A re-extraction or “re-x” is a step taken to clean up your DMT, post-extraction. When extracting DMT, impurities such as lye from your base layer or little pieces of bark can make their way into your final product. Performing a re-x is a good way to eliminate those impurities and make sure you have the safest and cleanest end product. If you would like to know how to extract DMT safely at home, check out “How to extract DMT: A simple guide“, on Entheogen insight.
A re-x is a straightforward process in which you re-dissolve your freshly extracted DMT into some fresh, warm Naphtha and put it through the precipitation process a second time. After you dissolve the spice in the fresh solvent, any base or impurities that have worked their way into your DMT will sink to the bottom of your solvent, allowing you to pour the good solvent into your dish for freezing, while leaving the bad stuff behind at the bottom.
This process is a good practice that is highly recommended with all of your future DMT extractions. The picture below is a side-by-side comparison that shows firsthand how much cleaner your DMT will be if you take the time to put in a little extra work. DMT that has been through a re-x will also be very smooth when smoked which is a huge positive for your overall experience.
Tools and ingredients needed to re-x
- Safety glasses and gloves
- A scale that measures in milligrams
- Dried DMT
- Naphtha or Heptane
- A standard cooking pot
- A Pyrex casserole dish for freeze precipitating
- A beaker or small mason jar
Preparing to re-x
Before starting the re-x process, you need to decide how much DMT you will re-x. For every ½ gram of DMT, you will use 50ml of fresh Naphtha or Heptane. A re-x works really well with Heptane because It Targets DMT better than Naphtha. Naphtha collects other alkaloids while Heptane specifically targets DMT. Heptane is expensive though so if you can’t afford it, Naphtha will work just as well.
The goal when doing a re-x is to use as little solvent as possible. When too much solvent is present, the DMT won’t precipitate out of the solvent properly. That is why often you will see people evaporate half of their solvent before freezing their dish. However, this is a waste of solvent. If you use the bare minimum, to begin with, you can avoid the need for an evaporation step.
Below is a chart to show you the ratio of solvent to use per ½ gram of DMT.
| ½ gram of dried spice = | 50ml of fresh Naphtha or Heptane |
| 1 gram of dried spice = | 100ml of fresh Naphtha or Heptane |
| 1.5 grams of dried spice = | 150ml of fresh Naphtha or Heptane |
| 2 grams up to 2.5 grams of dried spice = | 200ml of fresh Naphtha or Heptane |
How to re-x
- Weigh out spice to re-x
- Measure out solvent
- Fill the pot with hot water
- Give the solvent a hot water bath
- Dissolve spice in warm solvent
- Separate clean solvent from impurities
- Freeze precipitate your spice
1. Weigh out the spice to re-x
For example, here is how to do a re-x on 1 gram of DMT. using your scale, measure out 1 gram of DMT and set it off to the side.
2. Measure out your solvent
Since you are doing a re-x on 1 gram of spice, you will use 100ml of fresh Naphtha or Heptane. This is the perfect time to use the 250ml beaker that came in your beaker set from amazon. If you don’t have a beaker, use a small 8 oz mason jar. Whatever you use has to be tempered or borosilicate glass since we are using heat. After measuring out your solvent, cover the jar with aluminum foil to avoid evaporation and fumes.
3. Fill your pot with hot water
Turn on your kitchen sink and let the water get as hot as it can get. Then fill your pot till the water line in the pot reaches the same height as the solvent line in your jar. You need to give the jar a hot water bath to heat the solvent up. If you need to use a stove to heat your water, make sure your solvent is nowhere near an open flame.
4. Give the solvent a hot water bath
Place your covered solvent jar in the pot of hot water and allow the solvent to warm up for 15 minutes, occasionally swirling the solvent every 3 to 4 minutes. This will allow the solvent to heat up quickly and evenly.
5. Dissolve spice in the warm solvent
After your solvent has warmed up, peel back the aluminum foil on your jar and add your DMT to the solvent. Cover your jar again with the foil and begin swirling the solvent to mix the spice. Since the solvent is warm you will notice that the DMT dissolves quickly. Keep your solvent in your hot water bath for another 15 minutes, occasionally mixing the solvent every 3 minutes.
