official extraction help thread

[psilocybin]

Any questions or problems you may run into during an extraction can be asked to get other members input in this thread.

 

[neurobloom]

The end product is a very viscous amorphos transparent amber extract that looks so much like honey. I Always end up with something like thisw when i use dichloromethane and citric acid. It dodntt tastes too bad i was able to just freeze it and swallow that chunk woth a cup of water. Very little taste in my mouth. Already starting to feel the come up seems like a smooth ride.. slow build up.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Good to know that hexane/DCM works to extract from cactus tea. It's the DCM that's doing all the work, so to speak. The hexane really is just stretching out the DCM. You have to watch out when mixing a lighter than water solvent, like hexane, with a heavier than water solvent like DCM. Within a certain range of proportion the densities will average out to be too close to that of the aqueous phase and separation will become difficult. Increasing the density of the aqueous phase by adding salt, or something more dense like calcium chloride, will assist phase separation in such an instance.

Lower doses of mescaline should cause significantly less pupillary dilation.

 

[neurobloom]

I understand about the density part.. a 80/20 hexane, dichloromethane floats over water in my experience..well i cant say for sure it's in that ratio but eyballed. Eyball goes a long way in my extractions :d chemistry was never about measurements to be fair more about right conditions.

My concern is with the chemicals left overs in my end product am sure a technical grade dichloromethane isn't free from toxic residues.. hexane too.. . Sacrificing this over a psychedelic experience seems too much of a stretch in my book. Ordering lab grade stuff is alao comes with it's own risks.. damn whoever put ua in this circumstance :x distilling the dichloromethane would make me feel much better about the toxicity. Last time i tried to distill dichloromethane as usual it reaches it's boiling point and nothing came out feeling safe about dichloromethane low falamability i upped the temperature in a fore stove ..(using water bath in a stove) suddenly the whole thing started bubbling violently releasing huge ammounts of low boiling point hydrocarbons escape the room as like bullet.. likely it didn't catch fire..all windows were open for venting and it all escaped out quick. Since then am skeptical about paint stripper gels nowadays.. it's no longer as guaranteed to contain what you want. We left with 3D modeling dichloromethane (expensive) or plexiglass glue (chloroform) but requires that you work in the feild of shop front design as some abuse it as anesthetic for criminal purposes.. (unwanted attention) sighs.

 

[MuteUSO]

Hi everyone,

I got some caapi vine and was planning on performing gibran's alkaloid extraction. I was now browsing through the initial and many related threads but am still somehow confused about a few issues. Maybe some of you can help out.

1) Will this extraction yield a full spectrum of alkaloids, i.e. Harmine, Harmaline and THH? In several older threads it was mentioned that THH is not extracted, but (at least those that I saw) were still characterized by uncertainty. Is there a consensus on this meanwhile.

2) I only have acetic acid and it's 20%, therefore I don't really know how much to use. Can someone share the desired ph levels of this Tek?

3) Are there other alkaloids (than harmalas) extracted by this method. I guess so; but is there some knowledge on what other things are extracted and what the effects are?

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[Woolmer]

How can I calculate the amount of citric acid needed to fully convert a certain amount of freebase dmt to dmt citrate?

 

[ShamanisticVibes]

Any idea why my xtals are re-liquified? It is almost as if there is water in it, but t is clear, not purple like the rest of the mixture.... What do I do to rectify this situation?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

How can I calculate the amount of citric acid needed to fully convert a certain amount of freebase dmt to dmt citrate?

I'd suggest using a 1:1 molar ratio, even though citric acid is tribasic. Bear in mind, most citric acid crystals are the monohydrate. So, (the molecular weight of DMT) in grams of DMT will be neutralised by (the molecular weight of citric acid monohydrate) grams of citric monohydrate. Divide through by the molecular weight of DMT to get the amount of citric acid monhydrate that will neutralise 1g of DMT.

