I see a few issues here. I think a large issue is that your extraction vessel you are pulling your solvent out of... it should be CLEAR not opaque. If you're going with a plastic container for adding the base and pulling from so you can visually determine when the interface between the two layers forms and clearly see it along with the tip of the pipette you are pulling your warm naptha with (optimally conntected to the stopper of a side-arm flask flask with either vacuum or water aspirator to vacuum siphon your naptha off...)

Back to the plastic vessel, did you simply decant your solvent? how did you seperate it? I see a baster... were you sure to gather only clear liquid?

HDPE are both ok for naptha, likely more plastic #'s led so it is acid/base and solvent resistant (ph hotspots can produce brittle spots in the bottom of a milkjug which can turn into very nasty leaks over time, so the best storage container for an hdpe extraction vessel is a clear plastic sterlite bin such as what you would grow mushrooms in. I don't think a metal turkey pan is a good thing at all since metal is so reactive to pH changes but better than nothing...

I'm working on this extraction now. Taking a small break.

Now that the container has cooled down the naphtha pulls look normal and when I breath on the naphtha I can see white clouds forming.

I was saved my left over root-bark, just in case. I tried to do a pull on the leftover root-bark and the naphtha came out clear (I'm guessing this means there is no spice in the root-bark and my acid cook worked).

I'm running several more pulls on the original jar and then will freeze percip. I am also running the re-x on the funky spice I first pulled. Pictures soon to follow.

Ill be doing a 1kg extraction myself here soon, with a similar tek.
Im nearing around 8 extractions or so, and the last few experiments I have done have yielded pretty fair amounts of yellow spice.

Ill post my outcome as the result becomes available.

For the record though, I use much less lye, and don't freeze precip

Hey guys,

Coming in here to finish up this thread. In the end, I made a few small mistakes. But I really think the bark was bunk and I will never buy powdered bark again. Otherwise I should have been able to pull more out.

Here is photos of the re-x of the yellow crystals and what was left over in the jar.

I guess the goo needed to dry out more. The first pic of is of the re-x. The second pic of what I will try an re-x next.