I've always been confused by this ordeal.

As soon as I took the freeze-preciptated dish out of the freezer, I placed a fan on it and let it dry. I saw a lot of white powder about five minutes in. And then I came back an hour later, and all that was left was this clear, grease residue on the dish. I'm assuming it melted before it could dry.

So should I add the naptha I poured out, freeze again, and repeat with the fan even closer? Before, I had the fan about three feet away. I guess this time I'll have it one foot away??

Also, how are people completely evaporating by room temperature, when it's melting like this? Is it because they live in colder places? I'm in Los Angeles, and the average temp here year round is 80-90.

EDIT: So far the suggestions from those I've inquired are vastly different... I'm confused as to which one is the right way to go...

1) Water contamination. I'm instructed to redissolve in warm naphtha and then perform three washes with just distilled water. <--- the concern with this method is that I've already performed the sodium carbonate wash + 2x wash with just filtered water. By the last wash with the filtered water, the naphtha was so clear, it was very difficult to make out the line that separated naphtha and water. I don't know how I'm supposed to wash it 3X with distilled water when I imagine the naph and water will be virtually indistinguishable at this point.

2) Just let it sit around for a week and scrape up the goo.

What brand of naptha are you using? And was your container sealed while in the freezer?

Klean Strip. Just tested it and it evaporated clean. There was a swirl mark but no sticky residue and it didn't smell.

And yes, it was sealed with a saran wrap + lid. I had to drain out the naphtha as soon as I took it out of the freezer.

Well the msds on it looks fine but I would do an evap test since it says 95-100% although I have a feeling that isn't the problem. The picture you posted looks to me like water contamination but if it was sealed well then that shouldn't be the case either. The only other thing I could think of would be temperature. I used to live close to there and I'm thinking if the temperature was too warm then that might be why your crystals are melting... try finding a cool spot to dry them and have your precip container tilted on its side while drying with a fan on low. I would do an evap test to make sure it's not contamination before trying anything else. That's just my opinion tho, good luck

Hi,

Your dmt did not melt. It needs a higher than room temperature to melt. It may have dissolved though.

What probably happened is that there was still a lot of solvent stuck in or to the dmt crystals. As the dish with dmt and solvent traces warmed up, the dmt redissolved in the solvent. Just cover the dish with some light cloth (to prevent dust from falling in) and let it stand somewhere quiet with adequate ventilation. If my estimate is correct, you'll see feathers of dmt growing again.

Whenever I extract, I don't use these open dishes most people seem to use, but use emptied and cleaned food jars. When the freeze precipitation is ready, I decant the solvent and close up the jar again and put it back in the freezer upside down. After an hour, I take it out again and let out the last bits solvent that have seeped out of the crystals and onto the cap of the jar. Then I close the jar again and let it warm up to room temperature before opening up. This stops atmospheric moisture from condensing into the jar. The moisture is not really bad in any way, but it costs more time to dry.

Some will say that jars make it hard to collect crystals, but I find that not a problem, as I like to recrystallize with a minimum amount of fresh warm solvent anyway. The jar is a good vessel to redissolve the crystals in a warm water bath. When the dmt has been redissolved adequately, I decant it into a suitable recrystallization vessel, leaving any possible impurities like lye or plant crud behind in the initial freeze precipitation jar.

I've already evap tested the naphtha. Evaporated without any sticky residue, or what's observed in the pictures.

Can I ask you what "water contamination" is? Do you mean there was bacteria in the water I used? I tried to search and I found zero info on DMT water contamination.

As for room temp, I live in LA, so it's summer year round (rarely ever goes below 80F).

The only thing "different" I did for this tek is the sodium carb wash. Maybe that's what did it?

I left it in front of the fan for an hour, and the sticky residue would not go away. There was some sporadic, sparse growth here and there, as seen in the pictures, so I just added the naphtha back to it so I could try repeating the freeze-precip and drying.

Someone else told me that this is to be expected with ACRB, so they told me to just let it sit around for a week, and then scrape up the goo, egad... but Earthwalker didn't have this problem with his tek, so I don't get it.

So I'll try freeze-precipitating again and re-drying, and if it happens again, I'll follow your instructions and play the waiting game. How long do you think it'll take? 'Cause like I said, somebody else told me he waits one week and just scrapes up the goo.

Don't be impatient. Sometimes proper crystal growth takes some time. I would have taken at least a day to wait for preliminary results. The same holds for freeze precipitation by the way, don't rush the baby. Let it stand in the freezer for a day at least.


Well, there are certainly differences between batches of ACRB. Perhaps Earthwalker used slightly different solvents, or different amounts of ingredients. Your problem description does not include much information, it only points out what you see as the problem. Do you see the bigger problem here?

My advice would be to keep trying, be patient and learn from the process. Hardly anybody here gets it right the first time. A complete and successful extraction requires several skills that can be a bit subtle at times. Even professional chemists occasionally have a hard time getting things to crystallize properly and will admit that it is a bit of an art. Not everything is always spelled out in the tek, but most things are mentioned somewhere on the forum.

Read read read. Then do. Then read read again before asking questions. Read all the sticky topics in the "FAQ - All your basic questions and answers" subforum, such as this very useful one.

