Great EZ4u' - I saw the other thread ! But you mentioned a 1.35% yeild wow ! You had really good bark powder or it's just a little high ...

Unusually high yeilds (like the 2% tale we heard about) are a sign of contamination - I thought 1% was already very good, but much higher was 'suspect'. Anyone else know the MAX yeild from MHRB - each tree will vary .!?

I wish I had a fancy spectrometer to analyze things ! But when I see a film of scummy white powder in swim's tray, that does not crystalize with dmt shards and yellow oily crystals, I think it's NaOH, pure lye that has setteled out. This scummy-looking yeild made for bad launches, and tasted different.

So are you just completely against straight to base techniques? Or is it only the amounts of lye people are instructed to use?

Because I'm thinking that the majority of these don't use enough water but use too much lye to compensate which I think I've seen you mention. An extraction was just started, using 250 grams of bark, but this time I'm trying 3 Liters of water. Measuring the pH as I went I added less than 100 grams of NaOH in the end, which is way way way less than I've seen most teks suggesting. This gave me a pH of around 13. The mix is quite liquid and emulsions settle out right away. I definitely agree that There is too much lye being used in some of these teks, but I definitely don't believe that A/B is the higher path.