Keep the water warm during this time. If your water starts to cool off, pour it out and fill it with fresh hot water.
6. Separate clean solvent from impurities
After 15 minutes, you will notice that any impurities in your spice will have sunk to the bottom of your jar. Usually, it looks like a yellow or red blob of goo. Get your casserole dish and a few paper towels. Remove your solvent from the water bath and wipe off the outside of the jar to avoid droplets of water falling into your casserole dish.
Peel back the aluminum foil on your solvent and slowly pour the solvent into your casserole dish, leaving behind the yellow or red impurities at the bottom. You only want the clean solvent in your dish.
7. Freeze precipitate your spice
Now that you have separated the impurities from your spice, cover your casserole dish and allow the crystals to precipitate in your freezer for 24 hours. After 24 hours, remove your dish from the freezer, pour the excess solvent off the top of your crystals, and allow them to dry before collecting them.
Conclusion
You now have successfully performed a re-x on your spice making it safer and cleaner. You will notice a slight loss of spice weight. Since you removed the impurities, you will have slightly less spice than what you started with. For this example, if you started with 1 gram of spice, after re-x you will retrieve 800 – 900 milligrams. That means 100 milligrams of impurities were removed.
This means the re-x was successful and made your final product that much better. Once again, a re-x is highly recommended in every extraction. Spice that has gone through a re-x step will be very smooth when smoked and ultimately give you a far better experience. It is a great safety step to ensure your spice is clean.
So I see that Heptane and N-Heptane are both available on Amazon. A little research indicates that N-Heptane is more pure than Heptane.
https://simplesolvents.com/simple-solvents-blog/heptane-vs-n-heptane/
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks
Jeff
Hey jeff,
sorry to get back to you so late. I do have some thoughts on this the first being that N-heptane is purer than regular heptane, however this doesn’t play a role in your yield or how safe the final product is. That all comes from your final clean up steps. Any non-polar solvent you choose to use will work just fine because if you’ve conducted an evap test you will know it’s not leaving any harmful residues behind. With that being said, N-heptane is a great choice however its more expensive. Of course, we want the purest safest alkaloids possible, but you can absolutely get that with standard solvents like heptane and naphtha because at the end of the extraction you are doing clean up steps like a re-x. If you have the money for N-heptane, it will work great! you will have to keep it warm though because heptane doesn’t target DMT as well at room temperature. I hope this helped and thank you for your support as I build this up for the community.
So with N-heptane you should keep it warm during extraction? How warm should it be and how to do it properly when it needs to sit with the bark for 24h? Or is it only for the re-x it needs to be warm, as the other solvents
yes, heptane works well for targeting dmt yet it does need to be warm during the extraction process. To do this keep your jar in a warm water bath. I use a big pot with water and then throw This fish tank water heater in the water to keep it warm over the 24hrs. Typically the water will hover around 100 to 104 degrees f.
Ok thanks, gonna try my first extraction soon… I’m gonna try to use my infrared heating mat i use for my mushrooms
When you say the heptane needs to be warm, that is not mentioned in your instructions above. If I used the heptane you linked to and followed your re-x instructions, do I need to add a step of keeping the heptane warm? If so, it would helpful if that was included in the instructions.
Thanks!
The reason this wasn’t added in the re-x tek is because if you are following the re-x tek, you should be using a hot water bath anyway to warm your solvent when conducting your re-x. Your hot water bath should be faucet hot and that is plenty of heat to bring your Heptane solvent up to the 85-to-90-degree mark when doing your re-x. Heptane works well when it is above room temperature. If you’re going to use Heptane for your extraction, I like to keep my solvent warm during the extraction by leaving my extraction jar in a pot of water and then I add a fish tank water heater like this one to keep the water at 90 degrees while you conduct your mixes over the 24hr period. I hope that helped answer your question my friend. sorry for the late response.
Man, this SVH Tek is awesome. Thank you so much for making this site. A couple questions though. I have had a problem with the re-ex where I lose way too much spice into the yellow goo that I’ve since been told was actually the DMT. My initial yield was 1.5g and turned to only .35g after re-ex. I’m in my second attempt so hopefully I’ll figure out what I did wrong. I’m thinking I just didn’t miss well enough? How do you tell the difference between yellow DMT goo and contaminant? My other question is, others recommend a water wash before precip. Do you not find this useful? Thanks again for all the hard work my friend.