In short, 1g of DMT is neutralised by (MW CitA.H2O)/(MW DMT)g of CitA.H2O. Other amounts will scale accordingly.

If DMT forms a stable citrate of different stoichiometry you may only need to use less citric acid if crystals are your goal. This is an unknown at present AFAIK.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Any idea why my xtals are re-liquified? It is almost as if there is water in it, but t is clear, not purple like the rest of the mixture.... What do I do to rectify this situation?

This can happen when the humidity is high. Leaving the open jar laid on its side somewhere safe and dry for a couple of days should sort it out. Start with the goo at the top and it will ooze over the bottom of the jar, presenting more surface area for water to evaporate and leaving a trail of crystals.

If it is persistently warm and humid in your area it may be best to place the jar as described above in a sealed container with sufficient dessicant.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Hi everyone,

I got some caapi vine and was planning on performing gibran's alkaloid extraction. I was now browsing through the initial and many related threads but am still somehow confused about a few issues. Maybe some of you can help out.

1) Will this extraction yield a full spectrum of alkaloids, i.e. Harmine, Harmaline and THH? In several older threads it was mentioned that THH is not extracted, but (at least those that I saw) were still characterized by uncertainty. Is there a consensus on this meanwhile.

2) I only have acetic acid and it's 20%, therefore I don't really know how much to use. Can someone share the desired ph levels of this Tek?

3) Are there other alkaloids (than harmalas) extracted by this method. I guess so; but is there some knowledge on what other things are extracted and what the effects are?

Thanks so much for your help!

Your acetic acid is about 5 times as strong as vinegar, so just use one fifth of the suggested amount. It's not crucial to be too exact although it might be of benefit to take the hardness/alkalinity of your water supply into account if you're unable to obtain distilled or deionised water.

Various papers on chemical analyses of caapi are available so on the basis of what I've read you can expect some other alkaloids to make their way at least into the initial acidic aqueous phase. Some of these 'other' alkaloids may get altered or destroyed by the NaOH treatment so it's a bit harder to say what might become of them beyond that point.

This NaOH treatment is also a good reason for using distilled water rather than hard water straight out of the tap.

 

[neurobloom]

This extraction was a complete failure. During the final salting step the acid phase was quickly taking up a pink colour. Upon drying very tiny yield of pink semi crystalline oil was obtained. This makes me sad. Weirdly enough the same hexane i used on the same cacti and it yielded decently before. Only difference this time around was using the formic acid and using the new growth tips of the cacti instead of the old harder flesh. Either the cacti parts had very little alkaloids countent or they've been decomposed at the acidic phase hence the quick pink pigmentation during salting. Upon re-basifying this pink colour disappeared and appeared again when salting. The solvent clouded nicely when i added the diluted formic acid to it just like when i salt it with vinegar the change in smell from the basic pull to salting was also similar to previous successful extractions.


This is my first ever failing mescaline extraction Luckily I didn't extract the whole 3 kilos of cacti and left about 1 kilo for making a tea or just eat it's green skin fkesh in chunks or try extract it with dichloromethane i have to decide which route to go. The same cacti yielded over 6 grams from 3.5 kilos before using dichloromethane and salting with vinegar. It was such a waste of good consistent bredgesii that never fsilet me before. Am leaning towards the technical grade hexane i used being different frim batch to batcb or formic acid has just destroyed my product.

Some update on using formic acid for salting mescaline. The formic acid was never the blame for the failure of the the extraction. I repeated an extraction on the same batch of cactus tea only this time with a mixture of hexane and dichloromethane at around 80/20 %. It worked!

This has turned out to be a great way to save on dichloromethane and this will allow such a versatile but heavy (heavier than water) solvent to be used as top solvent once mixed with a light petroleum based solvent like hexane, naphtha, petroleum ether, petroleum spirit etc..