I agree, and I've done a lot of reading. At this point, I don't know how much more reading I could possibly do, unless I'm interested in different extraction methods. I've studied EW's tek, and both of Cyb's tek (Salt and Max Ion) + an analysis of his salt tek, Thicklite's tek, Q21's Foodgrade tek, and inquired about washing methods. Color guides for what to look for in DMT, what to smell, etc etc. I've been reading everyday for the past couple of months.

I used EW's tek and performed a 1 gram sodium carb wash.

Hmmm, Looking at the original post of this thread, I still don't think that you read this very useful one though. Especially Endlessness makes some good points.

It's quite simple.
You either didn't extract correctly
OR
the bark you have is not ACRB.

I suspect the latter...it's not uncommon, unfortunately.

This is what to expect. You can't expect anything with DMT. I've been working with acacia for over three years exclusively, and have just recently over my last few extractions, gotten to point where I'm confident in being able to pull nice crystal spice. It takes time in more ways than one.

For one, the advice youv'e benn given to wait and give the crytals time to go is solid. You have some nice clear xtals on a matrix of clear goo. If you leave that to dry for days, even weeks, you'll have a nice waxy tranlucent material or at least that's been my exp. As I'm sure you're aware if you've been researching, acacia confusa contains other alks that xtaliza differently than n,n DMT...

I understand wanting to try your spice. Checking every hour to see if they are growing... You can still use it before it fully xtalized, it's just a pain. There's several threads that talk about goo-utilization. It's all the same, no matter how it looks.

EDIT: I admit to not having studied the thread, but why do you say that, cyb? I mean the bad bark part. I've had results like this.

Thanks cyb.

If it's the former, I'm stumped where I went wrong. I've studied both your teks + others to understand the process as best as I could, before blindly measuring out ingredients. Even when I added the lye during the mini-AB stage, the liquid turned white, and according to EW, that's the DMT crashing out. And once I added the naphtha, it started going clear again.

Seeing as how nobody seems to have had this happened to them, it probably has to do with the sodium carb wash I applied at the end. If so, is it possible that water contamination could cause this? Because that's what someone else is telling me. That water in the dish could cause this... ?? And the instructions were to do another 3X washes with distilled water. Not sure how adding water to get rid of water makes sense... ??

Also, wouldn't water evaporate with the fan? I had the fan on for a while, probably a total of 2-3 hours, and it still looked like the above photo with the sticky residue.

Right now, I re-heated the naphtha to redissolve the DMT. I'm gonna repeat the freeze-precip again and then dry again, but this time I'll empty out the naptha from the dish, and then I'll stick the dish upside down in the freezer, then ten minutes later transfer it to the fridge and let the temp come down more slowly. I live in LA, and it's consistently 100 degrees here. Not the best weather for pulling DMT.

Somebody else related to this experience as well. Said this happens everytime with ACRB, so just give it a week and scrape up the goo. Or tincture or whatever.

I guess I like the simplicity of crystals. You can weigh it without it smearing every surface, and I have a lot of preconceptions about goo in general, but I'll research the goo usage now. Thanks.

So I freeze precipitated again, and there's still goo, but there's more crystal formation after an hour of fan-drying.

I think it was water contamination. I'm gonna re-dissolve and transfer it into another vessel and just suck out the top layer and see what happens. There's so little DMT here (100mg, if that) I'm just gonna chalk this up as a learning lesson and see what happens when I extract pure naphtha with no water contam.

It was the sodium carb wash, I think that screwed everything up. I did a 3x wash, and by the third wash, the water and naphtha were both so clear, it became hard to distinguish the separation as it got to the bottom. I was sucking up the water, instead of the naphtha, so when I didn't see any water, I thought it shouldn't be a big deal even if there was. Clearly I was wrong.

There's spice in those hills so if I were you I would go back over your extraction and try to get the rest out. If you still have all of your materials just start over from the beginning. Make sure your soup is basified correctly, mix your new pulls into the soup six times apiece, and make sure when you do the mini-A/B to do multiple vinegar pulls on the solvent to make sure you've migrated all the spice over from your initial naphtha pulls.

And find a better naphtha than Klean Strip That stuff will pull all kinds of gunk you don't want from ACRB.

Do you recommend a brand? It's all they have on Amazon.

I would be extra careful about buying solvents online... it is always safer to purchase it with cash at a retail store. That being said I have used crown vm&p naptha with amazing results until they stopped carrying naptha in cali. I am now going to have to drive all the way to nevada if I want to get some more.... can anyone say RENO BABY! lol

I have also heard good things about sunnyside vm&p naptha and the msds says it is 100% pure, and personally that's what I will be using next as soon as I take a trip

Alright, thanks, I'll try to get Sunnyside next.

BTW why are you switching brands if you've had "amazing results"? I know they banned it, but why not pick it up at Reno?

Also, have you heard of anyone getting busted for buying naphtha online? That would be bizarre.

It's not that you are going to get busted for naphtha, it's that you are creating a papertrail that you can't explain. Say you were to come under suspicion for extracting DMT. The record of you buying naphtha may lend creedance to that suspicion depending on the jury. While shopping for things on amazon in the past I have seen amazon suggest products that bought together obviously signal an extraction. This tells me that certain people are buying everything they need for an extraction all at once. If these people came under suspicion for extracting DMT it would be very easy to make a case against them in court.