i finished my first extraction 2 days ago and the results were as expected for a first attempt with 50g MHRB. first two pulls returned 53mg and 31mg, but the next 4 pulls gave me a total of 559mg, a somewhat low yield, but i was aiming for 500mg on my first attempt so i was very happy.

yesterday i started my second attempt, again with 50g MHRB, but i made some changes. i ground my bark down as much as possible (it was still shredded, but more finely shredded), i only waited about 30 mins between mixing the base/bark and adding the solvent (instead of 3 days on the first attempt) and i stirred it a LOT, over about 6 hours.
i also evaporated a lot more solvent before freezing and for the first time my solvent was cloudy, even without blowing on it.

today i removed the first pull from the freezer and weighed it in. i pulled 397mg and the result was much whiter than the total of the first attempt. i assume the colour was a result of the speed compared to the first attempt.

okay so now to the point. after the solvent was evaporated there was a very thin film of what i thought was water vapour, which i wiped with a tissue to discover that it was a sticky oil (so i probably wasted some goodies there). does anybody have any idea what this oil might be?
also, on the side that i evaporated the solvent from there was a thick, oil-like, white substance that looked like an evaporation mark.
when i scraped up the "evaporation mark" it turned into what looks like normal DMT powder, but before scraping it up it looked like something i was going to have to throw away. does anybody have any idea why this turned out like that and if it might be okay to smoke? or could it be contaminated?

here is the whole dish, where you can see how the two are contrasted and kind of see the oil in between.



and here is a close up of the odd leftovers from the solvent evaporation.



i have kept the top crystals and the smear separate for now. the smear only makes up 43mg, but it would be nice if i could combine them rather than bin it just to be safe. i think i might just be worried because it seemed to go suspiciously well for a second attempts.
sorry for the long explanation, i dont know what information might be important.

thanks for the help everybody <3

Off 50g only? Holy (I wanted to curse from enthusiasm, but somehow a no-no lol)!

I'm no where near even close to being experienced but that sounds incredible from all the reading I've done so far.

Mustve hit a jackpot, dont lose that contact hahaha

I know one thing recommended to do is do an evap test with the naptha first to ensure that brand doesn't contain trace impurities. Mine was clear and had that same evap so assumed the evap mark was also DMT. Seeing how crystals formed on my pipe from residue smoke I can def see that being the case.

What Im curious on if you just so happened to relase majority of the dmt from bark with the lengthy stir at a faster rate than a bigger yield though.

Please let us know if next pulls keep up great results or just happened to extracted it all on less pulls

Hello

It could be solvent but it can also be the deems. Leave the goo uncovered till it dries
up. If it smells good you can freeze it again with a little bit of solvent or just scrape
it up. But better make sure first.
When i still had no experience i just took some mj and wiped the dish with it.
I put it in a pipe and it was awful.
So i hope this helps and congrats on your extraction.

Have a gud one

thanks for the reply
i will do my best to keep this contact funny enough, i did some research before committing to my purchase and i knew i could trust this guy. while digging i discovered he was somewhat famous many years ago for committing a so called "crime". it was a very moral so called "crime" in my opinion. i wont go into too much detail, but it was on par with whistle blowing. i knew from his actions that he was my kind of guy.

i am not too confident about the solvent. i did an evap test and there was a tiny amount of residue, but it was very difficult to see. i read around and saw people saying it didnt matter too much if it was a freeze precip. i assume the logic is that it will not evaporate very fast, if at all while it was still -10°C to -15°C, so i can tilt the pan to form the crystals at one end then tilt the other way to pour off and evaporate the solvent, leaving residue on the other side, away from the crystals. that is why i am so worried about that side of the pan :/
i should probably do a cleanup on that stuff, at least. i am considering cleaning everything i have made, but first i need to find a clean solvent.

i agree, i think it is likely i have just released 80% of the content in the first pull. i cant really see the second pull in my freezer without agitating it too much, but i can get it out in a couple of hours so i will report back with a weight.

it is also quite possible i just gave up too quick on the first 50g attempt. i was content with my results and the crystals were getting yellower by the pull. pull number 7 was my line because there was a small amount and it was contaminated, so i just threw it away and called it.

i am very excited to see the results of this. if i get more thats obviously great, but even if i dont then it means i managed to get most of the content in one pull, so i can fine tune the method i used from there.

i will be back in a couple of hours with an update.

i have scraped it now. i did leave it to dry though and it smelt pretty good, but i dont trust my nose enough, my sense of smell is not the most sensitive

i think i will keep it aside until i can clean it with a solvent i am comfortable with.

thanks for the reply

As a rule of thumb, bad contaminants tend to settle on the bottom. Anything on the sides of the container will generally be fairly pure alkaloids. I would disturb with a knife blade to encourage hardening up. When basing these rings of crystals are fairly common, i have never rejected anything growing on the sides of the beaker.

thanks for the reply.
when you say to disturb it with a knife do you mean while it is in the freezer?

i have kept everything separate in this batch. they are divided as surface crystals, crystal goo (the gooey bottom layer from the crystal side of the dish) and the goo from the evap side.
i was going to not bother washing the goo from the crystal side, but if the contaminants settle at the bottom then i should run that through anyway.

thanks

the weight for pull number two is in. it was a total of 169mg, with 109mg of surface crystals and 60mg of the gooey bottom layer. the goo from the evaporation side was a very small amount this time so i threw it back in the solvent for another run.

so my grand total for this 50g batch so far is 728mg in two pulls! i am very happy with that so far. i would be very surprised if i get much more out of the next pull, but im going to try anyway. not today though, im having a day of from stirring

Damn thats fantastic news. I had my own hypothesis on what your doing but out of pure laziness didn't attempt. Lol

I was planning on ordering a hotplate stir combo shortly since I did feel keeping it in constant heat was also a route to take.