Normally one would have to filter cactus tea or any other plant tea if dichloromethane is to be used for pulls since it settles at the bottom where particles and sediments will also settle. This can create a big mess. Yet one wouldn't want to give up on such a very versatile very efficient high yielding solvent like dichloromethane. So simply adding a petroleum based solvent to the dichloromethane (dosent matter how efficient is such solvent is at extracting) creates a top player pulling medium with the properties of dichloromethane (maybe not as great as dichloromethane alone but it definitely works and yields ok for me)

Another advantage is that dichloromethane alone seems to pull a lot more fats than in mixture with hexane. In solvent mixture yielded less but was more potent..less Extract weight and stronger potency. Also less itchiness in the soles of the fees with the solvent mixture than dichloromethane alone and I believe this has to do with the wider alkaloid spectrum in the dichloromethane alone pulls that cause this reaction for me.

Pulling with hexane In a water hot bath with little olive oil mixed in with hexane has pulled the cleanest alkaloid profile based in my bioassays it caused the least sedation bit was the trickiest trips I have had ... These were the only extracts that still could take a bad turn even at the end of the trip when things are coming down.. so weird.

Here are some pics of a full spectrum bredgesiii extract in the formic acid salt form at different phases of it's crystallization.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

This extraction was a complete failure. During the final salting step the acid phase was quickly taking up a pink colour. Upon drying very tiny yield of pink semi crystalline oil was obtained. This makes me sad. Weirdly enough the same hexane i used on the same cacti and it yielded decently before. Only difference this time around was using the formic acid and using the new growth tips of the cacti instead of the old harder flesh. Either the cacti parts had very little alkaloids countent or they've been decomposed at the acidic phase hence the quick pink pigmentation during salting. Upon re-basifying this pink colour disappeared and appeared again when salting. The solvent clouded nicely when i added the diluted formic acid to it just like when i salt it with vinegar the change in smell from the basic pull to salting was also similar to previous successful extractions.


This is my first ever failing mescaline extraction Luckily I didn't extract the whole 3 kilos of cacti and left about 1 kilo for making a tea or just eat it's green skin fkesh in chunks or try extract it with dichloromethane i have to decide which route to go. The same cacti yielded over 6 grams from 3.5 kilos before using dichloromethane and salting with vinegar. It was such a waste of good consistent bredgesii that never fsilet me before. Am leaning towards the technical grade hexane i used being different frim batch to batcb or formic acid has just destroyed my product.

Some update on using formic acid for salting mescaline. The formic acid was never the blame for the failure of the the extraction. I repeated an extraction on the same batch of cactus tea only this time with a mixture of hexane and dichloromethane at around 80/20 %. It worked!

This has turned out to be a great way to save on dichloromethane and this will allow such a versatile but heavy (heavier than water) solvent to be used as top solvent once mixed with a light petroleum based solvent like hexane, naphtha, petroleum ether, petroleum spirit etc..

Normally one would have to filter cactus tea or any other plant tea if dichloromethane is to be used for pulls since it settles at the bottom where particles and sediments will also settle. This can create a big mess. Yet one wouldn't want to give up on such a very versatile very efficient high yielding solvent like dichloromethane. So simply adding a petroleum based solvent to the dichloromethane (dosent matter how efficient is such solvent is at extracting) creates a top player pulling medium with the properties of dichloromethane (maybe not as great as dichloromethane alone but it definitely works and yields ok for me)

Another advantage is that dichloromethane alone seems to pull a lot more fats than in mixture with hexane. In solvent mixture yielded less but was more potent..less Extract weight and stronger potency. Also less itchiness in the soles of the fees with the solvent mixture than dichloromethane alone and I believe this has to do with the wider alkaloid spectrum in the dichloromethane alone pulls that cause this reaction for me.

Pulling with hexane In a water hot bath with little olive oil mixed in with hexane has pulled the cleanest alkaloid profile based in my bioassays it caused the least sedation bit was the trickiest trips I have had ... These were the only extracts that still could take a bad turn even at the end of the trip when things are coming down.. so weird.

Here are some pics of a full spectrum bredgesiii extract in the formic acid salt form at different phases of it's crystallization.

