I’ve been working through my first ever extraction, and wanted to share progress/troubles, and see if anyone had any tips for how to improve yields – either with this batch, or on my next extraction.

I started with a very simple STB extraction as I wanted to just get familiar with the basic materials, and also wanted to keep things contained to the shed, rather than take over the family kitchen with evaporating solvents etc.

Process was something like:

* I put 50g Acacia Acuminata phyllodes/twigs into a blender. I fear that perhaps I didn’t take this far enough, which may be why I’m not pulling much material. While some was powdery, much of this was still quite fibrous - lots of 2-3cm long phyllode sections.
* 750ml water, and 50g of lye into a glass container to dissolve. Added Acacia. Shake, set aside for an hour or so.
* Added 50ml Naptha. Swirl/tip 5-7 times over a 24 hour period.
* Pull naptha from top with a pipette
* Freeze for 12-24 hours.
* Repeat. I’ve done about 5 or so pulls thus far (so we're about 5 days in at this point).

First pull was very pale yellow and after freezing there clearly wasn't enough concentration for anything solid to form. I still had about 50ml of liquid. I then just evaporated away the naptha and was left with a tiny amount of resin that when scraped did turn into a nice powered substance. Would have been maybe 5mg there at most though.

The following pulls I've been a bit more aggressive with agitating things - in the hope that I'll get more contact between the naptha and the alkaloids. The naptha has been coming out a deeper yellow, but it's a similar story after freezing. Some fatty/oil residue remains, but barely enough to even be able to successfully scrape off the glass.

In most recent few pulls, before freezing, I've been evaporating the naptha down until it it gets cloudy and concentrated, which seems to be helping a little when freezing, but ultimately I'm still getting a mostly empty container with a yellow residue.

I've attached two images of what the pulls tend to look like after freezing and pouring off excess naptha. While there are small amounts of material there it's incredibly hard to work with, and just kind of mushes around the glass.

There's also a shot of what the gooey material looks like when you are able to handle it and get it together.

Here's where I might be making mistakes:

* Didn't grind the source material finely enough?
* I'm not doing anything that might help make things less oily...? But ultimately it seems like the yield is the first problem to solve.
* Maybe the little freezer in my bar fridge isn't up to the task?

While I have evaporated away a fair bit of naptha to get access to the residues, I'd guess that this is mostly excess naptha, and that I'm simply not getting many alkaloids into naptha/freezer?

So, I'd think that there are likely still a bunch of alkaloids within the lye soup, but I'm not really sure if I should keep pulling at it, or try something new with it?

BTW, I'm thinking that for the next extraction I'll try this tek: https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...d_ATB_'Salt'_Tek

I recently failed at an extraction on Acacia Acuminata twigs so I'm in no real position to be giving advice, however, I believe you should be doing an A/B extraction for Acacia and not STB, so maybe that's what went wrong?

Also a defat step is recommended if using phyllodes due to the oil content.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

Have you had any progress since?

I'm looking at working with some Acuminata and it will be my 1st extraction so hoping you have some insights to share 😃
I want to use as much twigs/leaves as possible and not damage the tree by taking structure or root off her.

Thanks in advance ✌️

Not a tonne of meaningful progress to report. Moved onto this tek next - with similar results. A lot of work for small yields.

I'm currently mid way through this tek which looks simple and should be suited to the material at hand. Hopefully some nice goo comes of it. I'll update here when I've finished.

Awesome, thanks for the response 😀

How old was the acacia? Was it grown or harvested wild? Was it narrow or broad phyllodes var?

Did you weigh the total amount of goo you got? Sometimes goo is deceptively heavy... also, just because it looks oily/gooey doesn't mean it's not working, DMT is polymorphic and even when pure can be a yellow oil, but also very small amounts of impurity can make it remain oily and seem very impure when it's really not. Not sure if that's your case but just saying don't give up. Measure the total amount of goo and see if it's a reasonable yield.

You can try to recrystallize the goo or just try to smoke as-is.

Hey thanks for the reply/info!

The (wild) Acacia was harvested in roughly Sept and first tek begun in November. Narrow phyllodes.

