I have a few concerns regarding my upcoming extract.
Recently its been vigorous shaking versus gently rolling. I ran a 500 g xtract recently, with violent shaking but over a short period for the first pull. everything seemed to be going great, my pull looked clear as day and I was sure it would be nothing but crystals, but of course upon drying a goo was all that came to be. I was under the impression all the oils would taint the solvent yellow, am i wrong in this? Is there still fats/oils in the nps even though it looks good to go. Anyways i didnt do the mini a/b as i should have but thats in my next gameplan now.
Also, does anyone think it matters how hard you shake or how yellow you make your solvent if your going to follow it up with the mini backsalting anyways?
Acacia confusa is my source

Why would you violently shake? Ive always just rolled and twisted gently, and I get minimal goo'ing and am never disappointed with my end result.

Did you get ONLY goo? Or xtals and goo?

Oils wont necessarily color your solvent, Ive never seen anything other than perfectly clear to cloudy white. Never yellowish ambery solvent. It could vary from solvent to solvent however. Ive only used one particular brand of naphtha.

The Mini A/B I cant comment on.

I really think that being aggressive would increase my yield. But what I'm saying is I don't think it would matter much if I'm going mini ab anyways. I got plenty of crystals in freezer until it was pulled out to dry. Then all goo. The mini is completely necessary for me as I can only obtain acacia. You should check that mini out man. With it i believe you can heat and shake the hell out of it. Then you clean your solvent to get the gunk out. The more agitation. The bigger the yield I believe.

I can its worth the extra effort ,, go the mini and youlle never look back esp with ACRB

I usually shake, but also have been doing the mini A/B. Though.... I may switch to dry teks from now on. I got the nicest prettiest crystals from my most recent dry tek. The whitest white i've gotten yet.

I don't think intense shaking is necessary at all IME. I've always just rolled/tilted the container to gently mix for ~15 min or so with very good results. Also you should be careful with heating freebase DMT, since it oxidizes under heat which produces a yellowish oil. Also if you didn't do a defatting step it will leave a lot more oily impurities in the final product.

I haven't specifically worked with Acacia Confusa before, so I'm not sure of the purpose of the mini extraction? I've always just done a couple re-x with naphtha to get nice white crystals, but is there a reason you can't do this with Confusa?

so what you think EW? when i didnt do the mini before and it appeared my solvent was clear, do you suspect it still contained a significant amount of oils? i just think its crazy i got tan/yellow goo out of what appeared to be a clear solvent.(ronsonol) can you comment on the vigorous shaking? like i said before, a mini is followed up of course afterwards, so why wouldnt one just shake crazily for an extended period of time to increase yield on 1st pull.

I'd be interested to know what EarthWalker says as well, since I've never done a Confusa extraction but have been considering it as an alternative to MHRB since it's not as available as it used to be.

I did read up on the tek I think you're going off of though and it seems like the backsalting step essentially serves the same purpose as defatting (probably more efficient actually since your working with smaller volumes and the oils are already dissolved in the naphtha). So I would bet once you do the backsalting it will get rid of most all the oils and give you a clean product.

In my experience the color of the solvent after pulling is not a good indicator of impurities. It usually stays clear unless evaporated down to a very small volume and then you can start to see the yellow tint to it, so I wouldn't worry about the solvent being clear.



Shaking it shouldn't hurt anything, and it *might* even increase the yield (probably not by too much though). The main reason most people (at least me) avoid vigorous shaking is because it tends to form emulsions that can take awhile to separate. So you might get some extra DMT per pull, but then you may have to wait hours for the emulsion to separate between pulls and you could have used that time to just do a couple extra gently mixed pulls if you're trying to increase your yield. If you don't have a problem with emulsions, then the hard shaking shouldn't be an issue.

Emulsions are rare for me. It's hard for me to even try to get one. I'm pretty careful about filtering.and decanting my bark after the cook I let it sit on the fridge over night and more sediment drops and clunks at bottom, and its easy to leave that behind when pouring, I think that stops emulsions very well.