Welcome back

Thanks for the update. I think your mixed solvent extractions deserve their own thread in the cactus section. When you've tried it with phalaris it would be good if you posted that in its own thread as well. This ongoing thread tends to bury information as time goes by.

It's certainly noteworthy that olive oil-spiked hexane will pull cactus alkaloids, too.


General safety note: hexane and DCM would have a particular neurotoxicity concern and exposure should be minimised.

 

[Nordic traveller]

Hi everyone! I recently did my first small MHRB extraction using Noman's tek and was pretty happy with the result. From what I've gathered from reading the Nexus you can increase yield and/or make the extraction faster by salting the base solution with for instance NaCl (without iodine). I'm planning to try that next time. I have a couple of questions.

-Is more NaCl better? (If not, what is the optimal amount?)
-Is it ok if the solution saturates with NaCl and some salt crystals are left on the bottom of the bottle during pulls?
-Are there other salts or combinations of salts that are known to be better than NaCl?
-Are there any known disadvantages to salting the base solution?

 

[Ragna]

Hello!

Please help this newbie out. I am getting ready for my first MHRB extraction (Cyb's hybrid salt), but I am thinking about using 100g instead of 50. I have a couple of questions:

1: I understand as per the FAQ that I should double the ingredients; but should I double the quantity of naphta too? Or is that fixed regardless of the scalation of the tek?

2: If the answer to question #1 is YES: Do I need 2 containers for each pull? or do I put each pull in a container despite it having a "double dose" of naphta?

3: After freezing; will the scraping damage the glass container? and if yes, can I use another tool for scraping the crystals instead of a razor blade?

4: Last but not least, I have seen in this same thread @changaforchange's beautiful pic from their customized cyb's hybrid salt extraction. If I understand correctly, all their pulls are in the same container. Can you put all the pulls in the same container to freeze, instead of using 5 containers? What's the difference / what changes should I make?

Thank you for your patience and for helping me out!

 

[Nordic traveller]

1: I understand as per the FAQ that I should double the ingredients; but should I double the quantity of naphta too? Or is that fixed regardless of the scalation of the tek?

Yes you should double the naphta too. The amount in the tek is chosen so that the amount of DMT in the base solution is easily enough soluble in the naphta. If you use too little naphta it will become saturated sooner and you'll need to do more pulls to get everything out.

2: If the answer to question #1 is YES: Do I need 2 containers for each pull? or do I put each pull in a container despite it having a "double dose" of naphta?

You don't need extra containers.

3: After freezing; will the scraping damage the glass container? and if yes, can I use another tool for scraping the crystals instead of a razor blade?

It depends on the type of glass I guess but most glasses shouldn't be very sensitive to scraping. You can use any tool. The point of the razor blade is just that it's handy and gets every little piece easier than most other tools.

4: Last but not least, I have seen in this same thread @changaforchange's beautiful pic from their customized cyb's hybrid salt extraction. If I understand correctly, all their pulls are in the same container. Can you put all the pulls in the same container to freeze, instead of using 5 containers? What's the difference / what changes should I make.

You can put them all in the same container. There are a couple of reasons to use many containers. If you pre evaporate you can get more surface area to make it faster. If you accidentally spill some of the brown mess in the pull container you'll only mess up one pull. You will see how much you got from each pull and based on that decide how many additional pulls you want to do. Sometimes the first pulls can be cleaner so you might want to handle different purity levels separately.

I did my first extraction using many containers and the second one using just one. Both turned out surprisingly good for a newbie. I used Noman's tek but the idea is the same in all these teks.

 

[Ragna]

Thank you very much for your answer, @Nordic traveller! It was really helpful.

I have been doing some shopping lately, and I am having some trouble that I didn't anticipate with one of the ingredients. I have hesitated to ask again because maybe there was an easy answer, but after searching on the forum, reddit, and duckduckgo, I think I am getting nowere.

