Can someone please help me I keep failing terribly

[NightPuma]

On another forum I asked a trillion questions to a couple of guys who sounded like they know what they were doing and I thought I followed it pretty exactly but I wound up with nothing when I should have got like probably 6 grams. Maybe someone can help me out?

I took 300g of MHRB, powdered it, mixed it with 2100mL water and 200g of lye.

And I added in 500mL of Naphtha, stirred it and let it sit for 24 hours. I can tell this was far too much Naphtha and I will lower this to 200mL next time.

The next day I came back and sucked off all 500 ml of Naphtha and put it into a large Pyrex glass tray.


I was told I need to evaporate some of it off before I put it in the freezer so I put it in front of the fan. I was told that it will get cloudy at a certain point and that's when you are to put it into the freezer. Well I kept fanning and evaporating it waiting for it to get cloudy and it never did. After a couple of hours I realized like 80% of it had evaporated off yet it was not getting cloudy so I got scared and put in the deep freezer. It is now been a day and there is nothing in the glass Pyrex tray.

Even if I used too much Naphtha, it should have still extracted the DMT right?

Even if I evaporated too much of the Naphtha off, the DMT crystals should still be left behind right? Well they aren't.

Someone suggested that I stir it more to get the Naphtha in better contact with all the DMT floating in the basic region. I mean I did three pulls and stirred every time and got nothing. It really seems like the jump between me getting 0g and the probably 5-6g I should be getting isn't really explained by further stirring but it's certainly possible.

Can anyone help me? I just threw away a lot of product here and I thought I did everything almost exactly correct. Or at least correct enough to where I should have gotten something. Thank you.

 

[Rush56]

I'm not experienced but i'd suggest you start as low as 50g of MHRB to get feel for things or even less.

First time i went into it i tryed with 100g and A/B tek and got only somewhere around 0,4% yield.. I continued with STB because it is way quicker and did few 20g MHRB extractions to get a grip for it. Only after many attempts i got over 0,5% and in the last one it was around 1,3-1,4% yield..

You should write what tek you use, which solvents and materials and so on, so people can help you out.

Just adding solvent in and leaving it probably won't do much. You don't need to let it sit for a day. I never left for more then 3 hours or so, but i was turning the solution upside down many times, as you said, so solvent gets in contact with spice. Don't shake too hard!

To get more out of it i had to figure how much i had to heat things up, because cold extractions yield very little. But more heat means more fats, oils and that stuff will get through.

Be careful when heating anyway, you need to let the pressure out often, so you don't end up blowing the bottle or whatever you use to mix things. And the more you mix, the more pressure will be there, at least from my experience. I had few spills and it is not nice, also splashed around on the wall, and in one occasion i got a little on my face and it burns.. However i washed it quickly and there was thankfully no problems with that..

Use protection glasses and probably you should use gloves. If you use lye too, it can be dangerous if you are not careful. Don't get blind..

Oh and one more thing.. About cloudy solvent.. It only got cloudy if i blew into it.

Hope you succeed.

 

[null24]

It's about the stirring not sitting. There are entire threads here about nps mixing technique, but vigourously is the best advice I can give you, like tire yourself out doing it. If you read some TEKs, they sugesst manually stirring or shaking the vessel for ten or more minutes at a time. I think that's way overkill, but.

There's no need to let your nps sit on top of the basic soup after it has separated, unless you just don't have time to pull right away. It doesn't hurt either. Sounds like you did a stb, and the layers can take time to separate, but unless you have an emulsion which you did not mention, it shouldn't take longer than an hour at most. An emulsion can be broken up with by raising pH further with lye+water. (Lye to water always, not the other way around, safety glasses on yer face always if you like seeing and vinegar to neutralize, ya ya).

Either you got flexed on the bark or you simply did not mix your nps well enough are my guesses. We can't talk about sourcing here at all, btw, so leave that as it is, but I honestly don't see how you could get zero unless what was represented to you as mhrb isin fact not, it happens. STB is pretty straightforward.

And it doesn't always get milky, especially with mhrb. Yellow nps is a good sign. And yes on smaller batches, you just learned why, and 90ml x 4 should exhaust 50-100grams of bark for the most part. Good luck in your endeavors.

 

[endlessness]

Please check the FAQ

Mix better, use less naphtha, evap more before freezing. and dont forget rule nr 1: Dont throw anything away until you're finished, if there is DMT there, it can always be recovered. But if you throw things out, that's the end of it.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

From the procedure described, the lack of success sounds like the plant material was devoid of alkaloids - i.e. 'bunk bark'. Try one more pull on the soup, just to be sure. And ^ ^^ ^^^ what the others said.

 

[PedroSanchez]

i am still very new to this, so my advice is not based on much experience at all, more what i have read around the internet and been told by people on forums. i am still halfway through my first ever extraction, but i have put a LOT of hours into learning (but still many more hours ahead of me!) just want to make that clear

300g in one extraction is a lot. i have read that the more you try to extract at once the lower percentage yield you typically get. its also recommended to learn with smaller amounts (usually 50g). it is common to get nothing from your first extraction or two, so learning on lower quantities saves on waste.

another thing i have read is that too much naphtha lowers yield. im not sure if this can get extreme enough to yield zero though. but it could be one of a few combined factors.
that said, i dont personally think thats too much naphtha. i am midway through my first ever tek right now and i used 75-100ml for 50g of MHRB and i have had a low yield for my first two pulls but i at least got something out.

the DMT will not evaporate with the naphtha, so even if you evaporated "too much" you would have still have the DMT in the naphtha. if you evaporated all of it then you would have been left with crystals if they were in there.

another common problem i have seen is freezers not being cold enough. i dont know what the temperature needs to be unfortunately, but if you have one of those freezers built into a fridge then that could be part of the problem.

its probably too late now. but you shouldnt have thrown anything away. the DMT could still be sitting in the bark, base or even the solvent and would still be retrievable. the only way that wasnt a waste is if the bark was dud.

your tek is very similar to the one i have been following, but my ratios are quite different. i have had a low first 2 pulls, my third is looking better so far, but i wont know for sure until tomorrow.
my ratios were, per 50g of bark, 50g of lye, 300ml of water (although i think that was too low and will be trying 400ml next with maybe another 10g of lye but i think the extra lye is not necessary) and 75-100ml of solvent (still playing with that number).


sorry i cant give you any definite answers, but hopefully that helps a little.