I highly suggest you do the same. I'd even just let it run 24hrs before the first pull.

Excited to see what your total yield is. A quick an one time rewash with the total product can significantly eliminate all the extras in the goo. I did that after my 100g attempt and everything was white crystals after.

hahaha funny enough i have been casually browsing hotplate stirrers i did find some that are not crazy expensive too, although i havent looked into the cheap ones yet, so they might not be worth it.
i see people get ~2% yields sometimes and i want to figure out how to get there. going on the theory of stirring being the most important factor i feel like creating an emulsion might actually be the key. with a hotplate stir i think you can easily fix an emulsion (based on a YT video i saw) so i want to experiment with shaking the hell out of it then resolving the emulsion.
they are also just really useful to have it will be a while before i can get one though, but when i do i will do some side by side tests of creating an emulsion vs stirring vs hotplate stirring etc

Hahaha awesome. Only issue I've read on the cheaper ones is the temp control suck get way too hot iirc. I know lower Temps is key for us to not get these super yellow extracts some get. Know it's nothing wrong with yellow but still.

Plus I'm usually sitting at about 1500ml without naptha on 100g extracts so need to get a decent sized one.

One im looking at is about 140. Wouldve had it already but this nice check waiting on got lost in the mail since june 16th with all this Covid shit. Smh. Company finally found it now jts just waiting for them to process and send it.

Link to the yt video?

Hope things work out for the better and can get sooner, looking forward to see what experiments you come up with.

yea yellow is just as good, but there is something unexplainably satisfying about white crystals

hopefully they hurry up with your money! it will be a while for me yet, but when i do buy one i will be wary of cheap ones, thanks for the heads up.

here is the video i was referring to. the link skips to the part where he says he is using the hotplate stirrer to resolve the emulsion, then does exactly that. im not sure how well this translates to other teks/ratios/etc, this is the only source i have seen it.
https://youtu.be/nAlVWLqlsJA?t=435

i feel like if i could shake the mix the way he does it would save me hours of stirring time. he certainly seems to know what hes talking about, but until i understand the process more im not really a good judge of his abilities

weights for pull number 3 are in

pulled another 119mg! giving me a total of 847mg or 1.694%. it seems to me that 2% is considered a very high yield so i think im off to a good start, or just beginners luck

once i stop getting worthy amounts using a lot of stirring and less heat (i suspect the next pull) i will do a heated pull to see if anything was left behind by not heating it.

i dropped the ball on this extraction
i had so much other stuff to do the mix has sat in storage for about 4 days now. i am just going to jump straight into a warm pull and be happy if i can get any more out of it. im going to guess by now its going to come out pretty yellow anyway.

i plan to get some smaller jars and do some A/B tests with this idea (as in comparative tests, not acid to base ). when i finally get there i will document it all and get the results up for others to use.

Nice work on the yield!

Scrape up all the film, it is likely mostly DMT. Air dry it all thoroughly once scraped.

I personally strongly recommend a single recrystallization, that will get rid of most of the impurities even from pretty yellow stuff. I've gotten 80%+ yeild from the RE-X, so you won't lose too much, and what you do lose you didn't want anyway! I much prefer the cleaner experience, as without the RE-X I tend to experience a pretty heavy body load from the other alkaloids that isn't very pleasant.

The clever beginner will always have the freshest bark so maybe that counts for something.

My first ever extraction (STB, MHRB) was nearly 2% yield and the most difficult part was scraping up the huge pile of crystals.

thanks for the reply.
the "film" pull was about a week ago now, but i did exactly what you suggested. i scraped it up and kept it separate from the rest. after scraping it it did look a lot more like the rest of the scrapings. i also aired it out longer than the rest just to make sure all the solvent was evaporated.
i havent smoked any of it yet, but it definitely looks and smells the same as the surface crystals. my plan is, as you suggested, to re-X all the scrapings that were oily as well as the stuff from my first attempt that came out very yellow. i think i might wait until i can get some hexane though. it seems like 80% return is the standard, which is fine with me, like you say, i would rather have 80% white crystals i am comfortable with than 100% stuff that might make me feel paranoid during launch

thanks for the input <3

my first yield was about 1.1% or something. it was the same bark as my second attempt. if i knew then what i know now i would have tried to get more from it
it took me 7 pulls to get that though! so i was definitely not as much of a natural as you!
i will find out next time i guess. i have another 100g MHRB left (although it looks less) so hopefully i can pull off that return again.

i am trying to decide if i should do all 100g in one go or do two parallel extractions that are slightly different and see how it affects the results. i think the latter is probably the best way to learn and to give something back to the nexus community that helped me get here.

i scraped pull number 4 today and as i suspected it was VERY yellow. it was a lot like ear-wax
it was 100mg but i suspect it will be more like 60mg once i have cleaned it so i am drawing the line there. i am very happy with 947mg though

Beyond impressed. Granted my first time, had issues like spills,, etc. and thought 1% yield was the normal, i used 100g. After 1 quick rewash with clean naptha I ended with your same amount and white.

So for you to get off 50g is amazing, makes me think of all I prob sadly wasted ignorantly.

Congrats again!