Interested in ideas / experiences about minimizing the tannin content of ayahuasca (or analogue) brews.

Possibilities that come to mind are:

- letting the brew settle and decanting from the top, leaving behind the (tannin-rich) sludge. Presumably the tannins complex with proteins in the brew, or with calcium salts, and settle to the bottom. This is followed by filtering the brew to catch suspended particles (which are likely more concentrated in tannins). Perhaps this sludge could be fermented to hydrolyze the tannins into their constituent flavonoids.

- long low temperature brew, which reportedly leaves behind some tannins in the plants (presumably bound to fibers) since they are more strongly bound than the alkaloids themselves.

- egg white method: personally I'm not interested in this one.

- alkaline precipitation - I've precipitated acorn tannins with calcium hydroxide, so I'm wondering if adding it to a brew to precipitate tannins (and alkaloids) and then re-acidifying would re-dissolve the alkaloids before the tannins. Maybe not practical, but a thought.

- fermentation - this would definitely hydrolyze tannins. If the brew is sufficiently acidic, concentrated, and low-temp (preserving some endophytic bacteria), the fermentation may go acidic rather than alkaline and avoid putrefaction and loss of potency.

Also - anyone have data / observations about the relative tannin content of vine, Psychotria ssp, Diplopterys cabrerana, Calliandra spp, etc?

Our brew had become quite tannic and we needed a way to fix that.

While thinking about it this evening, another idea came to mind.

Since tannins bind to proteins (hence their reaction with saliva), I thought of commonly available protein sources. They'd need to be easily removable so that they wouldn't contaminate the brew.

The solution?

Silk, which is pure protein.

I found a study that reported up to 80%+ tannin removal from a 10% solution. The silk adsorbed up to 8% of its weight in tannins at 60C & pH 4.

We didn't have any silk around that we wanted to spare, but we had some wool.

We dipped it in the brew, wrung it out, and drank what came out.

It was less than half as astringent!

Tomorrow we'll get some silk and try with that.

Keep us updated on your trials! I've been wondering about this same problem for a while but haven't come up with a solution (haven't really tried that hard). However everytime I take some mimosa I dream of the day we have the technology to make it taste even somewhat normal 😄

Interesting. Purified lambswool is fairly readily available, in Europe at least, in the mother and baby section of drugstores. I might just be giving this a try - it would make a good filter plug in a ('THP') funnel. It's easy to imagine a slow-drip brew process for any of the tannin-rich plant materials coming out cleaned up in one simple process.

And 60°C is the suggested temperature for both silk treatment and the percolator so I look forward to hearing some reports of experiments with this and maybe sharing some of my own.

You could also try a fining process like they do with wine and beer. I've removed tannins from a MHRB extraction many years ago using gelatin as a fining agent. Also experimented with powdered zinc and acetic acid, though I wouldn't do that procedure for a brew.

-D.

We ended up deciding to use wool instead, since we had more of it on hand than silk.

Soaked it for maybe 30min around 60C, and it tastes about 1/3 as astringent - success!

I would be interested to know how a second soak with fresh wool might perform. Will it perhaps remove the remaining third of the tannins - or will it reduce that by two thirds to leave a ninth? I would suspect the former - it may yet be possible to get a super smooth brew this way!

Presumably the desired activity is remaining at an acceptable level?

This is certainly something I would consider applying to any future brewing efforts. What ratio of wool to brew did you use?

Didn't measure - my friend had an undyed wool poncho that we soaked in the brew for half an hour. It was pretty weighty, but the brew was maybe 10 gallons at that point (not fully reduced).

Congratulations, Stochastic, on achieving full membership!

[Take note, new members , on how positive contribution is an all-round winner!]

All we need now is a vegan version... hmmmm.... chickpea foam? Soya mince?


How did the colour of the poncho turn out, incidentally?

Any updates on this?

I thought tannins are good. Why to minimize?

Tannins contribute to nausea and they get their name from tanning leather... Not that drinking ayahuasca will turn your insides to leather, but there is, perhaps, a limit.

Not all tannins are equal - they come in several classes. Besides their antioxidant properties (which is perhaps what you meant by 'good') they also coagulate/denature proteins and bind to mineral nutrients such as iron. This binding property and the affinity for protein is what makes wool or silk a viable filtering option for tannin removal. The protein binding is what gives tannins an astringent mouth-feel.

A nice beige color.

Ayahuasca tofu?

Tannins also bind chitin (poly-n-acetyl-glucosamine), which is a significant component of fungal cell walls. If you could get ahold of the countless tons of fungal cell walls disposed of by the mushroom extract industry...

Chitin/chitosan is sold for various purposes including use as wine finings. [Fish scales are another proteinaceous by-product that could be put to use.] Or, combining the fungal and tofu ideas, tempeh might be the ultimate tannin removal solution

By the way, looking back to your comment here:

I've just extracted acorn tannins using 40% alcohol (i.e. premium vodka) and precipitated the tannins with calcium hydroxide. If this were a DMT brew, the DMT would most definitely remain dissolved in the alcohol. I'm not so sure if harmala alkaloids would be so soluble though.

It likely would also be necessary to get the alkaloids out of the vodka, or maybe the vodka out of the alkaloids, because a triple shot of vodka with each aya dose might not be such a sensible manoeuvre. This gets a bit fiddly if all you want to do is make a brew, but acidification of the supernatant followed by distillation would yield crude alkaloid salts plus recovered alcohol.