I may be way off the mark but could the acid stage of an extraction be done by fermentation ?
Maybe it could be done without additional heat over a longer period.
Would the yeast or lactobacillus etc change the the tryptamines or render them inactive ?

I got the idea from crude ginseng extract I used to make with water Kefir (Tibicos), If ginseng is added to the ferment, the ginseng becomes mildly active. It's a very short lived buzz but it seems to get the alkaloids into solution. Not all ginseng is equal and some are much better than others.

The finished Tibicos (if made with slices if lemon) hovers around PH 4 +/- 1 or there abouts It could easily be tweaked if needed. I never tested the PH myself, I got the figure from a quick web search.

I have read that the Kefir helps the alkaloids to cross the BBB, but I think that was just speculation.

All we'd need then would be a basic non polar culture & the microbes could do it all for us.

Now that's getting a bit far fetched, I know - hahaha

Good idea - what kind of fermentation you have in mind? Controlled I hope (since you mention yeast and lactobaccilus) as opposed to wild fermentation where all sorts of crap grow.

The problem is that controlled fermentations will need a source of food, most plant materials where dmt can be extracted from (barks, roots, leaves etc) are extremely poor substrates for commonly used fermenting organisms, meaning that you may need to enrich your fermentations somehow.

Fermentation can, in theory, biotransform actives to another thing, but I do not think that there's much, if any, research done on that. Possibly dmt might be attractive enough for some microbes to use as a carbon source? Who knows.

Yeah Tibicos needs to be fed sugar so that's a normal part of most primary ferments.

I noticed anything added to a ferment gets all but the toughest of most plants broken down to the stage where they lose molecular integrity and basically desintegrate so it could save a bit of prep work.

All sorts of bizarre stuff happens at a molecular level with many cultures and I think (don't quote me) it can affect the direction of rotation of some molecules. I'm not sure if it would digest any tryptamines and excrete different compounds as metabolites though ?

Sorry I skipped the first part of your question Infundibulum- I got distracted by a burning weed

I was thinking just a Tibicos culture, they can be one of the most resilient & vigorous cultures, that self perpetuates with minimal maintenance. I have had a few mediocre strains though.

The culture brews with minimal assistance at room temp. (in my climate) all year round.

Kombucha could be considered but that's a bit unpredictable.

I've never really experimented with cultures besides mushrooms, but some pharmaceuticals are cultured with specific cultures.

I guess your idea needs to be tried, rather than discussed to death.

You up for the task? Kefir or kombucha with mhrb is a good starting point, but you'll need good controls to demonstrate anything. What I would do, as a quick thought, would be to add mhrb in fresh kefir culture, and compare extraction outcomes with 1) mhrb that has been extracted with kefir that has finished fermentation and has been boiled to sterilise it and 3) mhrb extracted with plain water

You need the 2nd control because kefir or other fermentations turn acidic by time and the acidity alone can aid extraction. If you compare the latter with actively fermenting kefir (which is also acidic) you'll be able to tell if the presence of microorganisms has any impact.

Is biotransformation akin to biological transmutation.

Sorry if that isn't kosher (transmutation) I've had my arse kicked on that one before.

By biotransformation I mean that living organisms take one molecule and turn to another. It is akin to synthesis but living creatures are doing it as part of their metabolism.

I do not know what transmutation is though.

Transmutation happens at an elemental level - one element changing into another.

I just thought, if it's changing things things around at molecular level maybe it's possible elemental changes are happening too. Not that it's really relevant to this discussion.

Thanks for the input, I agree a fully controlled test is in order.

nope

isomerases and mutases can rearrange some (and this is substrate-dependent) molecules, but no enzyme changes one element to another. that's not their function.

Yeah like I said earlier, I've been put in my place over that one before.

Transmutation has long been thought to be a myth, that was until physicists were able to prove that nuclear transmutation was possible.

It's a controversial area, I know

I still haven't seen a suitable explanation as to how plant life can produce elements that they have been purposely deprived of. The idea that a lowly plant can do something at ambient temp that we can't do in a lab doesn't sit well with most people. Maybe I'm just a romantic or pig headed .

Anyway that's enough of my romantic fantasy - I hope I don't seem like I'm disagreeing with you benzyme, that's not my intention.

Back to the fermentation

I was thinking maybe a secondary fermentation could be more suitable.
With Tibicos the primary ferment is done with Kefir grains and a secondary ferment can then continue with the grains removed and more sugar added if needed.

The grains grow at an incredible rate and they grow mainly from the sugar but the process could lock up some tryptamines in the matrix of the grains. Whether they could still be pulled with solvent is another thing, but not having them there to start with could eliminate that issue.

you're not disagreeing, you just have some misconceptions.
neither plants nor microbes convert elements to other elements, they
merely convert molecules. they may be able to incorporate certain elements into
molecules, but that's not the same as creating them.

converting elements involves losing/gaining neutrons, that lies outside the scope/function of protein chemistry. that's
nuclear chemistry

Thanks for clearing that up benzyme

I was just probing this fermentation process a bit & it seems that lactic acid fermentation has been shown to decarboxylate amino acids to form different amines.

