OK so this is extremely frustrating and has never happened before. I set out yesterday to do Whatcha's tek which has worked beautifully many times in the past. First odd thing was that mixing the lye never really made the water heat up excessively. There was some heat but not as much it seems. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my results. After making my basic water I added the root bark to each jug and shook vigorously. Immediately a few things are noticed.

1) The water normally turns a murky brown muddy color when I mix the bark in. This time the water was purple. Now I know it's sold as a "purple dye" but I always thought that was strange since the water never before turned purple as it did this time.

2) FOAM...there was a TON of foamy frothy bubbles that developed after shaking that took a long time to settle out. Never seen that happen before.

3) Layers. Other than the foam previously mentioned which settles out after a while, there are layers in the basic solution. The bottom layer is bright purple and by appearance looks to contain most of the bark. It can be kicked up into the middle layer, which looks most "correct" as a kind of dark opaque brown, by gently agitating the jug, but this mostly settles back down into the bottom layer. The topmost layer looks the same as this bottom layer.

Despite this I attempted to pull, but four naphtha pulls yielded absolutely nothing from freeze precipitation overnight. I didn't expect it to either, the naphtha was absolutely clear instead of the normally yellow or orange. All variables are pretty much the exact same, the brand of lye is the same and I've used bark from the same vendor previously, although this bark was purchased a month or two ago and I basically just shelved it. I've used hot water in the sink as heat baths to try to help. I'm about to boil a pot of water and use it as a heat bath to hopefully help dissolve the bark further and maybe make this thing still work.

I'm open to any ideas or suggestions, at the moment I've got two jugs filled with a pound of lye and a pound of bark each (would hate for it to be a waste!) and a tiny bit of naphtha floating on top. Anyone had anything like this happen before?

This sounds like bunk lye to me. If you had a high enough pH, the MHRB would have turned jet black and no emulsions would form. Since the base didn't get low enough, the NP-solvent can't pull the DMT. Maybe not, but sounds exactly like what I expected reading your description of the basing process.

Any idea why lye could possibly be "bunk?" Sodium hydroxide is sodium hydroxide, what possibly could happen to it to make it not work? Keep in mind it's the same brand of lye I've used on countless occasions before.

What do you suggest I do? I can buy more lye and basify more, do you think this so called "bunk lye" would cause problems in the final product? I would assume not since even the bunk lye shouldn't get pulled by the NPS.

I think you should buy some ph paper or a ph meter.

I've heard sodium hydroxide can react over time with the atmosphere to form a more inert product.

This is what exactly what happened to me over the summer. I thought what was "Pure NaOH" was really impure, and I couldn't get the PH high enough, The extraction mixture was brown, not black, and emulsions formed. Once I added some real lye, It heated up a lot, Turned black, and seperated extremely easily.

One thing though is making me think it's not a problem with the lye: I can vigorously shake the mixture with naphtha and emulsions don't seem to form, the naphtha separates into a distinct layer rather easily. What gives?

So I was lazy and just left the containers sitting around since my last post, probably not a good idea. I did finally get around to picking up some new lye and that straightened it right out, should've done it immediately.

if you are bored, take 20ml of basic water and slowly stir in tiny amounts of bark. it easily can be a pretty dye. makes a wonderful pink color at low conc.

Total yield from 2lbs (~907grams) of MHRB: 11.6 grams of pale yellow spice (~1.27 percent)

All done in two pulls. I have a third and fourth pull in the freezer but it's been in there for 12 hours or so and I don't see any crystallization yet. Based on the high yield I think I got it all already. Whatcha's tek is fantastic, best one I've used hands down. Haven't tested the goods yet, I think I'm going to experiment with hyperspace jumps during the peak of 4-AcO-DMT and DPT trips to see how the different tryptamines mingle in the receptors.