All of the LSA teks that I've been reading suggest doing a wash with a NP Solvent to pull the bad stuff prior to doing your polar extraction of the actual LSA.

I let my HBWR/HBMG powder sit in xylene and kept mixing over 24-48 hours as it sucked up more and more of the bad stuff and then I finally strained it off and put the mush into a container to evaporate the excess xylene off. I got down to the point where the mush was dry to the touch but still had a light smell of xylene to it. In order to move things along more quickly, I went ahead and added my everclear to the mush to begin the polar extraction part of it. My thinking was that the xylene shouldn't end up in the alcohol so it shouldn't really matter.

The alcohol is turning that nice yellow color that LSA seems to create and all is looking well. I'll be pulling it out for evaporation this evening.

Xylene should not be miscible in the everclear, right? Meaning i shouldn't have trace amounts of xylene to worry about should i? I understand it will all evaporate off relatively cleanly regardless, but i guess i don't see the importance of waiting until there is no solvent smell whatsoever in the dried seed mush before putting your polar solvent in? Perhaps there are other solvent combinations where it would be more important, but i'm just looking to clarify! : )

All in the name of science!

Xylene is miscible with alcohol to some extent, definitly dont drink it if that was your intent. If you intend to evap it, shouldnt really be an issue.

Yeah I would never drink it considering there could be small traces of xylene still in it. I planned on evaporating anyways, but I just wondered about the miscibility of the xylene in the alcohol and if it could potentially bring over any nasties into the alcohol solution.

The seed mush was totally dry when I first checked for smell. From there I let the seed powder sit with a fan blowing air over the container for another couple hours and there was still this very slight odor of xylene in the seeds. It didn't seem to want to go away completely. Considering the degredation of LSA due to light/heat factors that i couldn't exactly control, i decided to go ahead and move forward at that point.

Well think about it. Even if you evaporated all of the xylene off completely, any nasties still in it wouldnt magically evaporate away with the xylene, but still remain in the powder. So no, it didnt leave any more nasties in it than if you would have just evapped it all off. Thats what the wash is for, to dissolve impurities in the solvent and then seperate the solvent from the seed powder, thus seperating the impurities from the seed powder.

I guess my original impression was that the nasties were only soluble in the non polar solvent.

but now that i think about it that doesn't even make sense! haha. i guess there wouldn't be any reason for doing the non polar wash in the first place if they were only soluble in NP solvent.

The "nasties" are just being minimized by doing the NP wash rather than totally eliminated? Or atleast minimized to the point where they have little to no negative side effects??

I guess i was running circles around my own logic with that one! haha.

The extraction seems to be going well though!

Thanks, Kash!

I was going to stick to your recipe verbatim, but i had some trouble finding some of the items needed. I'm still looking for the acids. I will probably just order them online when i get paid friday so i can start an all new Kash style extraction here soon.

Ya you can easily find them on amazon just look around or pm me if you have trouble.

I got a great big ball of yellow/brownish goo as expected from the extraction teks that i read. I'm looking forward to trying it out. I'm a little unsure on dosage though.

I mean i know the quantity of seeds that were used, but i only had enough everclear to do a single 2 day polar extraction. I don't know how much of the LSA was extracted because i didn't have enough alcohol to do a 2nd or third pull. I gave a whole bottle of everclear to my psych-soul brother to start up a 3 month and 6 month valerian tincture and he ended up drinking a little bit too. lol. NO THANKS. But anyways, I had just enough left for this extraction. In order to get as much alkaloid as possible i let it soak for 2 days and kept mixing it up several times a day and letting it settle again.

I'm assuming that this yellow/brown goop is relatively similar in purity amongst similar extractions using a NP wash and polar extraction. Probably can't be compared directly to the results of your style of extraction but i'm wondering if there is a rough estimate of how many milligrams of this yellow/brown goop one should consume for a decent experience.

I'm also wondering if the LSA behaves similar to LSD in that you pretty much need to take your entire dose at the same time rather than trying to add to it later if the effects aren't what you are looking for. Is the LSA the same? Or can you take some now, and top off your dose later if needed?

I've witnessed a bilayer form with xylene and 2% tartaric acid in denatured alcohol, which is on average 85-95% ethanol; but I've seen the same acidic alcohol mix with dcm.

It seems like it evaporated off very nicely. Thanks for the response though, Benzyme! Always appreciate your input!

I grabbed one of those amberglass tincture bottles with a dropper in it on lunch for $2 from the pharmacy across the street. I'm not sure if the LSA extract would remain more stable in a distilled water solution or an alcohol solution.

Any thoughts?

probably alcohol.
i forget which conditions cause their formation (probably storage in basic water), but the 8-hydroxy and 10-hydroxyergine
compounds are considered degradation products, and are inactive. they are formed enzymatically
from the fungus in submerged culture after two weeks

Very interesting! Thanks for the info!

Probably go with alcohol just to be safe

Just ordered some Citric acid, tartaric acid, AND some fumaric acid....

not to mention all the wonderful changa herbs that i picked up along the way...

Looks like i'm going to have to get the ol Spirit Preparation Kit (GVG + Axe pack full of accessories) out and clean it up for some journeying here in the near future!

Looking forward to some experimentation!

Lol nice, cant wait to hear about how it all goes.

Man i ordered a bunch of stuff tuesday from shamansgarden website.. just herbs and rue and some sage sticks and incense resins and stuff...

that stuff showed up yesterday! WOW! talk about fast shipping! 1 and a half days and it was on my doorstep!

All of the herbs had stickers explaining where they came from and provided information on the herbs/usages/history/etc... The B. Caapi leaves that i bought stated that they were grown on terence mckennas farm! I thought that was interesting! Apparently he has a farm that grows a bunch of ethnobotanical/visionary plants and herbs.

Just thought i'd share. Quality was excellent from this provider and shipping was insanely fast!