Yes, I used vinegar.

But enough questions - give it a try yourself!

Oops, sorry, you already said that. One more question. When you got precipitation to form just from the lye, would you feel comfortable smoking something that preciped right out of lye?

I ask because if one is unsatisfied with the quality of their spice because they didn't do a defat and want to clean it up. Could they acidify their spice, defat it with naphtha, and instead of pulling basified spice with naphtha, just get it to precip right out of the water using base? For some reason I don't like pulling with solvents and would rather not. I hope CaOH works for this as well.

And just curious, does anyone have a theory why it takes crystals days to form using sodium carbonate? Yet you say you got quick precipitation from lye. Why? In step 7 of the fasa method found here , it says,

“dissolve the alkaloid-fumarate salts in 5ml of tap water, then and then add saturated sodium carbonate to make the solution basic. The alkaloids will be freebased and the solution will become milky. In 3 days they will precipitate out forming nice needle-like crystal in the basic solution..”

Why does it take 3 days in sodium carbonate but instant with lye?

This is why you do the washes at the end. The more washes you do (eg the more water you use) the less chance there will be any residual lye in the end product.



I'm not sure if that would work or not. Give it a shot and let us know.



I believe it is because sodium carbonate is a much weaker base so it takes longer for it to react. With lye being so much stronger, it's more instantaneous. With the slower reaction, that allows crystals to form. With lye, it just falls out.

My neighbor's garden gnome has been attempting to perform this tek on some shredded caapi vine (of type/colour unknown), and has encountered the same problem in three different experiments....

The last run involved;
- boiling for 1hr, 150g of shredded vine in 750mL of water (enough to cover the material), which was added to it 75mL of white vinegar (4% acetic acid).
- strain off the solution, add a further 750mL of water and 75mL of vinegar, boil for further hour.
- repeat step two a further 2 times.
- boil-down relutant solution (approx. 1L), to 500mL.

The final solution did not quite have the thick, muddy texture and colour of ayahuasca. It seemed to be noticeably less concentrated than the solution pictured in this tek.

The addition of a 10% (wt./wt.) solution of NaOH caused the rapid precipitation of dark material, leaving a clear, ruby solution (as described in this tek - very similar to the photos).

This solution was decanted off after settling. However, even after several hours of standing, the solution could not be completely decanted, 50-100mL remained, in which the precipiate was dispersed.

Up to this point I had assumed the experiment was progressing succesfully, however the issue remains in the attempting to re-dissolve the alks. I found that (despite whatever quantity of vinegar was added), the VAST majority of the precipitate remained in solution. The solution was shaken vigorously, left to stand for several hours, further diluted with vinegar, however nothing succeeded in dissolving what appeared to be the vast majority of the precipitate.
The photos provided in this tek are still very similar to what I experienced, however the quantity of waste "undissolved plant matter" that was described, seemed to be all (if not the majority) of the precipitate itself.
The addition of the vinegar DID cause a visible change to the solution, however this was noticed as a slight change in colour of both the solution and precipitate - definitely NOT as a significant reduction in the volume of precipitate present.

On assuming that at least some alks should now be in solution, the solution was filtered, giving a perfectly clear, yellow solution. [The solid material collected on the filter paper first resembled a grey mud, which dried overnight to yield flakes of dark, brittle material that were insoluble in both vinegar and ethanol (approx. 1g).] The solution was then precipitated with 10% NaOH, which successfully caused the precipitation of a significant quantity of material (as described in the tek, however this precipitate was clearly darker in colour than that described herein). The solution was allowed to settle, decanted, and then washed in the described manner 4 times. The remaining mixture was then dried in a glass baking tray to yield 0.9g of dark-brown semi-crystalline material.

Not only is the resultant material clearly much darker in colour than that described here, but it will also not dissolve in either vinegar or pure ethanol.....

Personally I can't see what could have gone wrong here, except for the possibility that the caapi itself may be juvenile and contain little to no alks (?). But this still doesn't explain why I was able to precipitate out some material on the second attempt (via the addition of NaOH), that now refuses to dissolve in ethanol or vinegar.....

Any ideas on what is going on here?... Should i bother testing the material for activity, or is this a foolish waste of time?

Any thoughts/comments you could provide would be much appreciated. Really confused :S

not sure what the darks stuf is, other than perhaps left-overs from too large/rough filterings. IME your solution has to be black to get all the alks to crash out, not red. if it's red then you likely have some stuff left in there. At least this is how it has usually been with my extractions. Also my alks usually take a bit of heat before they really dissolve in vinegar, so what I do is re-dissolve in a pot and heat the whole thing until they are dissolved. upon cooldown insolubles crash out and I can filter it really easily. You might want to try that with what you have there. And if you didn't throw the red solution away, try adding some more base.

don't know if this helps...

I’m not quite sure if I’m following everything you did, but when you filtered the solution to get a yellow solution, was the solution clear or cloudy? The yellow solution was the solution containing alkaloids.

