I have recently aquired an electric coffee grinder. It has made powdering mhrb a real breeze! I wondered if grinding caapi leaves to a powder would maybe get more alkaloids out when boiling in water to make 11x caapi leaf.
I boiled for 1 hr 30 and besides a thick dark green foam on the top everything was usual. I had to sieve out the fine foamy residue twice, then boiled down my reddish brown extract to the usual tarry consistency then poured it over my ground up (by hand) caapi leaf to dry.
I went to scrape the tar from the pan but to my surprise when scraped it procures a sandy material that smells strongly like caapi leaf.
There is quite lot of it here, I'm still scraping! I am wondering, in powdering the caapi leaves, have I somehow left myself with lots of freebase harmalas?
Obviously I'm not about to smoke it without a bit more research!
But I would be so happy if it was what I suspect it is!

It can't be freebase harmalas because you didn't add a base, so it will be acidic, meaning the harmalas will be in salt form.

Also just because it smells like caapi leaf doesnt mean it is harmalas. Harmalas themselves don't smell of caapi leaf. And it seems logical that something crude coming from caapi leaf boil will smell of caapi leaf, no?

Now whether you can smoke whatever is left after pouring the concentrated caapi brew, I guess you can always try smoking a little bit, but maybe with the heat, some of the possible sugars caramelized, or other compounds might have changed their form, and who knows, it might be harsh on the throat/lungs, so don't smoke a whole lot at once. I'd think being water soluble, most harmalas were in the concentrated brew you poured off, but whatever is left behind stuck to the pot probably has at least a bit of them too.

Ah I see and thank you for your response! I have come to the conclusion that it is the very finely ground and dry caapi dust covered in extracted alkaloids. It looks like brown dust. I smoked a little and it was smooth and gave a heady caapi feel. I smoked a larger quantity and it blocked the pipe and also was a bit of a throat tickler so is not really viable for changa but does seem to be quite strong. Thank you again for a considered response

Just to update: smoking this stuff seems to have given me a minor chest infection. Came on slowly but was pretty abrasive. The changa was fine though

i have to agree with endless also. also what you most likely have is fine particle sediment that made it past the sieve. whats wrong with that? nothing, aside from the infection.