There's something wrong with my DMT

[cooljules1]

Hello amazing community,

I'm writing here since I've encountered an issue with my product, that I can't explain.

For the extraction method i used MHRB and Cybs rDUB Boro v1.0 tek and pulled and re-x'ed with heptane.

My issue is, that my product smells like heptane still (very faint), even after drying for 6 hours. Smelling it feels like it makes my nose and mouth dry... But it might be in my head...

The smell was very faint (in the sense that i couldn't tell it apart from the DMT smell) after drying for so long so i decided to smoke it, which produced a beautiful DMT experience but it also made my lungs feel strange, my hands got super dry and i had dry mouth for 3 days. Mid trip i came back to reality, and i panicked because i thought i had died, since i noticed something was off.

I'm vaping it, and the vape smoke was smooth as always.

I sent my product to have it analyzed and it came back as 80% DMT and 1.4% NMT. See report and pictures below.

What could've gone wrong here?
Has anyone ever had a similar experience?


The analysis report:

https://imgur.com/a/58OkkpK

My product:

https://imgur.com/a/BEcnzGU

https://imgur.com/a/PEPBoLc

Thank you in advance :d

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Hello and welcome to the Nexus!

I sent my product to have it analyzed and it came back as 80% DMT and 1.4% NMT.

That seems a bit on the low side. It makes one wonder what the remaining 18.6% might be, along with what the error limits for the analysis are.

Did your solvent evaporate clean in an evaporation test? What grade of heptane did you use for the initial pulls? Is that the same as you used for your recrystallisation?

I'm unable to find any reference to "Cybs rDUB Boro v1.0 tek" anywhere but in your post, so could you please describe exactly what you did both in your extraction and in the subsequent recrystallisation.

Perhaps the most crucial question is, did you collect your product by freeze precipitation or by evaporation?

 

[Dirty T]

I'm baffled by the remaining 18.6% as well. As we have all learned here color and texture are not an indicator of purity but rather polymers. If you are using distilled Heptane there is no reason it would not evaporate even at freezing temperatures. Some insight into how your extraction was performed can help us trouble shoot what's going on. I havent heard of Cybs Borotek either. I'm familiar with Cyb's maxion tek but I believe it contains extra steps not necessary for successful extraction with good yields. I personally got 3% yield on my most recent attempt and that's before Xylene pulls or backsalting, that's 4 sets of heated Naphtha pulls on heated soup, 2 pulls back to back daily for 4 days. In my experience with STB with a 1 to 1 bark to lye ratio and 15 to 1 water it takes 4 days to breakdown the cell walls to the point that you pick up everything an aliphatic hydrocarbon will grab before moving to an aromatic to grab the rest.

 

[cooljules1]

Hi both,

Thank you for your responses! It's much appreciated.

My heptane is from a chemical supplier, so i expect it would be of good quality. The SDS checks out, and the evap test evaporated almost entirely clean - very very vague residue.

This is the tek i'm using:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dmtguide/comments/oc84ll/cybs_max_ionsalt_tek_rewrite_for_borosilicate

It was left in the acid soak for 24h, and i freeze precipitated it. I also re-crystalized it.

 

[Dirty T]

If your Heptane is leaving a residue I would use a different NPS. I've always gotten shiny white crystals from backsalting even using dark yellow Naphtha. You don't have to "soak" in acid either. The backsalting process only takes a few minutes for the DMT to migrate from the NPS to the acid and the same applies after basifying and adding new NPS to collect your now 'clean' DMT.

NPS should leave no residue, I use "Klean Strip" or "Jasco" Naphtha VM&P (they are mixed together at this point) and "Klean Strip" 'Xylol' Xylene and neither leaves a residue. I would do multiple evap tests on a clean mirror, clean it with glass cleaner and newspaper first to be sure the residue isn't water spots or soap. Residues from NPS can be dangerous to inhale much less vape or smoke. Possibly the testing wasn't the most accurate or the glass was dirty you did the evap test on but having yellow DMT rather than green or blue is a good indicator.

I've read reports of residue from Jasco Xylene which is why I only use Klean Strip for extractions. Jasco Xylene is good driveway cleaner when mixed with vermiculite.

 

[PedroSanchez]

Hi both,

Thank you for your responses! It's much appreciated.

My heptane is from a chemical supplier, so i expect it would be of good quality. The SDS checks out, and the evap test evaporated almost entirely clean - very very vague residue.

