All right, I'm planning on running my first extraction fairly soon but am still unsure about a couple of things regarding the various acids available to use during an A/B tek.

I have access to acetic-vinegar, phosphoric, citric, and HCl and have no personal bias for one over another, but that being said, vinegar and HCl are the most accessible for myself. Anyways, should one expect to yield more per pull when using one over another or are they all pretty much the same in what they do and how well they do it?

Secondly, I've heard of the acid cooking off either during the initial cook or the reduction. Is this a problem I should be on the look out for?

Also, should I acidify to 3 or 4? Are there any negatives to acidifying to 3 instead of 4?

Finally, is it possible to add too much HCl to the solution and completely destroy the yield or no? I know that I should keep it at 3-4, but I don't want to run the risk of having my pos pH meter misreading destroying a batch.

-Thank you for your time

From what I've read, phosphoric appears to be the best, followed by hcl then vinegar, but people use vinegar more because it's food safe and won't burn skin etc,
-The more powerful acids give better yields but are more dangerous,
-The weaker acids give more impure yields but are safer.
Don't take this for fact as I'm not entirely certain but I would use hcl if it's easier to get, check the purity as for the most part it's hard to find high purity/food safe hcl/phosphoric acid. (they usually have trace amounts of metals in them, do an evap test to check purity)

Acid won't evaporate too much if you just simmer the mix, keep the room well ventilated anyways just to be safe.

There shouldn't be any problems with acidifying to pH 3, best way to do it is to acidify until the water (simmering) containing the plant material turns red then add a few drops more. (Should be a deep red)
What is the concentration of the acid you can get?

And no low pH shouldn't destroy the actives.

If this is a question as the the acid to use for the bark cooks, acetic will do just fine. Removal is quite efficent at this stage and using a stonger acid will only have more noxious fumes with little to no gains in bark breakdown.

For salting its preference
Acetate and citrate are both hygroscopic and can be a bit difficult to deal with but many people seem to prefer acetate for its ease in freebase conversion.
HCL will be crystalline.

A pH a between 3 and 4 would be just fine, but I'm not sure that a too low pH wouldn't damage the yeld.



Citric acid is also wonderful. Is food grade, doesn't destroy with heat, good stuff.
Also, Vinegar would create some non-extracting dmt acetate, would have a yeld loss. Can't really suggest it. SWIM usually uses HCl and works just fine

Eden, I think DMT HCl is hygroscopic too... from what SWIM has tried, just fumarate works fine

edit: no, don't need to use many types of acid, they're there just to low the pH =)

I believe any acetate that forms will be neutralized in the basifying stage.

Thats interesting to hear about DMT HCL. All other HCL salts I have run into are quite dry. You saved me from ever attempting it, thanks.

I also am a fan for fumarate but only for pharma intentions or storage.

Didn't know this,
SWIM recently did an a/b on some mhrb, and had to acidify his non polar solvent (naphtha) in the end as freeze precip wouldn't work, after boiling down, SWIM got found he had jungle spice, but it's taking him ages to evaporate fully, this is probably why.

All right, thank you all for clearing those questions up for me. I'm probably going to be using HCl for this one, but have to check the purity first so I might end up changing plans. Thanks redeadnixon for bringing that up, didn't think to do an evap. test on the HCl.

And yes, this will be used for the acid-cook part of the extraction, I have fumarate for salting but not enough to acidify everything.

Before commenting on the rest, I have a question to the OP: Is your mimosa powdered or in pieces? If its powdered, dont worry, any acid will work perfectly fine. Even not adding any acid at all will work because being powdered, there is a lot of surface area that will be exposed to the water, and DMT in mimosa is naturally in a water-soluble salt form.



