Hi all,

A friend of mine is doing his first extraction

Things he did:

1. Added 2000ml water to borosilicate flask
2. Added 160 g lye to the mix
3. Added 100 grams Phyllodes from Acacia Acuminata (Narrow Phyllodes Variety) powdered to the mix.

It is sitting now.

Some questions:

How long should the mixture sit?
The coffee grinder he used did not powder the bark to a very fine mixture, is that ok?
How much naptha should be used per pull?


Thank you!

Generally you want 15ml of water and 1g of lye per 1g of bark. So You should have done 1500ml water and 100g of lye. Then that mixture should sit for an hour.

Also, I'm still a novice, maybe someone can correct me, but I believe an Acid to Base extraction would work better than a Straight to Base extraction because your bark is still on the shredded side. The acid helps to pull the alkaloids out a little more.

You want to use 1ml of Naphtha per 1g of bark, so in your case 100ml. You'll want to do multiple pulls.

I advise you do what I did before beginning your first extraction, and thoroughly read over a variety of ATB and STB teks. Which can be found here...

STB Teks

A/B Teks

Lastly, there's no sense in saying that it's your friend doing it. It's usually discouraged since it doesn't protect you legally in any manner. Also it makes posts harder to understand. You could say your hamster was doing the extraction and it wouldn't matter.

Read up on some Teks, learn, be patient, and be safe.

The hamster was actually doing the extraction hahah.

So first pull, literally nothing, used 100 ml naptha...

Just some yellow substance left over, very thin oily layer.

Maybe its bad bark?

+1 to Widderic

Acacia usually needs a defat stage to remove the plant fats from the end product, that's probably what the oily substance you're referring to is. Definitely do a bunch more reading on the various teks linked above by Widderic.

Also you don't need nearly that much Lye if it's 99% concentration. 10% of your bark mass should do it even for distilled water, but double that for safety to 20% just to be sure and you're certain to have a proper pH. Use pH test strips or a meter if you have them. (e.g. I can raise my acidic aqueous solution's pH from 2.3 to 12.4 with 20g of Lye in a total solution volume of 1200mL and 200g plant material) SVG on reddit just discovered for herself how ~9g is more than enough for her STB tek.

It's more likely to be bad bark though given the steps you described, you should have seen something in the dish after you put it in the freezer to freeze precipitate... you did freeze it right?

Read read read! Oh, teach your hamster to read first, unless he's just the sous chef...

Hi mate,

Yea i read all of the articles, and did freeze it, and all i got was the yellow substance.

Even if i defatted the acacia, if the bark is bad, wouldnt i get the same effect, probably even less due to less oils?

I am pretty sure its bad bark, since from 100 grams, i would have at least gotten 250mg of product or 500, but i did not even get that, just some slimey yellow goo, very thin layer on the dish.

No crystals formed during the freezing stage. I also air evaporated all of it, no crystals, just goo.

I would guess its less than 50mg of product from 3 pulls now.

Sounds like bad bark then honestly if you've read and followed a tek to the letter. The goo might actually be spice but it's difficult to say without seeing it. You're right about defat, you should see some resulting crystals in the precipitation even without.

The goo is definitely active... it works... but yea its bad bark i believe, since very little came out of it even after a few pulls.

also worth checking out this stickied thread on goo given that's what you have and it's active

Thanks bro I have seen that thread before.

How prevalent is bad bark in your opinion?

The place i bought from has very good reviews, so not sure what is happening.

You have done nothing wrong and the goo will be active this is typical of A. Acuminata. What freeze precipiatated was almost all DMT. It was just an oilgomer form of DMT. If you scrape it all up and leave it for a week or more the oily yellow substance will form a smokable wax (if you used naphtha).

I'm guessing with the use of Acuminata and the oily dmt indicates you're from Australia and you used shellite. If this is the case you'll need to refine your process for crystals and better yeilds.

Yea it was shellite bro, what do you mean by refining the process?

The acuminata phyllodes were bought from a well known Aussie seller online, first google result that comes up.

Just bummed it was bad product, but who knows.

It's not a bad product, you got dmt, the goo is mostly dmt.

When I say refine, I mean your extraction process may need some fine tuning if you want crystals as an end result (and if you want higher yeilds). Goo is common with acuminata (depending on your process). However, as I said your goo is still dmt and still smokable and very active. The product is fine.

Your phyllode/ base 'soup' will likely still contain more DMT if you used shellite. it would have been better if you did hot pulls with shelitte. What I suggest now is try an xylene pull. Then evaporate (don't freeze). And see how much goo you get. Then you can make some enhanced leaf. I would wager your yeild will increase. Try to get the xylene to mix well without forming emulsion, let it separate then pull.

Correct, total liquid volume including the original acid soak for an A/B method. If you heat too high and evaporate off, you can always add some more distilled water, just as long as the pH is still around 3-4 so that when you basify you can get it to around 12. I'm still learning, but if measurements get confusing, as they are for me still, you can adjust as needed during your extraction.