I've realized that doing three , three hour boils to make ayahuasca is unnecessary.

Why is it that you can do three one hour boils on caapi when doing a extract of harmalas but you should do three three hour boils when making a tea to drink?

If all the alkaloids are coming out of the vine in three one hour boils in order to extract the harmalas why are people doing three three hour boils?

Reason I bring this up is I recently did three three hour boils on 112g of yellow caapi, followed by soaking the brewed vine in vinegar for 24 hours , then freezing and thawing , boiling for two more hours and then doing a easy caapi tek the gibran2 way.

Although the alkaloids aren't totally dried out yet it is easy to see I have at least a half of gram of harmalas drying.

My major point is why the difference in brew times? If one is brewing In order to extract and freebase the harmalas it is said to do 3x1 boils, yet if one is brewing to drink it is said to do 3x3 boils.

It seems to me something isn't right here and more work needs to be done. If people are assuming the 3x1 boils done prior to extracting harmals is sufficient to get all the alks out of the vine and into the water then why am I having the results I have?

We need to do more testing in order to see how many boils and for what length of time it takes to totally deplete the vine of alkaloids.

Initially I assumed that the 3x3 was overkill as I'd done a caapi extract before ever brewing to drink and yielded over a gram on a 100g brew of yellow vine. However when I brewed the first time in order to drink I figured I'd stick with tradition. So I did the 3x3 brews and then followed the advice in the FAQ about soaking in vinegar and then pulling any extra alkaloids out with gibran2s tek.

I truly thought I was wasting my time but did it anyways just to see the results. I figured if 3x1 boils was enough to pull all the alkaloids out that the 3x3 boils for a oral tea definitely depleted the vine completely so I expected little to no yield. However I'm looking at quite a bit of alkaloids drying.

I wk report back with final weight of yield soon. And before anyone asks about brewing technique or something that may have caused this. I say again I have experience doing this so I'm sure my technique was good.

I'm mind boggled as to how I have all these alks after doing a aya brew prior to doing this harmala extraction tek.

And the difference in brew times is rather confusing. Is this just because people are following tradition when brewing aya to drink? Or why do people think 3x1 boils is enough to get all the alks?

It depends how well the caapi is powdered/shredded too. If it is powdered or very finely shredded, you probably need less time boiling.

Also, I think syrian rue seems to 'give up' the alkaloids more easily, maybe the way the cells are structured and/or how the alkaloids are distributed within the seed, versus caapi, so I feel with rue less boiling is necessary.

And then if you add acid during the boil it extracts more alkaloids according to some tests (though im unsure of exact values and how much it changes)

Personally I just like to do as FAQ says, boil normally and use that to drink, and then extract with acid the left-overs. This way I feel I dont waste too much energy boiling, and at the same time I get most out of the caapi.


Oh and, there is another factor to add into all of this, which is the harmala interconversion. If indeed Harmaline is reducing to THH as some data seem to imply, maybe there is an advantage (or disadvantage?) in boiling longer to get more THH in the brew.

I think best is if you do tests of your own and find what works for you best , and let us know

I definitely plan to do further testing and report back with my results. The reason I started this thread was because I seen so many different methods based upon what is intended to do with the vine and it got me thinking.

Obviously the vine only has so many alkaloids and at some point it is exhausted. However this is only my second brew with yellow vine. My first extraction of vine yielded over a gram of alks with only three one hour boils which seemed to me would be all the alks based on what I've read.

When I did this brew In order to make a tea I figured it was overkill but still followed the tek anyways. Upon doing a extract of the already brewed vine I figured little would be found. To my surprise though there is a significant amount of alkaloids.

I plan on securing a nice amount of vine in the near future and I will do some testing in order to see what happens.

In regards to Syrian rue though. Do you think grinding or crushing seeds is necessary or should they be boiled whole ? I've read different things such as crushing them only makes for a more difficult filtering process etc.

I tested grinding vs not grinding rue seeds and grinding gave me significantly higher yields. I know someone else in the forum made that same test with similar results. On the other hand, infundibulum had similar yields with ground vs whole, but he had a specialized percolator kind of set up which may be the culprit.

If you want to test both and let us know...