The cloudy brown stuff that won’t dissolve in vinegar is NOT alkaloids – harmala alkaloids dissolve very easily in even a small amount of vinegar.

It sounds like you got a very low, very impure yield.

One indicator of high-yielding caapi is when you’re first boiling: the decanted liquid will be clear when hot and will get very cloudy upon cooling. Weak caapi will not get very cloudy and might not get cloudy at all. When reduced and cooled, strong caapi will look almost like chocolate milk (as the photo shows).

My guess is that your caapi is very weak. It seems that with weak caapi, the alkaloids don’t clump together and fall out of solution, but instead remain in solution as a cloudy precipitate. This precipitate will settle if given enough time – 24 hours or so.

The only unusual thing you describe is the precipitation of dark material when adding NaOH. I’ve never had that happen, even with low-yielding caapi.

thanks guys.

Yes that was my conclusion as well gibran. I was just suprised that I wass able to initially drop out such a large quantity of material (via the first basification with caustic), and that so little was then soluble in vinegar.

- The yellow solution was clear.

- Yes, I realise the brown precipitate that won't dissolve in vinegar is not an alkaloid.

Ok, i'm fairly confident that the problem was that I was working with weak caapi (I was a bit doubtful of this from the start). The reduced solution was clear (fully dissolved) when hot, but only slightly cloudy (colloidal) when cool.

The main thing that left me confused (as I mentioned initially in this post) was that so much precipitate crashed out upon addition of the caustic, and so little of this precipitate was then soluble in vinegar.....
It seems to me that the unbasified solution (aya) is a concentrated colloidal solution, which is unstabilised by the addition of the caustic (causing numerous materials to either precipitate, or be bound up and crash out of solution with the precipitating material). This would explain why the solution becomes cloudy upon cooling and clear whilst hot (i.e. the added heat provides the required energy to fully dissolve the contents of the solution, rather than remaining as a colloidal dispersion), and also why a significant amount of brown precipitate will crash out of solution with the addition of base, but then will NOT dissolve again upon acidification (i.e. the caustic acts as a floculant for the colloidal solids and their precipitation is not in fact directly dependent on the pH of the solution).
Ideally, when the precipitate mixture settles and is decanted, vinegar is then used to dissolve the alkaloid portion of the precipitate. In my case unfortunately, there was little to no alkaline material to dissolve and then later re-precipitate.

or perhaps i'm way off

anyway, thanks for the input!

As enoon said, if one wants to work with sodium carbonate and get really white extract that will take more cycles. However I did the tek once and tried the extract and it was good.

I must add here:

I took about 20-25mg of sodium carbonate based caapi extract and smoked 10mg, it was nice but as I expected, not near a breakthrough. However, I then after about 30min smoked 15mg of spice and I must say it truely felt like 25mg! Therefore I might speculate that the caapi had the first dose still inside me and therefore the 15mg added was felt like double dose.

I don't know, but I've never had this kind of strenght with 15mg alone.

Caapi is truely magic and highly pleasant, a must try for any true spice enthusiast. Absolutely beautiful!!

How well do Freebase Harmalas vaporize i.e. in Vapor Genie.
Will it ruin the smooth taste (or mis-flavor vaporizer) of Water re-crystalized Spice?
Thanks...

They vaporize pretty well. It takes a bit more heat than with plain spice and it will give it a unique taste.

My main gripe is how dirty it makes the GVG. It gives it a reddish/yellow tint that comes up easy enough with methanol.

If you vape enough, it will definitely give you a pretty good buzz but it doesn't last too long.

I definitely prefer oral harmalas even though it takes a bit more to get the job done.

What's the point in excess vapor if one can use it sublingually with great effects?

Has anyone tried over 25mg of sublingual caapi alkaloids before vaporizing DMT?
Is there a noticeable difference between for example 50mg and 25mg of caapi extract before vaping? Such as change in duration or intensity of the experience?
Personally I had good or great results with 25mg, but I wonder how the higher doses work?

When you say sublingual caapi do you mean extract powder under the tongue.

Yes, made with this tek.

Could you also say how long before you took it. Thanks...

How long I took the sublingual before vaporization? About 20 minutes...

50mg of sublingual harmalas hits me rather intensely and gives nausea. As I can eat 400mg of fb with zero nausea...I find sublingual to be a waste and not worth attempting to dose high with. I much prefer the synergy with spice when taken orally...if I want to smoke it with cannabis/spice, it hits similar to sublingual, but the dosing and/or inhaling allows me to moderate the amount I take in at any given time.

Do you mean you find sublingual harmalas to be a waste with high dose or in general?



How does caapi alkaloids compare sublingually vs orally?
And why does one have to take so much more orally than sublingually?
If one takes sublingually, is the effect basically working only for smoked DMT?
I am really interested in the differences of oral and sublingual caapi and their effects on freebased DMT.

As sublingual caapi have blown my mind with the D

What tek please?