So about 14 months ago I had vacuum sealed some whole ayahuasca vine for later use and set it aside. I completely forgot about it until I was going through my stuff recently and found the package. Unfortunately the vacuum seal broke at some point and time and I can see some very spots of mold on maybe 5% of the various vine pieces. I have no idea how old the vine actually is, it might not have been freshly harvested when I first got it myself, although I'm sure there was no mold on it when I got it.

Should I just shave off those parts or would I be OK jut doing an extraction on it as is? I figured between 9 hours of acid boils + reduction time and a good dose of lye to convert to freebase would pretty much kill anything bad on there but I'm not 100% sure.

I'd rather err on the side of caution but vine isn't the cheapest material in the world and I invested enough in it I'd rather salvage it if I could.

If anyone has ever dealt with a similar situation or could throw me some advice on how to proceed I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

Ive once extracted mescaline that had a lot of mold and nothing appart from mescaline came across as test results have shown. But there was some solvent pull and salting involved, so maybe that is relevant.

Ive also drank ayahuasca made from some vine that had some slight molding, and I brushed/scraped the mold out and washed the vine before brewing.

If its indeed just small amounts of mold, and you clean it well, and then you even extract and do at least one redissolving and reprecipitating, I would consider that`s probably pretty safe but proceed at your own risk

Thanks for the info.

My plan as of right now is to use a razor blade to trim off the small areas off the vine that have noticeable mold, perform a gibran on them, and then dissolve the end result in 95% ethanol, filter, then evap.

I am the first to admit I don't know all that much about mold, but I'm fairly sure the ethanol wash performed after the A/B would kill anything that may be bad.

Luckily I am equipped with nothing but time so I am in no hurry. If I am completely incorrect in my assumptions I would love some additional input.

Thanks again

I have successfully extracted from moldy vine -similar situation but it "looked" like trich, but I couldn't be sure. I figured the lye would destroy any living creatures and no ill effects were noted from the extract (well, ILL effects sorry

Sadly, I ended up just tossing the vine. When I started shredding it I noticed there was more mold than I originally thought so I figured it better to err on the side of caution and not bother with the extraction. Even if the extraction went perfectly well I wouldn't want to go into a pharmahuasca experience thinking that I might have taken something contaminated; set/setting and all that.

Next time I won't let my ethnobotanicals sit around for over a year.