Ah then there was some mis-read. But then this is pretty forward, just extract with Acetone and dump the Benzoic Acid.

I think the water was not the reason, so better not add water further into the Acetone. Should be always fully dry.

And yes that defat would probably have changed something. Its quite easy to simply do the boiling Naphtha rex, as it luckily should take away all other (potential) alkaloids and fats. I guess that could have been a reason for the super nice crystals of _Trip_. But even when getting brown flakes with defat, it could still be pure regardless of shape/colour. As I said when going with minimal solvent amounts the bufo benzoate crashed out as some tan powder also.

So just as a sidenote to crystallization, even small impurities can greatly change the shape/colour of any crystals. Any crystallization act is a process of slow molecule aggregation, whose orientation is determined by a specific energy minimum that each molecule will have when incorporated in the crystal grid. That energy minimum is an inherent property of the molecular structure, so any change in functional groups or constitution might completely change the whole appeareance - as seen with the pictures I posted here across from DMT / Bufo / 5-MeO. Now if any impurities are present, they might steal their way into the growing crystal, effectively creating defect areas within the grid. At these positions the molecules cannot exhibit their thermodynamically-designed orientation and thus the growth of the crystal itself will get a defect. Therefore even small impurities might change the appeareance and mostly for the bad, meaning that sometimes crystals will not even form.

A lower concentration in general might prevent building-in of defect areas, as the impurities are also simply diluted and not so prone to snatch into the growing crystal. Therefore creating crystals from a really low volume will mostly give uglier crystals, also because the overall crystal growth speed is much higher (if precipitation is then much faster due to low volume). This itself can also create ugly crystals even without impurities.

If you all have Benzoic Acid you could make a cool experiment. Dissolve quite some in hot Toluene or Naphtha or Limonene and then let it cool back to room temperature. Even with super fast precipitation Benzoic Acid will give crazy needles, looking quite cool. Still I guess there is no tool to foresee crystal geometry based on molecular structure. But maybe in the case of benzoic acid this really well-ordered crystallization comes from the fact that it has 2 very different structural features (Benzene-Ring + R-COOH) which are truly forcing the molecule to only have 1 very specific orientation, making it hard to ever create defects. On the other hand Tryptamines have their flexible side-chain, which can have a multitude of orientations and therefore cause some anger when trying to crystallize it.

Furthermore a funny anecdote:

Speaking of harsher crystallization conditions when impurities are present, there is a funny story from biochemistry research. In protein analysis it is obviously one of the most important things to access the 3D shape of a protein, as this will make you able to understand its function. This is generally done by crystallizing the protein and then using X-Ray spectroscopy to create a 3D Map of the individual amino acids. I cant remember which protein this is about, but a pretty "important" protein never could be analyzed and the 3D shape was unknown, as the Protein was never pleased to crystallize in any lab conditions. Then finally the mystery got solved as crystallization worked and the 3D shape could be uncovered - but then there was the super funny realization that when building up the protein with Amino Acids, there was actually a "defect", unintentionally exchanging 1 Amino Acid with another one due to bad lab work. And this single exchanged Amino Acid (from 100+) suddenly enabled the Protein to crystallize  

Quite a funny story how 1. bad lab work made a great next step in science and 2. actually incorporating an impurity was the only (yet not even planned) chance to even get a crystal.