Hi all,

A friend of a friend of mine is trying to do the Q21Q21 tek with sunflower oil instead of d-limonene (no extra steps). After salting with vinegar/water the vinegar and water both become cloudy instead of transparent, so at least "something" must be in there..

When he boils down this vinegar/water solution to reduce the volume, the liquid becomes yellow and looks a bit like urine.. He is still in the process of pulling and salting and has not completed the tek yet.

The question he currently has is, if there is DMT-acetate present in the vinegar/water solution, what happens to it during the boiling step? The Q21Q21 tek says the following:



It also says:



Doesn't this mean that boiling the vinegar/water creates freebase DMT in the solution? And doesn't it just fly off as a vapor, creating a loss of substance?

Thanks for reading.

it will be acetate while it's still in the solution, you need to evap the solution off completely and then heat it up for the conversion. That conversion hasn't been very effective ime. I'd suggest doing a sodium carbonate or lime conversion and pulling into ethanol, ipa, or acetone as a better way to make sure you get a thorough freebase conversion.

This. I will attest to the freebasing with heat method to be hit and miss and/or ineffective. After freebasing with sodium carbonate, I saw huge differences in the quality of the (smoalked/vaped) experience vs unknowingly (at the time) smoking the acetates.

The problem with the heat conversion is that (IME) it never seemed to really get rid of all the vinegar. Therefore it left behind a funky taste when smoalked not to mention acetates are much harsher when smoalked. I ended up wasting a lot of product because of this.

Thank you both for your clear and informative responses! If I may, my friend still has a few more questions..

I had indeed noticed there seems to be some controversy surrounding the conversion of DMT acetate to freebase with heat alone.. Is there any thread/post/article out there that contains the necessary step by step instructions on this last step conversion with sodium carbonate?

My friend also has ethanol at his disposal. Although it comes in a glass bottle, it is also quite expensive. He also has ipa in a glass bottle that he bought at the pharmacy for a lot less money, but apparently they store it in plastic containers before selling it into bottles.. As he cares about his health and the food safety of the final product, he wonders if any parts of the plastic container might have ended up in the ipa, making it unsafe to use?

He also noticed that even after 10 "saltings" of pull number 3, the water/vinegar solution still becomes cloudy after shaking, as opposed to clear after just adding. Even when he only uses water. What does this mean? How does one know when to stop pulling and salting?

It also strikes him that the vinegar/water solution after reduction has somewhat the same yellow color as the sunflower oil used, even though there are no oily emulsions to be seen with the naked eye (he used a paper towel to filter out the tiny amounts of oil floating on top before boiling). The sunflower oil also becomes cloudy after salting, and stays that way. Is all of this normal? As this is his first tek and thus has not used any other solvent before, he has no reference point and is full of questions..

He sent me this picture:


On the right you can see pull number 3 (he uses fresh sunflower oil with every pull), and on the left you can see the reduced vinegar/water solution from 8 saltings of the very same pull.

Being overly curious, my friend decided to potentially sacrifice the combined saltings he got from his first 2 pulls and vaporized the solution to see what he would get. He sent me some pictures of the result:





He's not sure what it is that he got, but apparently it is dark brown, sticky and smells sweet like cookies or popcorn.. I told him not to try and eat it and that I would ask for advice first..

Can't see your pictures for some reason. When you attach pics, follow these steps:

1. Write post
2. Click on the "Attach Files to this Post?" and Check the box below
3. Click "post"
4. This will bring you to the upload image page where you can choose files from your computer.

If that is what you did already, then ignore the above, perhaps I just can't view your images...

Anyway, on to other things...

For the sodium carbonate wash, search in google for (EDIT: ) "BLAB tek + DMT Nexus" This should bring up the wiki. Or click on the WIKI tab above and manually find it. Step six is the "acetates conversion."

Whatever package your IPA came in should be fine. I use IPA (make sure to use 99% ... you may have to order that online...91% will work but it has more water and takes longer to evaporate.)

