Hello Everyone,

Just wondering what this layer is that formed after adding NaOH. The following steps were performed.

0. 5x Boil of 150g acrb
1. Each time added 1L H2O (non-distilled) and 150ml White Vinegar
2. Liquid reduced to 300ml
3. 100g NaOH added to 500ml (non-distilled) H2O
4. Mix allowed to cool, then shaken & left overnight

Only problems I could see are that I added slightly less NaOH than recommended (100g vs 150g) due to the small volume of liquid I was working with and that I used tap water instead of distilled (I'm very close to the water plant & tap water is close to 0 ppm).

Is this fine to go ahead and proceed doing my pulls with solvent? Or should I add salt or more lye to bust up this layer from forming? When shaken it disappears, but slowly re-forms after 10 min or so.

THANKS!!!!

Dont shake... that seems like an emulsion, even though you havent added a solvent, it can be like bubbles of air trapped inside the whole mix. Id add moer lye and salt to break it up before adding the solvent

I've seen this before too... Would a heat bath help the lye and salt trick? I think I added lye and stirred with a glass rod.

Thanks guys. I added a bit of salt, seemed to help things, although I shook it up to test if the salt worked and after awhile it reformed again, albeit imperceptibly smaller.

Instead of lye, would lime or Na2CO3 work? I only used 100g lye cause that's all I had left. I want to do food safe/nontoxic extracts going forward, so I'm not into buying another lb. of lye.

THANKS!!!!

Bro let me repeat what I said, DONT SHAKE. There is no necessity to shake for anything, once you add the solvent you wont either shake anything you will just stir in round motions or similar. You are creating your own problem, so stop it

And no, right now lye and/or salt are what you need, not lime nor sodium carb. Another extraction you do in the future, you can switch to something other than lye (paying attention to the characteristics because each base/chemical works different, you can't just substitute one for the other and do everything else the same), but now you just have to continue with it.

as journeymann asked, yes a heat bath can help too.

Gotcha, thanks! Emulsion layer is almost gone now, after adding salt & heating overnight in crockpot. I will add more salt & check back later tonight.

Thanks so much, you guys rock!!!