From the first two extractions (50g of plant matter in each) I've pulled about 250mg in total – so certainly not a total failure! I'd say there's been a least a dozen pulls in total with yields from each being 25mg if I'm lucky. One of these is still giving small yields on each pull.

The goo itself – i put into a changa bland – definitely active – but you gotta smoke quite a bit to get there. So I certainly haven't lost hope, just trying to work out the best way to work with these materials. Plenty more to learn!

I have a lot of success with very generic a/b pulls on acacia. The last time i tried a stb run on it I just got tons of fats and impurities.

Phyllodes/twigs?

I know the acacia information thread says otherwise, but my experience with accuminata has always been far less than 0.5%. After more extractions than I can count on my hands I would say it exists usually in the 0.1% range. Now this may very well be due to the nature of how shredded the material is (if u don't know, then just try and grind up that kind of acacia bark to a powder, i guarantee you'll be there for hours on a single litre) or even the location of the trees themselves (not being in its ideal habitat). I had to upscale my extraction and buy a bigger pot.

Finished up with this tek. And looks like promising results!

100g of plant material. 700mg of yield – a substance that is strikingly similar to honey.

Looks good. Might solidify with time.
Interested to hear your report on sampling.
I'm growing a narrow phyllode plant, so I like to hear people's experience with this plant.

Hello friends. It's been too long

I just did an extraction of my acuminate narrow leaf , got zilch.
My plant is now 4 years old, lives in full-day sun, plenty of nutrient rich soil, stands around 7-8ft tall, and has flowered once (very lightly) last year.
40-50gm branch bark harvested early April.
1) Ground bark to powder with coffee grinder
2) freeze/thaw in filtered water x 3
3) Add 40ml vinegar + 100ml water (ph4), soaked for 5 days
4) Added 200ml water saturated with salt, then basified with Caustic Soda (ph13/14)
5) Added 30ml warm/hot shellite, turn it thru, let it separate about 10 times (x7 pulls)
6) Pull into vinegar water to re-acidify (ph4)
7) Repeat step 4 & 5, then reduce until a bit cloudy and freeze precip.
Saw maybe 3 xtals which disappeared when drying after decanting shellite.
Barely even any goo

Tried also on my maidenni bark which is same age and harvested same time. Got nothing.
Will try the phyllodes next week for the acuminate and the maidenni, but don't have much expectations. I will definitely give the pressure cooker method a go.
Might need to wait one more year and harvest when it's about to seed.

Has been sampled. Absolutely active. Goo was used in a roughly 30% changa blend. 1 small bowl brought a strong body feel, visual distortions – strange perspectives, and plants in particular looking just incredibly striking and... different. With 2, full open-eye visuals, things morphing and breathing, a very strong body buzz, motor skills affected. With 3, even more overwhelming – entire visual field affected, not a breakthrough, but just wanted to close my eyes and look at the beautiful visions – swirls, fractals, etc. Saw some figures/presences, but they felt somewhat distant.

Overall, things felt pretty short-lived, over pretty quick, and I think it's because the only MAOI in the blend is plain caapi leaf. Afterglow was lovely though.

I've found that AANP extractions can be very hit & miss - sometimes fluffy white crystals, other times it all melts into an opaque-white goo/oil. My theory is that different batches picked at different times of year (or maybe time of day) produce very different DMT/NMT ratios. Sometimes the NMT content is so high that the remaining DMT gets lost in it or can't hold a crystalline structure in the non-polar solvent.

Unfortunately, I've yet to figure out which times of year/day are best for higher DMT ratios

Also, haven't yet tested out the dry ice method of crashing out the NMT from non-polar solvent as carbonate solids. I tend to think that this process (in addition to defats) might possibly be very useful for those working with acacia acuminata. Supposedly the process involves dropping small amounts of dry ice pellets into the non-polar solvent, which will crash out only the NMT as little chunks of carbonate that can be easily filtered. Might be wise to do this slowly in a beaker sitting in a warm water bath to avoid the DMT precipitating also. Once all the NMT has been removed as carbonates, the DMT saturated non-polar solvent can be freeze precipitated as per normal.