Is there a limit to reducing (concentrating) acid pulls from MHRB?

[thereisandthereisnot]

Is there any limit to how concentrated one could get the acid pulls from MHRB? I suppose the lower the volume, the easiest it should be to actually pull the compounds of interest with non-polar solvent after basifying, but is there a maximum level of thickness/viscosity I should stay clear of?

 

[Twilight Person]

Indeed it should be easier but if you concentrate it too mich down, then when basifying you will have a lot of voluminous precipitation at pH 7-8 which will make the soup indeed viscous. This only happens in the basic pH so you will not even get a direct sign of this when still reducing the acidic soup. I think it happens if you reduce it more lower than to 20% of original volume, so better stay above that. It will make last step diffocoult otherwise and even risk getting less efficiency with nps pull.

 

[thereisandthereisnot]

Ok! Good to know. Thanks for the reply!

 

[Transform]

Concentrated MHRB tea dumps out tons of tannins on cooling, which can be messy and potentially could trap some yield. Acidification of the brew, fortunately, appears to minimise this to physical retention of liquid but non-acidified brews might have losses through ionic bonding of the DMT to the precipitated tannin; of course, it's only a loss if you toss the precipitate away. How you proceed with the remainder of the extraction determines the relevance of this observation!

 

[acacian]

There are advantages to working with both low and high volumes of liquid. Higher volume tends to result in a cleaner extract than concentrated solution.. lower volume quicker and easier to handle. I think the middle ground is the place to be. You want to find the balance between having a low enough volume to make contact with your NP and alkaloids easiest, but diluted enough to avoid it becoming viscous and precipitating other compounds. Transform makes a good point about loss of DMT tannate if non-acidified brew is filtered. For this reason, if reducing below 500ml I would say it is best to bond your DMT to another acid and carefully filter any precipitate. This will clean your solution and reduce the risk of emulsion.

I think 500ml is a good volume to work with. Depending on how much plant material you are working with then it shouldn't be too thick.