When purifying alkaloids, do we understand the kinetics of HCl leaving the product?

The final step in most alkaloid purification is an acid/base extraction, since you can easily push the product from aqueous phase to organic phase and back again, leaving behind almost everything else. But since it’s often desirable to store products long term in their salt form, you finish by washing your DCM with HCl soln. and then evaporating to yield your hydrochloride salt.

Now in theory HCl is a gas so as you evaporate away the water, HCl vapors should be coming off as well. But I’m sure that residual HCl is occluded in the newly formed crystals and doesn’t immediately leave. From experience I can say that unless you pick your stoichiometry just perfectly, your product generally has an extremely low pH to start off with, which slowly climbs as it dries.

Can you expect the product to be fully free of HCl by the time all the water is gone? If not, how do you reconcile this? HCl is a strong acid, and I’m assuming could degrade many molecules over time. Are there other ways of ensuring that the pKa of the alkaloid is the only factor in pH of your product in solution?