This is the tek i'm using:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dmtguide/comments/oc84ll/cybs_max_ionsalt_tek_rewrite_for_borosilicate

It was left in the acid soak for 24h, and i freeze precipitated it. I also re-crystalized it.

i would try another solvent. a lot of people accept a faint ring on the evap test, but i have never seen anybody accept a tinted area. as far as i know we should not accept anything but completely clear, but it seems in reality a faint ring under the right light is about as good as we can get from store solvents (no solvent is perfect).
not sure what kind of residue you are getting, but the whole thing sounds questionable to me. even if your spice is perfectly fine, just thinking that it might not be okay is enough to ruin a good trip.

 

[Ernestine]

I'm baffled by the remaining 18.6% as well. As we have all learned here color and texture are not an indicator of purity but rather polymers. If you are using distilled Heptane there is no reason it would not evaporate even at freezing temperatures. Some insight into how your extraction was performed can help us trouble shoot what's going on. I havent heard of Cybs Borotek either. I'm familiar with Cyb's maxion tek but I believe it contains extra steps not necessary for successful extraction with good yields. I personally got 3% yield on my most recent attempt and that's before Xylene pulls or backsalting, that's 4 sets of heated Naphtha pulls on heated soup, 2 pulls back to back daily for 4 days. In my experience with STB with a 1 to 1 bark to lye ratio and 15 to 1 water it takes 4 days to breakdown the cell walls to the point that you pick up everything an aliphatic hydrocarbon will grab before moving to an aromatic to grab the rest.

I am not certain what we have really learned about colour, texture and purity. A hypothesis that polymorphism explains away all colour and texture differences without concerns about purity has become the accepted dogma on various discussion boards. It's good to see some counterevidence.

It should be obvious to most logical people that whilst the polymorphism reference suggests not all DMT polymorphs are white it by no means implies that all non-white extracts are 90-95% nn-DMT.

 

[Enchanted]

Pull the msds on your particular heptane. AF purchased a 5 gallon pail of "heptane" from a solvent supplier. It is used in the legal cannabis industry here because it is a 'once and done' solvent that can be 'washed clean' with water, separated, evaporated. Big label says HEPTANE and nothing on the pail indicates what the MSDS shows: it is 50% n-heptane, 30% methanol, 20% acetone and might work really well if heated to cook off the methanol and acetone.

Bestine is pure n-heptane. IMO, toluene is the ideal thing to extract from the aqueous phase. What most don't seem to know is that the 'goodies' can be washed from the toluene into acid-water, which can then be rebased into hexane or heptane... pure n-heptane seems to be the most selective.

Also... I am 'on the fence' regarding freeze precipitation. Look up "saponification" and sometimes I wonder if we are making soap (so to speak). Full evap is probably better on all accounts but we all like the white powder.

 

[slane]

Bestine is pure n-heptane.

I bought Bestine in March of this year that did not pass the evap test! Have you bought any recently?

 

[RoundAbout]

I am not certain what we have really learned about colour, texture and purity. A hypothesis that polymorphism explains away all colour and texture differences without concerns about purity has become the accepted dogma on various discussion boards. It's good to see some counterevidence.

It should be obvious to most logical people that whilst the polymorphism reference suggests not all DMT polymorphs are white it by no means implies that all non-white extracts are 90-95% nn-DMT.

The comment you're responding to says polymer, not polymorph.

 

[Ernestine]

I am not certain what we have really learned about colour, texture and purity. A hypothesis that polymorphism explains away all colour and texture differences without concerns about purity has become the accepted dogma on various discussion boards. It's good to see some counterevidence.

It should be obvious to most logical people that whilst the polymorphism reference suggests not all DMT polymorphs are white it by no means implies that all non-white extracts are 90-95% nn-DMT.

The comment you're responding to says polymer, not polymorph.

I know, thanks. Some folks get 'em confused though.

 

[Dirty T]

I'm baffled by the remaining 18.6% as well. As we have all learned here color and texture are not an indicator of purity but rather polymers. If you are using distilled Heptane there is no reason it would not evaporate even at freezing temperatures. Some insight into how your extraction was performed can help us trouble shoot what's going on. I havent heard of Cybs Borotek either. I'm familiar with Cyb's maxion tek but I believe it contains extra steps not necessary for successful extraction with good yields. I personally got 3% yield on my most recent attempt and that's before Xylene pulls or backsalting, that's 4 sets of heated Naphtha pulls on heated soup, 2 pulls back to back daily for 4 days. In my experience with STB with a 1 to 1 bark to lye ratio and 15 to 1 water it takes 4 days to breakdown the cell walls to the point that you pick up everything an aliphatic hydrocarbon will grab before moving to an aromatic to grab the rest.