I think you might be mistaking things. What I have read about phosphoric acid being good is nothing to do with extraction, but it's a claim that the dmt phosphate (dmt dissolved in phosphoric acid solution) is very effective, has good bioavailability, or in other words its absorbed very quickly and some people claim it makes the trip stronger. I personally tested it a couple of times and did not find any difference, compared to ingesting dmt citrate or fumarate (but thats only my own experience, we would need to do some blind tests to know for sure)



got a source? I have never read anybody doing a side-by-side experiment, keeping all conditions exactly the same but only changing the acid variable. I would be very interested if anybody did makes this test.

I would suspect with powdered bark it will make no difference at all, and with bark in pieces it might make a difference, but only if one makes long soaks/boils



Again, I have to ask for a source.... Where did you get the information that those acids usually have trace amount of metals?




Naphtha should usually be only aliphatic hydrocarbons, which means it wont pull any of the jungle (and it will freeze precipitate just fine, considering its saturated enough before sticking in the freezer). But it happens with some brands and specially in some countries (like in europe for example) that naphtha might have a mix of aromatics like xylene, which will prevent freeze precipitating from working and it will pull jungle. I guess this might be your case.




What are you talking about? Vinegar works perfectly fine for extracting, dmt acetate (just like dmt hcl, citrate, etc) is water soluble which is exactly what you want, and when you add a base it will be a freebase which will be non-polar soluble, also exactly what you want.



You can use HCl if you want but if your bark is powdered, I would say go for vinegar. Its foodsafe and cheap.

No need to use fumarate for acidifying, that would be a waste.. use it for salting if you want dmt fumarate, yes...

Im a big fan of the citric acid, only because I know how much I need per gallon of water and its cheap and available close to my house, safe, and super easy to deal with.

I dont see many dmt citrate fans around here, but me and my friends sure do enjoy it.

I pretty much use citric acid for anything involving an aqueous migration. It's very safe and super soluble

I've read this too... maybe the MHRB SWIM has worked with had some strange effects, SWIM did a compared extraction using vinegar in one pot and HCl in the another, and had better yelds from the HCl one. But can be just a case, I should try again and then tell.



isn't it in goo form?
Never tried to salt out with citric acid =)

I recently picked up some citric acid with the thought that I would have it if I ever needed it. Could you share you knowledge on this matter?

Was the bark powdered or in pieces? Were all the other variables from beginning to end maintained in the exact same way? Do you remember the exact difference in yields?



He is talking about acidifying the acid step in the extraction, if I understand correctly, and not about the salting out, so it doesnt matter if pure dmt citrate is a goo or not (and yeah it would be a goo).

The bark was powdered, and yes, I should have the difference written here:
580 mg against 660 at first pull from 100 gr MHRB with naphta.
The other variables were not so controlled, such as the pH in the basic phase (I finish that day my pH papers). But I'll try it again with everything controlled and let you know.



I know, but it sounded like he was talking of dmt-citrate as for salting... I know it's not so relevant in the acid cook if it's a goo or not.

Sorry no source, just the general idea I've gotten from reading around, but I would be interesting in doing an experiment like you say,
if I get more mhrb in the near future I'll post in here with results/pics.





http://www.mistralni.co.uk/details.php?id=69
Iron (Fe): ≤ 0.006%
Sulfate (based on SO4): ≤ 0.005%
Arsenic (As): ≤ 0.0001%
Ignition Residue: ≤ 0.08%
Oxide (based on Cl): ≤ 0.005%
Perhaps I was a little vague on the contents, this is from one chemical supplier in uk, but I'm guessing most publicly available HCl acid that isn't above food grade will be like this.

edit: one more thing, the naphtha (i used white spirit) says that it contains approx 15-30% aromatic and 70-85% aliphatic hydrocarbons, might use this in future or just pull with xylene and then pure aliphatic naphtha or heptane to get jungle and dmt.
Would jungle work the same without the dmt freebase in it?

I used acetic acid with my first extraction, but have since found that I can get a better yield using citric acid. As this is easy to buy and cheap, I've stuck to this ever since.

The bark is powdered.

After reading these posts saying to use citric it seems like that would work very well. I think I might try that with the next time I do an extraction, but this time I'll be going with HCl in all likelihood.

Thank you all for your time.