Thanks for the elaborate answer. This is very helpful and I will apply your advice to my next extraction run.
Quote:No, freezing is not necessary. It MIGHT speed up the process a little, but you stated that there is no rush.
Okay. I will do a side-by-side experiment once to test how much the freezing helps.
Mine MHRB is powder-ish, a very well shredded dusty material, but still contains some root fibres.
Quote:This is incorrect. One soak will never come close to full extraction from any plant material.
I understand. I was weighting several scenarios:
- 1 long cook
- multiple short cookings
- multiple short (1-2 hour) hot soaks
- multiple short soaks, then two or so long soaks w/o heating
Based on your advice, I will try the last one. I guess the hot soaks will take most alkaloids out, then the longer soaks will get the 98-99th percentile.
I am drinking re-steeping loose leaf tea so I am intimately familiar with how the strength decreases with successive infusions
Quote:In reality, the 3 soaks should pull at least 95% with a strong acid. Weaker acids like acetic or the phosphoric you mentioned will require longer soak times and more soaks.
I have lab-grade phosphoric (85%) and hydrochloric (35%).
I don't like the hydrochloric of course for the caustic fumes and reactivity.
I like phosphoric for a couple of reasons:
- more viscous, reducing the risk of splashes
- not a weak acid, nor strong one - only few drops reduce pH very quickly, yet it does not ionize completely, no danger of reacting with plant material
- reduces soaking time (I am patient but not
that patient
)
- easy to obtain as pH- liquid for growers
Thanks for suggesting acetic, it's good to know it works for you.
Quote:The pKa is high enough to freebase DMT, but not high enough to damage the molecule. The saturation pH for sodium carbonate is 11.37.
Wonderful! This sounds too good to be true as I can finally avoid lye
I was converting sodium bicarbonate in a frying pan earlier so I am familiar with it.
Quote:If you mix the zinc with a base, I'm not sure how this would react.
I agree - zincates may form, probably harmless but better safe than sorry. I would add more steps later than contaminating plant material with zinc.
Also I just realized the DMT N-oxide can be collected and then converted all at once rather than doing this for every extraction.
Finally, it is more eco-friendly as MHRB and zinc can disposed separately (compost MHRB, landfill/recycle zinc).
Aluminium should perform even better than zinc as a reducing agent, but I don't think it worths the health risks.
Quote:My defating solvent of choice is xylene, but beware that almost all plastics will either dissolve or degrade with contact to xylene.
I cannot work outdoors to get enough ventilation so I avoid xylene as a safety measure. I store the used DCM in a metal can with pressure seal (for later recycling perhaps).
...
I forgot mentioning the salting step, i.e. adding saline solution before basifying to improve ionic strength as described in
Cyb's 'MAX ION' tek.
Okay back to work. Thanks for having patience with a newbie, will post my results later.