One example I found was an increase in tryptamine levels in lacto fermented poultry carcasses. I found several other examples but I don't have access to the relevant papers.

From Development of Biogenic Amines During Fermentation of Poultry Carcasses



So it seems like all sorts of interesting stuff is going on under the influence of lacto fermentation.

And that's the tip of the iceberg. Fermentations are quite complex bioreactors.

I just found another incidence of lacto fermentation increasing tryptamine levels.

From bionewsonline.com



It seems like it's worth investigating. Maybe a milk kefir culture could be a better choice for a starter (milk kefir contains several of the listed species used in the instance above along with yeasts) or even an extract done in they whey from the milk kefir

All I need now is some bark.

Thanks for the input lads.

man... make sure you have some decent ventilation.
anaerobic respiration produces some very rank products.
putrescine and cadaverine literally smell like a rotten corpse.

Yeah it sounds like a job for the garden shed. I certainly don't want that in the house.

I'm starting to wonder what might happen if I was to lacto-ferment melatonin or tryptophan in a solution low in ornithine & lysine and then do a pull on the solution. That should minimse the smelly amines.

It would be a crap shoot as to what would happen with a random culture but it's got me thinking.

Thanks for all the help, I'll let it go now.

interesting idea , how do you lacto ferment melatonin or tryptophan ? i have no idea about lacto fermentation anymore than making my own yogurt

i really cannot imagine how that would apply , could you share your technique or method ?

also have you made any progress ?

very interesting thread

Fascinating idea. Maybe even more interresting than your initial MHRB
fermentation idea. These are practically shots in the semi-darkness,
yet intuitively it seems such vital terrain to explore.

However....supposing DMT or other tryptamines COULD be converted into different
compounds of considerable psycho-activity....
Wouldn't it be a hassle to, after the fermentation-process is complete, extract the active, desirable compound out of the fermented liquid mixture?

IIRC Kombucha requires only few nutrients( water & green tea ) to survive for a long time
in a glass bottle. I guess this would make for an easier extraction of the active compound in the end, as the water(processed by Kombucha) contains little else.

If various Tryptamines could be dissolved in water fed to Kombucha,
then I'd be interrested to know what analogues tryptamines Kombucha could make of them.

Unfortunately that's about as much as I know of Kombucha and I can't even garantee it's true. It's just what I remember reading about Kombucha.





Then again Yeast may also transform Tryptamines in very desirable ways.
Yeast requires sugars & water & creates Ethanol. If besides sugar,
tryptamines like DMT, Melatonin, Tryptamine, Serotonin & Tryptophan
could in some form be dissolved in the water as well..... what would
yeast do to these Tryptamines?

This seems like a simple experiment I could easily do. After the Tryptamine-
fermentation process is complete, the dead yeast can be filtered out & the
ethanol/H2O/Altered Tryptamine-solution could be evaporated with gentle heat,
leaving behind a mystery-tryptamine residue. At least that's how I imagine it

I'm not sure that melatonin or tryptophan could be fermented that way Jin but there is some evidence (suggested above in my other posts) that amino acids can be lacto fermented and sometimes they can decarboxylate in the process. It's really not even a hypothesis yet, I'm still researching the idea. The idea to ferment amino acids came in a flash madness after reading about the decarboxylation of amino acids in lacto fermented chicken carcasses

My idea was to use a Kefir culture which is a known source of lactobaccillus, it seems milk kefir grains(sans milk so the ferment doesn't include ornithine which can decarboxylate to form putrescine) & water Kefir are both capable of fermenting herbs to get the alkaloids into solution.

There's a good write up on herbal Kefir extracts at Dom's Kefir site.
Kefir extracted herbs
Also from the same site Dom details Kefir fermented Ginseng


Kefir is a self perpetuating culture that is normally cultured in unsterile conditions but it is quite resistant to contamination. Experience has shown me that sterile cultures can easily contaminate but unsterile cultures tend to be much more flexible.

I've started propagating a culture of water Kefir that I intend to use for preliminary experiments. I don't have a great deal of Kefir grains yet so it will be a few weeks before I have the volume of grains to produce enough Kefir to do a large enough experiment that will give me some data to examine.


@ SKA I was thinking Kombucha might be a better candidate for this idea (fermenting plant tissue) than kefir. I've read that finished Kombucha ends up around PH 3 where Kefir finishes fermenting around PH 4.5 or there abouts. The lower PH of the Kombucha should help get the alkaloids into solution better.

As for getting the alkaloids out, I was thinking pulling with an NP solvent, but I don't know what else these cultures might contain that could be pulled that way so I'll have to suck it & see.

I know milk products contain a lot of lipids that can be pulled with a non polar solvent so that's why I'm looking at water Kefir & Kombucha or Milk kefir grains -sans milk