No problem I’m happy to help! So to be honest that is a huge loss in yield after a RE-X. on a 1g re-x, you should only lose about .2 to .3. How long did you let the DMT soak in fresh solvent? My guess is that the DMT wasn’t fully dissolved or fully mixed. Don’t be discouraged though. if you still have all that solvent and the beaker you performed the re-x in you can just heat everything back up and continue to dissolve everything. You will know when it’s done because that mass of yellow goo stays at the bottom and does not get any smaller. Then you can siphon and leave the other stuff behind. What you have heard about the yellow stuff being DMT is true however it is more NMT which has a different boiling and freezing point than DMT. This is why you will see some yellow goo with your white crystals when you do your freeze precipitation. This is perfectly fine and smokeable. However, this NMT will dissolve with your DMT when you do your re-x. The point of a re-x is to rid your DMT of any base layer (black bottom layer) that you might have accidentally transferred over when siphoning. Your water bath could also have been too cold and didn’t allow your DMT to dissolve fully. When you try again, ensure your water is hot and give the DMT time to fully dissolve. There should be no solids after everything is dissolved. you will see two distinct layers. The bottom is everything you want to get rid of and the top layer is what you want to keep. As for water washing, it is not necessary, but it is more like an extra step taken to ensure no lye is present in your final product. You can water wash before you freeze if you want but I recommend doing it last after your re-x because your re-x is going to be the first initial clean of your DMT. The water wash is for anything that remains. I’ve done water washes but honestly, I just do my re-x and that’s it. I hope that helps and thanks for all your support! I have many new write-ups coming out soon for everyone that I’m sure will benefit the community. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! stay safe my friend!
Hi, first of all, thank you so much for this guide. I am a newbie and have a question regarding water washing. I am concerned about lye being present in my solvent so I want to try this. But how do you do that exactly? You just let water through your solvent? Do you have to use normal (distilled) water for that or do you have to mix water first with lye? Thank you so much!
hello, so a water wash really isn’t necessary if you’re performing a re-x in my opinion. However, I do understand your concern I will be putting up a blog on water washing soon that will explain the entire process. For now, if you perform your re-x on your final product, I can assure you that you will have nothing to worry about, my friend.
Hi, you are an amazing asset to the community. Quick question:
What about a magnetic stirrer with a build-in hot plate like the ones on Amazon? Is this something you could or would use as part of the re-x or even the extraction process?
Thanks again!
Thank you for the kind words I really appreciate that! You can spend more money to get a heated mag stirrer if you want. I bought this one before which works great but I ended up going with This one later on because I liked the bigger surface area for larger beakers. these work great for re-x process and make it super simple if you have the money to streamline that is. Hope all is well! stay safe!
Thank you for this. I’m about an hour from my first pull on this tek. I’m curious about 2 things – well, it’s 1 thing in 2 stages. I have an ultrasonic bath which also holds heat digitally. Could I use this either during the Re-X or in the “6. Mix the jar 8 times in the next 24 hours” step? I’m using naphtha & the erlenmeyer flask you recommended. I’ve read in various places that using the ultrasonic bath might cause an emulsion. I’ve also read that heat can prevent that?
I guess a 3rd thing – in the re-x, you saw warm the naphtha, but to what temperature?
Thanks!
Honestly I haven’t used a ultrasonic bath but I don’t see it causing any issues in my opinion. As for the temperature of the naphtha in the re-x step I assume it would be around 90 to 100 degrees f. Honestly that isn’t an exact science. Just get your bath water as hot as your faucet will go and that will be plenty warm for a re-x.
Thanks for all of your great and organized info. I’ve read a lot recently about water washing before the first freeze precip step for extra purity. What are your thoughts on that?
Thanks
Any step that improves quality and safety, I always encourage it. I personally like to precipitate my crystals first, then collect and dry them. Then I like to add them to fresh solvent before water washing. I do this as a good practice measure to make sure that no lye is being carried over in my solvent. by using fresh solvent, I know that I’m only washing lye from my crystals and not my solvent.