I've been reading up on different STB teks and it seems the main difference is how much mhrb and water is used. All stb teks seem to agree with equal parts of lye and bark, but the varying amounts of water has me puzzled.

Noman's tek says 50g mhrb, 50g lye, 750ml of water, 50ml naphtha per quart extraction jar...

While on a different forum another STB tek says 100g mhrb, 100g lye, 600ml of water, and 150ml of naptha... per quart extraction jar.

What im wanting to know is why is there such a vast difference in water ratios? I understand the equal parts of lye and mhrb, and also how more or less naphtha is just gonna make it easier or harder to get the DMT out, but what gives? Does more water make the DMT transfer to the naphtha easier?

Any insight to this would be greatly appreciated for I'm still new to extractions and DMT in general and I'm just trying to figure all of this out.

Thanks in advance.

A good question! I have been wondering this as well. I followed Nomans tek which suggested that you use 1.5 to 2 times the amount for powdered bark. So I used 1500 ml for 50g of MHRB and have a very watery solution. Although many posts I have read suggest that more water is not a big issue.

This is the key here. The answer is yes. It's all about having enough water (and base of course). If you don't have enough water, your extraction is fail. Might as well stick to Noman's since it is tried and true, but feel confident in using more. You can use as much as required for your extraction vessel. Just beware that due to the increase in water volume you may need to increase the amount of base.

Another hint, pH can lower after each pull. Add more base if your pulls start to get finicky about separating.

Not enough water will make a sludge, which makes it harder to separate the naptha. I prefer the lower volumes and have not had any problems. The 100/100/600 ratio works fine. I'm not sure about the additional water helping more of the DMT transfer to naptha. It seems that you would need to do more mixing to get all the naptha to touch all the water. From what I understand, it is the polarity of the water, made highly polar with lye, that has the strongest "pushing" effect. If you used a lot of water and not enough lye, you would need to do more pulls with naptha to get everything out. As long as you're not losing too much naptha with each pull, then you have enough water. With less water, some people use heat and agitation to help the separation, but I've never needed to do that because I'll sometimes let it go days between pulls.

I'm sorry for bumping this old thread, but I have the same questions and am not completely satisfied with the answers. I'd like to use as little water as possible, so I don't have to use as much lye.

To put it broadly: What are the considerations for using more or less water per gram of root bark?

More specifically I have these two questions:
1. ۩ agreed that more water "makes the DMT transfer to naphtha easier". Why would this be the case? My reasoning is that the more water one uses, the lower the concentration of DMT in the water/MHRB mix. Hence it is "less advantageous" for the DMT molecules to move to the naphtha, so that more DMT remains in the mix? (I realise I am missing some chemistry terminology here, sorry about that)
2. Shouldn't the amount of lye used be a variable of the amount of water used, not the amount of MHRB powder? It is the pH of the water that matters in the end, right?

My own hunch is that one would like to use as much water as is needed to sufficiently dissolve the MHRB powder and no more (so that the remaining mixture is not a sludge).

I know these questions are quite nit-picky, but I like to know why I am doing what I'm doing.

I have tried everything and settled on this for my extractions.

30g lye, 170 grams powdered bark, and fill as much water as needed to end up with 1 liter for my erlenmeyer flask.

Never fails.