So if you don't mind me taking advantage of your patience, I have another question:

It's the vinegar.

The tek says "white distilled vinegar". Well, where I live there seems to be lots of different vinegars. Our "white vinegar" is white WINE vinegar, which I think doesn't work, because of the colour (the colour on cyb's picture is transparent, and white wine vinegar is yellowish). I do have found concentrated white distilled vinegar, on the cleaning section of several supermarkets. This one does look like the one on cyb's picture (same colour, I mean; not same container), and also I have read the ingredients and it only says "vinegar", so there's no additions. But I am still not sure if I should use that.

The thing is, when reading about vinegar I found that it should be 5% acidity. I don't know if that is true for all teks, as Cyb's doesn't specify that, for example. But the white distilled vinegars that I have found on the cleaning section (I have gone to several different supermarkets) all have 8% acidity. I have found some white distilled vinegar online, but that's 12% acidity! If it helps, the white wine vinegar (the yellowish one) in the cooking section is 6% acidity.

Do any of those vinegars work? Or I should look for something else?

Thank you again for your patience and your time!

 

[Nordic traveller]

The tek says "white distilled vinegar". Well, where I live there seems to be lots of different vinegars. Our "white vinegar" is white WINE vinegar, which I think doesn't work, because of the colour (the colour on cyb's picture is transparent, and white wine vinegar is yellowish). I do have found concentrated white distilled vinegar, on the cleaning section of several supermarkets. This one does look like the one on cyb's picture (same colour, I mean; not same container), and also I have read the ingredients and it only says "vinegar", so there's no additions. But I am still not sure if I should use that.

The cleaning vinegar is best because it's chemically the most pure. The point of vinegar is the acetic acid which is used to bring the pH down to 2-4.

The thing is, when reading about vinegar I found that it should be 5% acidity. I don't know if that is true for all teks, as Cyb's doesn't specify that, for example. But the white distilled vinegars that I have found on the cleaning section (I have gone to several different supermarkets) all have 8% acidity. I have found some white distilled vinegar online, but that's 12% acidity! If it helps, the white wine vinegar (the yellowish one) in the cooking section is 6% acidity.

8% is fine. You can use it a bit less in a 5/8 proportion or add gradually and measure the pH. Many teks mention 2-4.

 

[Ragna]

Wow, that was fast! Thank you again!!!

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Hi everyone! I recently did my first small MHRB extraction using Noman's tek and was pretty happy with the result. From what I've gathered from reading the Nexus you can increase yield and/or make the extraction faster by salting the base solution with for instance NaCl (without iodine). I'm planning to try that next time. I have a couple of questions.

-Is more NaCl better? (If not, what is the optimal amount?)
-Is it ok if the solution saturates with NaCl and some salt crystals are left on the bottom of the bottle during pulls?
-Are there other salts or combinations of salts that are known to be better than NaCl?
-Are there any known disadvantages to salting the base solution?

You've been answering several questions here so it seems fair that your own questions should get answered too!

A lot of what you're asking about is answered here: Minimum Polymer
so it seems that keeping the salt concentration down might be desirable if you'd rather get white fluffy crystals. Hence, saturation is unnecessary, and I would suggest that salt crystal formation has the potential to be unhelpful in the extraction.

Sodium chloride is useful on account of its ubiquitous availability and does the job well enough. While ammonium sulphate may be a superior choice for efficacy in salting out, it will emit fumes of ammonia when sodium hydroxide or any similar strong base is added. Loveall has posted some links to principles of salting out and which salts are the most effective.

 

[Nordic traveller]

Thanks, downwardsfromzero!

I'll probably experiment with different salt concentrations including no salt.

 

[monomind]

Greetings Nexians,

A couple of questions for the knowledgeable ones

1. Is there a way to wash d-limonene from plant fats and other gunk so it can be reused many times ?
2. When performing hot pulls, what temperature should I have my soup and d-limo ?
( I use a sous-vide pot so can adjust the temperature accurately )

Thanks!