHRB bark- around a pound
metal pots
distilled water(1 gallon+)
collection jar/sepratory funnel (sealable glass)
pickle/mason jars for freeezing
glass funnel
filter paper
Naphtha
Lye
White Vinegar
filter paper-medium grade
Sodium Carbonate (Washing Soda)


Step 1- Acidify
In a metal pot, place ~500g root bark. Heat distilled water. Mix hot water and vinegar until a ph of 2-3 is achieved. You will use 1 gallon of this solution for three passes.

Pour 1/3 solution into MHRB pot (while hot), stir. Leave for 30min-2hours. Put in double boiler if constant heat is desired (recommended). Pour off solution into collection jar, leaving sediment. Repeat twice with remainder of clean water/vinegar solution, pouring each time into the collection jar.

Step 2- Basify
Mix ~50g Lye with 1 pint water. Add to sealed collection jar, until Ph of ~13 is achieved. Mix.

Step 3-Pull
Add ~300ml Naphtha to collection jar. Place jar in a pot of heated water, away from open flame.
Roll jar, mixing gently. Let sit for several minutes. Siphon/decant Naphtha layer, place into
pickle jar and into the freezer (You can let it evap for an hour before freezing to reduce volume to 50-150ml, may improve precipitation yields).

Wait 24 hours, and repeat with new Naphtha.

Wait 24 more hours, and repeat again.

You should now have three jars of Naphtha/DMT in your freezer. Discard (or save, lol) Bark sludge.

Step 4-Crystalize.
You can evap the Naphtha. Or, you can freeze precip. To do this, pour super cold Naphtha through medium-grade filter paper set in a glass funnel. Voila, crystals.

Step 5-Wash and/or recrystallize.
Both of these steps are optional, for purity. Note: they may reduce yield. Make sure to wash QUICKLY, and at a high PH (12+), to avoid losses.

Wash:
Add a pinch of Sodium Carbonate (Washing Soda) to 50ml water. Dissolve your crystals in ~50ml naphtha. Mix. Quickly mix and siphon off the water layer, save the naphtha. Repeat with plain water. Recrystalize Naphtha.

Recrystalization:
Simply disolve your crystals in ~50ml warm Naphtha, and freeze precipitate them out again. This will result in cleaner product, as any plant oils etc. should be left behind in the solvent.

NOTE:
Some teks have a defat step. MHRB shouldn't require this, especially with a wash or recrystalization step, as there aren't many fats in bark anyway. I have thus omitted it.

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Thanks guys, and God bless you all.

bump bump


Any takers?

Seems about right, I would just adjust the amount of lye (probably add more) in case you get emulsions, I have had nasty emulsions that were solved by adding about 50% more of the original lye after reaching ph 12.5-13

Nice. Thank you sir.


So err on the side of too much rather than too little? Sounds good. I've been worrying about how I'm gonna measure 50g anyway; no scale, liquid measurements up the wazoo, but no scale.

Have you heard of the whole 'add table salt' technique to separate emulsions? I'm pretty fuzzy on that, not sure whether to give it credence

buy yourself a scale (especially if you can find a decent priced mg scale).

you will NOT regret it.

Table salt hasn't helped me with emulsions, but it increases yield. For emulsions more lye works great.

And yes you should get a scale, I got mines from ebay they are very cheap and reliable, you just have to wait patiently a few weeks to get them on the mail.

I *have* a scale; only, it measures in the mg, max weight is 20g. It's accurate within a mg or two; and to get it off Amazon for $20 was awesome (versus a multi-thousand dollar analytical scale... lol). My brain was so worried about weighing spice, the thought of weighing large amounts of ingredients totally escaped me.

For the most part, large measures are easy: I either measure them volumetrically in a flask, or if I have, say, 100g Mimosa, I can just eyeball out halves to get 50g. Normally, I'm not big on the whole eyeballing thing (like obsessive to the point of using a beaker set + ph strips etc.) but I didn't think large weights would matter much at the time, since I was checking everything with litmus paper anyway... But now I know better. Next time 'round, I'm gonna definitely buy a scale that can weigh up to a few ounces.

Thanks guys. I'm gonna be starting tonight, wish me luck.

Oh, one more thing on the use of salt, I haven't been able to find a definitive no/yes on this:


Is iodine okay? Or does it HAVE to be Ice Cream Salt/Kosher Sea Salt?

Salt is just salt...
If there are any additives present (iodine etc) I would be inclined not to use it (do you want iodine (potentially) in your spice?)...
Anticaking agents seem to be OK.
Just regular table salt (cheap) Nacl is what you want.

The salt was amazing.

My second pull was exponentially (literally) better yielding than my first unsalted pull.

Thank you all at the Nexus, especially Cyb (& ymer and Parshvik) for helping me accomplish one of the most interesting and rewarding feats of my life.

Goodnight, and God bless.