My hydrochloric acid boils go from a ph of 2-3 to ph of 7 after 10-20 minutes of cooking and I have to add more hcl. I even now start with ph of 1 and then it goes to about 5. It is as if the bark neutralizes the ph or absorbs the acid or something. Doesn't ph of 7 make lower yields?

Has this happened with anyone else? Why isn't this in the extraction teks?

Maybe what is happening is your acid is boiling off & PH is going back up when it occurs.
I have never had this happen with acetic acid, ascorbic acid, or fumaric acid, but it seems maybe HCL is volatile & evaps off easily possibly due to the small amount needed to lower PH.

Have you tried using a different acid?

BTW I hope you respect to boil HCL not in a metal pot. Not alu, not steel.

Perhaps it is evaporating, nevertheless this should be updated in the teks using hcl otherwise people will be just cooking with a ph of 7 Do they even get updated?

I know aluminium was unsafe because of the oxidation that leaches into the soup... but I only thought it corroded stainless steel and didn't produce any harmful effects like aluminium does oxides??? After the acid cook is done I clean my stainless with lye and it gets most of it the stains out.

I found another guy on here with a similar problem but using phosophorus acid. He thinks it may be that the heat causes the PH to drop but it is still very much unclear what it is that causes PH to not stay constant.

This is a problem especially for people using HCL because there is a suggestion that going below a PH of 3 will kill dmt and hinder yeilds dramatically (my own experience confirms this too as I only yielded 1g from over a couple kg while acid boiling under a ph of 3 with hydrochloric acid).

Here they work with pH 1.

Ande here :

Acetic=

One tek I did, I used vinegar as the acid and added it to the water before freeze/thawing process. I checked the PH with litmus after that and it showed it wasn't acidic at all. This was with Powdered ACRB.

Using vinegar I have found it hard to get below PH of approx 3.5. With HCL, very easy, but the Max Ion tek (which is suppose to maximize yield) calls for anything between 2 and 4, so I can't see PH below 3 being a problem.

It's very simple...

You need pH4 (or below) to create the required reaction. (acidic stage)

You need pH11 (or higher) to create the required reaction. (alkaline stage)

That's all you need to know...The End.

Simple would mean that what is stated in the teks is what occurs, namely you dump in the acid and viola your ph is set but this is unpredictable behaviour on the part of mr. muriatic acid over here.

It would be nice to know that low ph doesn't kill DMT so that I can put in excess HCL and not worry about having to keep checking the PH.

Even though Jees states that in the Yoda tek they use ph of 1 in this thread there are complaints that ph of 2 and below rendered bad yields.

In that thread they ask for confirmation, a confirmation that never came.
You must be careful not to fill in the dots by automation that pH2 or lower DOES render dmt to decompose. It might be, or not, until the jury is out. So far we have contradicting indicators, that's all. There are doubts one one side, and a tek with no problems at pH 1.