Hi
I've had a long break from hyperspace and have recently been called back. The break wasn't self imposed, more that I was careless with the spice in the past and was punished for treating it like a toy. I was told to give it a rest and was taught a lesson when I didn't. Lesson learned (hopefully). Coming back to the spice was absolutely terrifying, but I had to go back, and found that with the focus of a prayer gifted to me by another traveller and a better attitude, I was allowed back in! The most recent experience was very powerful and left me laughing and drooling in a heap, shaking with pure joy and love, and the better attitude was rewarded with a better outlook in general - I've felt generally more at peace since it, I see other people as part of the collective we are all part of and I feel a tremendous sense of love towards everyone. Yesterday I lay in the park in the sun and looked up at the blue sky and felt a wonderful cool breeze on my legs and face, just soaking it in. I don't remember the last time I felt this way. But being human, I tend to forget as time goes on and will need reminding, so with that in mind, I need to do another extraction.
Max Ion with 350g MHRBI've read I don't know how many teks to date, including but not limited to Spicey Cat's, Vovins, Nomans, Q21Q21 and Cyb's hybrid and having tried salted and heated teks with some success, tried Max Ion this time.
The root bark I had used was obtained 5+ years ago, so I was concerned that the DMT content may have degraded over time but I need not have worried (though a little healthy concern for the outcome is no bad thing - intentions an' all). It was pre-shredded into fine strips, so I used one batch of 150g and two of 100g. On each batch of MHRB, I broke the shredded strips down into small pieces by hand by working them back and forth until they snapped or came apart, then went over the bark again with a pair of secateurs to break down any harder pieces and to further break it up. After that, it was added to a blender with water (I have more success blending wet bark than dry) until the blender was swirling the contents around like a homemade smoothie. Originally I had intended to do 4 batches side by side as I had 4 1.8 litre kilner jars, but only had 3 batches of MHRB to hand. The blender took a bit of a beating and by the end of batch 3 had broken the seal between the glass and the base so was noticeably leaking, so 3 turned out to be the magic number
After a serious blending, each batch was transferred to a Tupperware container and the root bark pushed down so the water covered the bark evenly, then each batch was transferred to the freezer, then back out to thaw once frozen. This was repeated 3 times as per the tek (this took about a day). After the freeze/thaw cycles, they were transferred to kilner jars for the acid soak with distilled vinegar for eight hours (checked pH around 3), then to bain maries on the lowest setting on an electric stove top, then the salt was added (50g for the 100g batches, 60g for the 150g), then the caustic soda (pH around 11-12, 50g for the 150g batch, 40g for the 100g batches), then left for 24 hours, both to let the lye do its work and also to let me tend to real life duties. (the jar lids were opened and closed periodically to allow pressure to escape)
The tek calls for hot naptha, but out of fear of potentially overheating it and possible consequences, I went with hot mimosa mud instead, so the kilner jars were placed back on the lowest setting on the stove top on a bain marie and 50g of naptha was added, then the kilner jars (doing this one by one btw) were rolled in a figure of 8 for about 45 seconds and transferred back to the bain marie for 15 minutes. Four rolls per jar, then a pull. You can see my detailed notes in the picture below:
Each pull was transferred to a long thin glass before being added to the large pyrex baking dish. This allowed any mud that had been sucked up to settle to the bottom of the glass before adding to the main dish. It also allowed me to use a glass eyedropper to suck up the remaining naptha with the minimum of waste. I had intended to do 6 pulls as per the tek, but by pull #4 I was starting to lose the will (had been around 5-6 hours by the end), so settled with 4 rather than continue on when my heart wasn't in it. During the figure of 8 jar rolling for pull #3 I had become a little too vigorous with my rolling and had the dreaded emulsion when it came to pull time, but an additional 20g of salt and 10g of caustic soda per jar solved that (in fact, the naptha/lye separation layers were considerable more defined and easier to pull with the added salt and lye).
The contents of all pulls were combined to one large pyrex baking dish (I know, I know, but there's only so much space in my freezer), then relocated a well ventilated room. I added a little white strip sticker to the side of the dish and marked on it with a pen the current naptha level, then below it roughly where it would be with 40% less liquid. A medium powered fan was placed pointing at it and left for around 45 minutes, by which time the liquid level had reduced to around the lower marking. The naptha was very opaque by this stage, wonderfully milky. Cellophane was added over the top of the dish and it was left in the freezer undisturbed for another 24 hours roughly at -23°C while I attended to real life.
Finally, the baking dish was removed from the freezer and the naptha drained with a turkey baster into a spare jar for reuse. I had planned on pouring it out, but a serious amout of floaters stopped me from doing this for losing them in the pour. Once drained of naptha, the jar was turned upside down briefly, then set on its side with a cool fan blowing over it for around 30 minutes to evaporate any remaining naptha. The results are below:
The results were lots and lots of fluffy white xstals with a bed of clear(ish) goo, which was more solid than gooey. The remaining product was scraped up and weighed in at 7.87g from 350g, a yield of 2.24%. Super happy!
Things I would change: In future, I would up the amount of salt/lye from the beginning for fear of emulsions, and maybe be more mindful of how the jars are being rolled. It's hard to stay totally focused and intent over the space of many hours, but it is important. Also, I need to fix my blender ¬_¬
Things that were useful: a glass eyedropper - this allowed me to pull right down to the meniscus while decanting naptha from the mimosa layer, very handy. A glass syringe - on previous extractions I had used regular rubber bunged syringes and found the rubber reacted to the naptha after a pull or two - no such trouble with a glass syringe. Salt and heat go without saying. I noticed the difference on the first milky pull
Things I learned: for every part of the process I had trouble getting my head around or anything that went wrong, there was an answer for it here on the Nexus if I searched for it. Various tek steps, types of naptha, types of salt, whatever - in each case the question had been answered after some time searching. The wealth of information here is overwhelming, but with this collected research and experience, there isn't much I can't find if I put the effort in, and for that knowledge I'm extremely grateful.
And also,
3 is the magic numberThanks for reading!
(No doubt I've forgotten something, so I'll update if needs be)