Hello Nexians, just preformed my first extraction using the Lextek, had a question about the second step, cooking the bark in the acidic water. Does this need to be done three times, if the pot can fit all the water in it, or is it the coming back to temperature which is vital? Also does the amount of acidified water used in this step affect the end result (could less be used if possible)?

Thanks, just looking at ways to bump up my efficiency.

That would be a neat trick achieving this by doing lesser [water, acid and washes]

Only a side by side comparison on same bark material could reveal.
A tek should have been tuned trough some trial and error stages already.

I'm pretty sure the reason that there are three boils is due to a dilution ratio. Each acid cook only allows a portion of the alkaloids to be removed, because some of the alkaloids are still in the aqueous solution bound up in the bark. Each time you do a boil, it kicks those trapped alkaloids into the free aqueous solution so they can be used for extraction.

How were the yields? I moved over to Cybs max-ion because of the high yield/low work ratio with a mini a/b for ACRB. The boils are so messy and take so much time and I was getting smaller yields but I was using the Thick light tek which is close to most other a/b teks IMO.

Yeah, I was figuring it had to do with the volume of DMT that the water could hold, will have to try Jees suggestion to test the theory.

Not sure of the yields yet, has another 18 hrs in the freezer. Some really nice clear crystals were forming last time I checked though. I did this tek as it was using acacias, which I gathered/used (exact species unknown). Pretty excited to see the results as it being my first cook... Will update with yields...

Problems...

Looked like really nice crystals were forming in the freezer, took it out and evaporated the rest outside. As the shellite dissipated what looked like crystals was looking like less and less, anyway ended up only getting .015g off 1kg bark! Was yellowish in colour, a friend tried 50 mg in a crack pipe, it smoked up but failed to melt, he claimed it tasted funny as well...

Three things I am thinking:

-Very a very low alkaloid trees.

-Only used a third of the vinegar in the second step as it was reading pH 4. Measured it out all three times with the same results...

-Probably my main concern is the warning reading 'Warning do not use this tek for acacia extraction!' Must of read it 6 times, my mate too and missed it every time!

Please read Entropymancer's extraction overview thread. The OP indicates a lack of understanding of the extraction principles. Once you understand the principles, teks will make more sense in general.

Good luck!

Thanks Snoz. I have zero chemistry experience, so its a bit of a learning curve. Was a very good read, every step was followed exactly so I am assuming it was the trees used, that was a mistake on my part, was told by a friend they had made DMT from those trees before so didn't get a ID on them...
Oh well have enough chems for another cook....