I distinctly remember someone posting a different thread a while back along the same subject, AFAIK a ph of 11.5 is the highest you need to get all the alkaloids from MHRB. To freebase half of the DMT present in bark you need only a pH of 8.68. At pH 10 one can net over 90% of the DMT. This is according to the pKa of DMT. At pH 11.5 nearly all the DMT is freebased. If doing an A/B you can get decent yields with as little as 50 percent. With an STB you need 99% for decent results. Also, remember that pH approximates a logarithmic scale, so pH 13 is 10x more alkaline than 12. Swim thinks pH 12 works good for Swim.

yeah in terms of freebasing dmt, one doesnt need so high pH.. but higher pH has two major advantages, one is to break the bark further (specially for unpowdered or not finely powdered bark) and therefore helping with releasing any trapped dmt. So testing pH differences and yield would be specially useful for non-powdered bark and longer soaks. The other main advantage is that very high pH prevents/breaks emulsions....

but yeah of course one must measure the pros and the cons for himself and see if lye is expensive to him, if he might attract attention with buying the extra lye quantity, etc..

1.0g of colour from 100g purple dye

thanking you all for the advice!