If the reason we have to add so much base to our extractions is to make the DMT able to me soluble into the solvent because its normally a salt in the plant, cant you defat a STB solution if you mix powdered bark and water together before adding the base? Isn't the powdered bark/water mix going to be slightly acidic anyway? If there is a loss of yeild some how, it shouldn't be too significant or else people would just extract without base at all, I'm thinking.

On your STB procedure are you originally just boiling the plant material in water with no acid added? Or are you adding an acid when doing this step?

If your making your original boilings very acidic, then you should be able to do a defat on the mixture of the three boils after the reducing stage. After you have done that however many times you feel the need to and all the naptha is removed, add the base to the mixture. Resume your tek as usual.

No sir. STB means Straight to Base, which means not using an acid. I'm talking about if I'm setting up a jar for a STB extraction, wouldn't it be possible to do a defat on the mixture if it was just plant material and water, no base or acid added. It should work just fine, right?

Theoretically it seems possible but I wander whether the acid also separates the oils and tars resins etc making them extractable?
What actually are these fats and oils? I remember endlessness mentioning an analysis by burnt butI cant find that thread now..
Maybe ethanol would have the same effect as using an acid thus keeping with the one pot stb procedure.

How would ethanol have the same effect if its miscible in water?

Yea ethanol is a bad idea as it will dissolve freebase and salts.

That's not really the reason you have to add so much lye for a STB.

The reason you add so much lye is because you have not yet lysed the cells, prior to basification. Thus, the lye is performing a dual purpose; lysing the cells and altering the polarity of the DMT molecules.

If you want to use less lye, go with an A/B, where the cells have already been lysed prior to basification. You will find you can use significantly less lye to a much greater effect.

To complement this.

Adding more lye also helps a lot to avoid getting emulsions, if you add just enough lye to get the PH up, your solution will take a longer time to separate the layers.

The point of my post was asking whether or not its viable to do a defat prior to adding the base in a STB tek, or is the acid required for some reason? Do cell walls need to be lyced for defat to be alot more effective?

Prior to adding base (with STB) you would just have bark sitting in water...so no...adding solvent (for defat) would pick up no oils as they won't have been released from the cells.

Not to actually defat but to break down the cell walls to enable a solent to be used to then defat. Some old school researchers used just methanol to extract.

Cyb couldn't of said it better. The only way I can think of to make this possible would be to repeatedly freeze and thaw the plant material, which from what I have been told in the past should be effeciant enough to lyse the cells. If not all of them, it will lyse a decent amount of them. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

After its been lysed and freezing and thawing, could you then just boil the plant in water with no acid added? This would lyse the cells further, and everything should carry over into the water because everything is in a water soluble state inside the plant naturally.

Once that is done, just reduce and defat before adding your base. No acid has been used so I would still consider this a STB, just a little more drawn out one.

The freeze/thaw is an old tactic as well for lysing. So that is possible I suppose.

Let's not forget however that the efficacy of freeze-thawing process has never been tested, AFAIK, at least in woody materials like mhrb and acrb. It could very well be that the highly lignified cell walls in mhrb and acrb are more than resistant to water expansion during freezing - think of how tree trunks and roots may survive winters in sub-freezing temperatures.

What is certain however is that even if freeze-thawing is not beneficial, it is not detrimental either.

Infundibulum is correct, MH is quite hardy, especially the seeds, you could freeze and thaw them 100 times and they would probably still germinate.

Although I don't doubt the freeze thaw method efficiency, i've used it myself, in conjunction with boiling inside a pressure cooker.

45 minutes to an hour at 15 PSI with a bit of vinegar is effective at lysing the cells, actually, it gets quite sludgy!

If you wanted to be extra cautious, you could try freeze thaw method AFTER boiling for an amount of time, with or without the pressure cooker. I'd imagine that would get the job done.