10 saltings is, in my opinion, overkill for one pull. I do three to four vinegar saltings and one water salting generally. I'm not saying that you can't do more but it is likely unnecessary. I'm not sure on the cloudiness. There is a lot of different speculations as to what it means but like I said, 3 to 4 saltings is generally enough to get the goodies out. Also I do about 6 to 9 total "pulls" on your plant material. You can do as many as you want but most people say that 4-6 is more than enough. I like to do extra just in case.

The yellow color you describe is plant fats and/or oils that get pulled along with the limonene/sunflower oil. They are not harmful. It is also normal for your limonene/sunflower oil to stay cloudy/off color because some plant fats and other things will remain "trapped" in it.

Okay so you got goo then (can't see pics)? That is very normal for the limonene teks. Most people describe the smell as "indole" or "new sneaker" or "flower-y" so the sweet smell also sounds normal to me. It seems to me that you are almost ready to go!

On the sodium carbonate wash, be sure to use about a 1:1 ratio when mixing your DMT goo and sodium carb (as in, if you had 1 gram of DMT goo, mix that with 1 gram of sodium carb and a tiny tiny bit of water to make a paste...this will make more sense when you go over the sodium carb wash tek) . I say that because I used excessive amounts before and then it was a pain to pull all the DMT back out of it and it resulted in a slight loss of yield...

Well, besides seeing the pictures, I think that answers most of your questions. Keep in mind, this advice comes from experience. I am by no means, an expert or a chemist.

Good luck

Thank you The Grateful One for carefully answering all of my questions! I relayed the sodium carbonate instructions along with your useful tips to my friend and he will try them out as soon as he can as he has been quite busy lately.. He is not sure what purity his IPA is though. If he can recall correctly, he's also read something somewhere about low purity IPA leaving sodium carbonate in the final product??

And he is also still not very comfortable about using IPA that has been stored in plastic.. Is there any information out there that can put his mind at ease? He has read the concerns about using plastics with d-limonene and decided to use oil (from glass bottles) instead because of this.

It's interesting to read that there is some speculation as to what causes the cloudiness.. My friend has done 7 pulls so far, but apparently the oil and bark become very difficult to work with after a while and are very difficult to separate which makes for a big mess and loss of material. Also a lot less oil seems to come out than goes in. He's currently looking into better ways to filter the oil, like perhaps a French press.

The brown "goo" that he got actually feels a lot like earwax.

As for the pictures that I posted, they are hosted on postimg.org. I have included all of them in this post. I will keep you all posted on my friend's progress.

Sure, no problem! That goo/wax definitely looks normal!

Sodium carbonate is soluble in water. That is why we use 99% IPA (less water = less sodium carbonate contamination). If you can find IPA and limonene (or whatever oil you went with) in glass bottles than by all means go for it. I am fairly certain (don't quote me though as I'm not an expert... ) that they make specific plastics for these solvents/alcohols so that the plastic will not leak into it.

So I am assuming that you mean your limonene/oil is getting trapped in the bark mix, correct? To help with this problem, add more base. Generally in the initial stages when you are trying to get your mix to a certain consistency. You want your bark mix to be thick, not dry. This will help the oil to separate from the bark. Gently tapping your glass container with the mix and giving it a little shake sometimes loosens up the solvent and sends it to the top (this is just something I do, never heard anyone else mention it before)

I thought about using a french press before but, IMO, it is more trouble than it is worth. I used it in cactus extractions before but isn't essential if you get your consistency correct. It generally takes a few tries before you find what consistency works well. I get it to where the mix will not pour/move much or at all when you tip your glass container. In doing this, the bark mix will not "chase" the limonene as you decant it (alternatively, you could use a turkey baster or a glass syringe to suck out the limonene). I also run the limonene through a paper coffee filter to filter out any bark mix before salting it out.

Q21Q21 tek calls for a 3:4 ratio lime to bark ratio but I tend to go with a 1:1 ratio (100g lime with 100g MHRB/ACRB instead of 75g lime). No matter what you do, there will be some inevitable solvent loss.

Also, I use less water and vinegar in the initial stages than one would think. Usually about 300ml or less total of vinegar and water, or 150ml or less each. Any more than that it tends to get watery and then I have to add more base. It really just needs to be moist, not completely wet. This has all been based off trial and error on my part and a lot of research here at the Nexus.

Anyway, hope this helps you and your friend troubleshoot some of those issues.