So i have about 60grams of shreeded caapi that ive soaked in acetone for almost a month, ive used the acetone for my changa blends and just refilled the jar whenever i needed more.

Lately ive felt that the afterglow of my changa has been decreasing more and more, so i decided to take the caapi out and did a 3x3h boil with some white vinegar in it.

After that i boiled it down to about 300ml and added enough lye to make it go black, i don´t have any ph sticks or similar so everything is made by feel.

i let it precip over night and now the jar bottom is full of stuff that i guess is alkaloids. i will take a pic so you guys can see.


I will try to make the rest of the tek and weigh up my results.

one thing that is weird, i can´t seem to get it to go as black as gibrans tek, ive used alot of naoh and it´s still brownish,

Also what is the best way to sipher out the lye mix?

The color of the basified liquid will vary – depends on caapi variety among other things. I’m working on an extraction from yellow caapi, and the solution is a cloudy chocolate-brown instead of the clear blackish-brown I got with my black caapi.

I use a turkey baster to remove the liquid. (My turkey baster sure gets a lot of use – salvia, DMT, caapi, and occasionally turkey!)

Please let us know what kind of yield you get.

I let it soak overnight from yesterday and there was quite abit of stuff in the bottom, however i thought something was wrong since it didnt go black so i added more lye and now it´s in the fridge for cooling.

I will look at it tomorow and hopefully have some results for x-mas eve...

Im curious regarding the results of this. I've long been suspecting that caapi soaks with IPA/acetone do not get most alkaloids and that people will be wasting a lot if they throw the caapi away.

Please do tell us the results

looks like there was alot of fallout from the lye, ive let it soak for a few days since i haven´t had time to do anything with it and there is now almost 5cm of yellow stuff in the bottom of the jar under the 15cm layer of lye.

I have gotten most of the lye out but there is still about 1cm left on top, will try to get it out once everything has sinked down again.

one thing you can do is filter to remove most liquid, then prepare a lightly basic solution (with a tiny pinch of lye or sodium carb), and wash that yellow precipitation with this, and it should remove all lye and some other impurities and yoru harmalas should stay undissolved

If you’re not filtering, but rinsing and decanting instead, make sure you do several rinses with plain water, then check the pH and make sure it isn’t above 8 or so. Keep in mind that the 5cm layer of precipitate is still mostly liquid, so if you have 5cm of precipitate and 15cm of liquid above it, you’re only removing about 75% of the liquid (and hence 75% of the NaOH) with each rinse.

What should i filter through? i would believe that a cofee filter would melt if i put this lye solution through it... or maybe not.

I will try to use my plastic syringe to remove some more lye..

After that should i pour in more water and let it precip again? then after that pour away the water and save? repeat 4times? should i add some lye in the water to make sure it won´t dissolve the harmalas?

plastic syringe? What kind of plastic? sounds bad idea. Why not just wash it? Check gilbran2's tek in the wiki for harmala extraction and you can see how the wash can be done. No need to filter the whole thing, add to container, mix with water, let alks decant, pour as much liquid as you can without harmalas, repeat process.

but even if you want to use filter, I dont think paper filter should be any problem with dilute lye solution

i used the same kind i use for my naphta pulls, ive seen pre mixed lye come in bottles made from the same kind of plastic.

I will try a coffe filter now and after that pour everything that sticks in the filter back in the jar and fill upp with water? then precip remove water and repeat?

I remove as much liquid as possible with a baster (syringe), then refill the container with water, stir well, allow to settle, repeat.

The liquid is a fairly dilute lye solution, so plastic should be OK.

coffee filter didnt work, nothing came through and eventually it broke, so i washed it off with hot water that i saved and mixed with the rest, i guess i will just wash with water and precip,

Does freezing speed up the process.

Freezing? The settling of the precipitate should only take 30 minutes or so.

And just to reiterate, that's just the settling that takes ~30 minutes...the actual precipitation is pretty much instantaneous. Following basification you should get a color change and the harmaloids should crash out of the solution.

ive done about 3 cleans so far but it´s still preety balck, guess i shouldnt have used so much lye...

anywau i will keep pulling the black water out and add water untill it´s clear.

Nice experiment, very interested in seeing the result!

Ive cleaned it up about 5times now and the water is getting almost clear now, still alot of stuff in the bottom hopefully mostly alkaloids,

Also i soaked the coffee filter that i used before when i tried to filterin acetone and evapped, left me about 100-150mg of light yellowish powder that smells harmalas,

So far it´s likely that a acetone soak won´t remove all the alkaloids from caapi.

Sorry guys just havent felt like touching my lab stuff the last week, i can tell that after removing all non solvable shit there is still alot of stuff left that i presume is harmalas, now i just need to remove the last lye and i can weigh it up.

Finally i finished this extraction now when i got a new bigger syringe, it was a pain in the ass to empty the water with a 5ml medicine syringe so now i got a "marinator" which is made to inject marinade into steak

this baby takes 35ml which made this alot easier, i did about 10 rinses since i used too much lye, finally the water was totally clear and i actually tasted a tniy bit off the water to be sure,(stupid i know but i survived so i think it was good)

The end product was 0,75grams of dried freebase harmala alkaloids,

I did not save any of the rinses either so i could probably have gotten 0,1-0,3 more if i would have done that.

the amount got from just using acetone was about 0,6grams so in the end you only get about 50% of the harmalas out with plain acetone.


Next time i will try to use FASA and see how much that would yield.


EDIT: this was made on black caapi vine, i think if you use powdered leaf just acetone will be alot more effective, although i guess basing you alkaloids will make them better for smoking.