I have seen the natives roughly bash their Caapi, and use that to brew. So when i made my own brew the otherday, i was really happy that i managed to tear it apart by twisting it and roughly pulling it apart.

Do you think this is enough for extraction purposes, or does it all have to be really properly seperated out?? I guess the water cant get at the bits that are stuck together?

Here's what you can do.. After doing the standard brewing (3x3h or whatever), put your filtered caapi pieces in the freezer overnight and then thaw, and then leave it soaking in vinegar for a day or two. After that, brew for another couple of hours..

You can either extract this (just precipitate alkaloids with a bit of lye) or add it to the rest of the brew to drink (if you dont mind the extra acid/vinegar). This way if the standard brewing didnt get enough, the freeze/thaw+acid soak+last boil should get most of the last alkaloids out.

Dont forget to let us know how it went!

Thanks for that tip, Endlessness.

I've watched more u tube videos, and they show people roughly pounding their Caapi , which obviously doesn't seperate it all out, but their stuff would most likely be fresh, and i guess they aren't bothered about loss like us Gringos are! .

Mine is quite dry, so i guess i'm still wise if i put a hammer to it and spread out those Caapi fibres that are stuck together, and see if i can extract even more goodness.
I'll give this a try first, seems easy enough.

EDIT: I think this is quite an important topic.Perhaps those that don't bash their Caapi enough are missing out on getting best bang for buck?

- hOW DO YOU DO YOUR cAAPI ?

I personally think it is important to pre break my caapi then I grind it into powder with a coffee bean grinder.....you just have to use a really strong one otherwise it breaks.

I then use a "muslin" bag to filter it leaving only the finest particles and they never settle. I'm talking about a water only extraction though

I take whole vine, lay it out on a towel on some concrete and bash it for like half an hour or so with a hammer into small pieces..this is for like a kilo of vine..

Yeah I agree the better its broken down, the better the yield, its certainly more energy efficient to break more than to boil for longer.

The thing is, what material are coffee grinders made of, plastic? I had a glass blender I used before but it broken, I have a plastic grinder and I dont trust it. Maybe im too paranoid but hard caapi pieces being thrown/pressed at high speed against the plastic walls seems like a very probable way to get pieces of plastic in the brew. Even glass blenders with rubber on the bottom seems a bit sketchy to me, (at least for dry-product grinding) but again, maybe im way too paranoid.

So if grinding is not a possibility, second best is beating with a hammer, and you can twist with hands and/or pliers so that its even finer strands.

Before the vine I just got, I've never needed a coffee grinder for my ayahuasca. The internal grinding section of my grinder is entirely metal and has a metal blade to boot. When I put in the new vine chunks, it seemed to grind them with minimal effort. That being said, it was probably more intense than anything else I've used it for (although it didn't seem much worse than cacti chips). It's a little $35 kitchen aid one, I believe.

i dont really enjoy dealing with powdered caapi, and i don't have a coffee grinder anyways

so i just stick it in a bag, then wrap it in a towel and hit it with a hammer. works very well

fwiw, I wouldn't consider coffee-grindered caapi to be powdered (it's certainly nowhere near mhrb powder consistency)...just pulverized.

Today i gathered the Caapi, took it to the beach, and hammered it till it became a soft pile of fibrous material. It's currently boiling away and looks like it's gonna be well worth the effort.

I'll let y'all know how it went!