I am not certain what we have really learned about colour, texture and purity. A hypothesis that polymorphism explains away all colour and texture differences without concerns about purity has become the accepted dogma on various discussion boards. It's good to see some counterevidence.

It should be obvious to most logical people that whilst the polymorphism reference suggests not all DMT polymorphs are white it by no means implies that all non-white extracts are 90-95% nn-DMT.

While I agree with your statement I have to assert that if all steps of any given MHRB extraction TEK are properly followed and basic soup is not allowed in the precipate dish then a low purity final product is highly unlikely. In this case color and texture are not an indication of purity. If all steps are not followed, impure solvents are used, improper vessels, additives in the Lye (alumina is one that comes to mind) it can result in an impure product but the beauty of DMT extraction is you can get a very pure product, the only way to introduce impurities is if we introduce them ourselves, there is nothing in the bark other than DMT that the aliphatic hydrocarbons we use to extract with "pick up". Even extracting with Xylene which pulls ALL of the fats and waxes a 50g MHRB extraction only has about .25 gram waxes and fats, I have extracted and measured this myself. Naphtha or Heptane will not pick these up.

 

[Ernestine]

Warm naptha will pick up some plant oil and waxes. Cool, not so much but still a pinch. Plenty of teks suggest warming the NPS.

0.25g oil/wax per 50g of bark would be sufficient to neatly explain what the remainder could be in the OP's sample, wouldn't it? I'd suggest that if no defatting step was used then there is a prime suspect for the impurities, assuming good quality reagents were used and no base soup was pulled by accident.

Whether 10% plant oil and wax is any concern depends on what you plan to do next I suppose.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Warm naptha will pick up some plant oil and waxes. Cool, not so much but still a pinch. Plenty of teks suggest warming the NPS.

0.25g oil/wax per 50g of bark would be sufficient to neatly explain what the remainder could be in the OP's sample, wouldn't it? I'd suggest that if no defatting step was used then there is a prime suspect for the impurities, assuming good quality reagents were used and no base soup was pulled by accident.

Whether 10% plant oil and wax is any concern depends on what you plan to do next I suppose.

If I recollect correctly, MHRB doesn't really have that much plant fat (like Acacia), and why many teks for MHRB don't really mention a defat step.

Yes, there is some plant fat in MHRB and can be part of the final result if the OP only evaporated and never freeze precipitated. That's kind of a key component to know at this juncture of the conversation. While my naphtha does turn a little yellow, my crystals are white. I always use hot solvent and freeze precipitate before decanting the solvent and allowing the final product to dry.

So my next question is with regard for the quality of the bark and if the bark itself is contaminated (say, if a vendor decides to add some other kind of bark to make more while providing less actual MHRB, or some other manner that another kind of bark or substance found its way into the MHRB bark).

One love

 

[Dirty T]

Except as I stated before that Naphtha/Heptane won't pick it up. I had a glob of tan waxes left over from backsalt processing Xylene once all the DMT was collected with Naphtha I tried again to pick up the tan glob with Naphtha, stirred on a hot plate at 1100 rpm at 80* C for 48 hours and didn't pick up anything, I evaporated the 100ml Naphtha that I used and nothing was left behind, no waxes, no DMT, no residue, it was a dry run. I added 100ml Xylene and stirred at 1100 at 80* C rpm for no longer than 10 minutes and the glob went directly into the Xylene. I evaporated and was left with an inactive film that smelled like DMT but had no effects and was very harsh like vaping Cannabis that has not been winterized. The conclusion I drew was no defat step at is necessary with MHRB when using Naphtha (vs. another source like acacia which requires a defat step) as a NPS because it doesn't collect whatever waxes/lipids/tannins are in MHRB. Doing a backsalt step will also remove any that were collected using Xylene if using Naphtha or a similar aliphatic hydrocarbon blend.

While we're here, I can't think of any reason anyone would be hesitant to freeze precipate unless they live somewhere where freezers are a luxury. The major benefit is you can reuse solvent (golden yellow Naphtha that looks like Mountain Dew will still produce fluffy white crystals). Yellow solvent doesn't translate to the end product. I was my solvent with Sodium Carbonate after each backsalt and I only backsalt at the very end once I have extracted everything from all of my bark. Doing this also retrieves the DMT that is "trapped" (at 0* Celsius Naphtha holds 112mg DMT per 100ml Naphtha so there is 1.12g DMT that can be collected per liter of Naphtha used for freeze precipation)