Hello ladies and gents,
I don't have anyone around me to discuss these things with so I want to throw this post up here to see if anyone has anything for me.
I have been making my very first extraction attempt using ACRB following Cyb's Hybrid Salt Tek which I feel has been an utter disaster...except for the lessons I have learn from the mistakes...which I guess when I really look at them are invaluable.
To try and make this as short-n-sweet as possible: I was following the tek to the "T". Everything seemed to be going really well until I added the naphtha to begin my pulls. The naphtha separated almost instantly. I had all 4 mix/separations within 10 minutes. I figured something wasn't right at this point. Continued on with the show anyway. Naphtha pulls were yellow, I did not pre-evap at all and they went into the the freezer. I did 5 pulls in total. 18 hours later I pull them out, drain naphtha, and continue to evap with a fan. Once it was all said it done all 5 pulls yielded little to nothing. I think i was able to scrape up 100mg of golden goo.
I decided to start over. Frustrated, I dumped everything. :thumb_dow
I took a little more time the second go around. Practiced some more patience and tried to pay extreme attention to detail. I ran back into the naphtha issue except this time they weren't AS fast to separate and I continued as before. I have removed the first two pulls out of the freezer. Still disappointed, but after scraping I have around 300mg of yellow goo (I will attach a photo). Still waiting on the rest of the fellas to finish freezing.
I have read many posts regarding ACRB and goo and with a good amount of those in very positive light although it seems like everyone is shooting for the white crystals. I was planning on making changa with it but to be honest..it still makes me nervous. Being my first time I can't help but feel that I've messed something up which is why I am posting this here and now.
Maybe that means I'm not quite ready? Or will I ever have the unquestionable confidence in my extracting ability the first time no matter how white and fluffy the crystals may be ( Although I'm sure it'd help

)
I was planning on taking this goo and running it though a Re-X or EW's clean up steps BUT as I'm cleaning up my kitchen I grab my turkey baster that I used for all my pulls and realize that it is PLASTIC! Which I immediately assume makes everything that I've done 'No Go Criteria' and needs to be trashed. So what I planned to do next doesn't even matter.
*sigh*
I feel like I'm back to square one again. I needed to get this out there for my own sake but any advice, stories, reassurance, or even some hard brutal honesty will be welcomed.
Cheers,
H.