Jees, my bark was shredded. I did 3 soaks, the first one 'as is', the 2nd one following a freeze-thaw cycle, and the 3rd one following another freeze-thaw cycle and further shredding in a Nutribullet, which just produced finer pieces, but nothing close to a powder.
Now, I don't know whether that was needed; some of it may have been redundant. According to Mindlusion, just one cold soak, with enough liquid to cover the bark, should remove ~85% of the DMT.
He suggested a long soak, in the order of a month; mine, on the other hand, were short: the 1st one was overnight, the 2nd and 3rd were no more than a couple of days.
More experimentation needed and welcome!
monomind wrote:1) What is the purpose of adding salt before basifying ?
To increase ionic strength, which should reduce the number of pull needed. This roughly follows Cyb's Max Ion tek, although I didn't really measure the amount of salt and I don't know how much it contributed.
monomind wrote:2) Given that you start with vinegar medium and ends with vinegar medium, isn't the basifying stage redundant ? I mean ( if i understand the theory correctly ) you could just defat the original vinegar pulls with naphtha and get exactly to the same place without using lye at all.
There were two reasons: to remove the astringency caused by the tannins (this could also be done with egg whites, at least to an extent) and to remove the NMT or whatever compound gives it what I perceive as a sweet/artificial feel and perhaps dampens the DMT effects. If I'm not mistaken, naphtha will preferentially pull DMT and not so much NMT.
When I've drank ACRB brews (made with the use of boiling/simmering), I've also experienced unpleasant physical effects at higher doses - waves of terrible nausea that would bring me to a state of panic.
Luckily, the simple cold soaks (without proceeding to NPS extraction) seem to be sufficient to remove whatever constituent is responsible for the nausea. So if someone wants to work with crude ACRB preparations, cold soaks already offer a great qualitative advantage over boiled brews, not to mention saving energy.
My intention for this experiment was to get as much data as possible for minimal work, so I decided to try a crude soak first, test it to see how it differs from brews, and if I still wasn't happy with the result, to proceed to an NP extraction. In this case, I was happy about the lack of nausea, but there was still room for improvement in the astringency and 'sweet feel' department.
dithyramb wrote:May I ask what are the known and suspected contaminants in ACRB?
Not sure, but hope some of the above addresses this question to some extent.
Last night I decided to try the extract. Unfortunately the results were confounded by the fact I drank a serving of normal aya (caapi + chali) first, and the ACRB extract 4 hours later.
I drank around 4g worth in the extract (1.5 ml), and washed a glass used in transfers with water and drank the wash water.
A long, powerful and insightful yet gentle experience ensued, which was free from the sweet feel. It was also quite visual, although without a sudden onset, but rather a slow unfolding and the visuals still there 8 hours later. The harmalas may have been responsible for the long duration.
Next time, if I do a rue-style extraction (acid soaks, base, collect the precipitate), it will be interesting to see whether the sweet feel remains.