Hi all,

I have a bit of a chemistry puzzle here (at least it is for me!)
I bought 86g of a 50/50 mix of P. viridis and B. caapi online, with the intention of making ayahuasca. It failed miserably, but I'm a bit fuzzy as to why.

I used a coffee maker (the kind were you put a filter, some grinds, and the water falls on the grinds and drips into your cup). I modified it so that the water, after hitting the leaves, would go back into the water reservoir, and back through the machine, onto the leaves, back into the reservoir etc. (I thought this would make a stronger brew). I used two liters of water, including roughly 1 cup of vinegar.

I turned the machine on, and everything seemed to be working fine. I left the house, and when I came back about 2 hours later, the reservoir was empty and the only water left was left in the container that was holding the leaves. The water had obviously overheated and left as steam (1. with the DMT tannate/acetate?) I refilled the reservoir, let the thing go until it started steaming, and then collected all the liquid.

I drank as much as I could stomach (1 liter). Other than from the horrid tannic taste, there was nothing.

The next day, I reused the remaining liquid, along with a fresh liter of water, and soaked the leaves in it for the day at about 25 celcius: barely any taste, and no effects

2) Why no effects: were did the spice go!? Was it just no extracted in the first place?

I still have the leaves (put them in the freezer)...should I bother keeping them?

1. Don't use a coffee maker.
2. Dont leave your brew during cooking.
3. Don't let it overheat or evap all the way down.
4. 86g mixed leaf & vine? Not enough. Buy them separately & whole not powdered. Also try chaliponga rather than chacruna. More reliable alkaloid content.
Or what i like to do is caapi brew with freebase dmt dissolved in.

Man you basically did EVERYTHING wrong.

Brewing aya is not that hard. Do some research & stop trying to take shortcuts & buying premixed low quality materials.

concombres ...... can you please explain why you think that a coffee maker is not a good idea ? Is that not how its done in a lab ? A flask with a column on it with a cartouch / patron in it filled with material to extract . The water in the flask is heated , evaporates , condenses on a cooler and then cold water drops back onto / through the material therby washing the things one wants back into the flask . Doing it with hot water / steam should be better ...... thats why coffee machines in shops work with hot water / steam .

For 1 i've never heard of ayahuasca being made in a lab it's very possible no doubt.
But in a lab temperature is controlled very carefully. In a coffee maker it is not.
He also did only a single 2hr boil & with caapi & a fine coffee filter, it has been proven the sediment often contains actives.

My point being, if he stuck to a more traditional method it may have worked much better if the materials were good. In his case, buying pre mixed doses of plant matter from a vendor, the odds are not in his favor. They seem more likely to be just purchased, mixed, & never tested for quality or authenticity.

What i was getting at is he should try traditional methods using whole vine & leaf or raw freebase dmt mixed into a brew because he could 1. Brew separately & determine potency of his materials before just blindly mixing pre-made dosages & find what dosage of both materials works to get him a full aya experience.

Not trying to be mean to the guy, just trying to explain that taking more time to brew & test potency & authenticity of the materials he has will save him alot of money & time in the end. I've learned this all the hard way & i'm attempting to help op avoid doing that.

He can probably get away with using the thp if he wants a set & forget route, but he'll end up reducing for days & it looks like he didn't know enough to even reduce (he said he drank an entire liter of liquid)

What GOD is describing is a Soxhlet extractor.

The use of the coffee maker is a nice hack. The heating mechanism might be a little crude and rough on the stuff you are trying to extract with it though.

Letting it run dry is a sure way to ruin the extract, even with a fancy Soxhlet. One of the nice things about a Soxhlet extractor is that a proper reflux cooler will keep all the solvent in the system, reducing the risk of running dry.

I would say that the only thing that went really wrong here was the experimental innovation and optimization being attempted before getting the basics worked out. Oh and leaving an unknown and unfamiliar process unattended. You are quite lucky that coffee makers are designed reasonably fail-safe. Had you done this on a gas stove as a heat source, the problems could have been worse than just a failed extraction.

Next time, try simply boiling in a pan for 30 minutes and filter through the coffee filter. You can optionally re-boil the filtered material until expended. And stay with the whole process, especially if it is still unfamiliar to you. Spent time is not lost time, it is time invested in learning. Watch and observe all the little details that are not always described in teks. No tek can show you the "feel" of things.

Failed attempt to upload a foto . Next try ---- >

Failed again . I give up .

Thanks for the chaliponga idea, I'll check that out. My idea of using a coffee maker was, I agree, rather dumb. But do you think there's anything left in the leaves that could be extracted using a more traditional method?

If not, would 223g of a Chaliponga leves plus 223g of shreded caapi (60$ on ebay, from ecuador), bought apart, make a decent brew?

PH0Man

You are not dumb . You showed initiative . The idea of useing a hacked coffee perculator has been around for a long time .

You did something and you learned from it and that is good .

It would have been better if you had done it the way recomended ...... and then try to optimise it .

The 50 / 50 mix isnt realy a good idea because an ayahuasca mix isnt made 50 / 50 . If you boiled it all its probably dead now = Start again with another suply .

223 G should be enough for at least 4 - 5 doses . A lot of people start with 30 g as one dose .


1 liter is a lot to much . At a ceremony or when i do it myself the amount i have had to drink was between 50 mls and about 150 mls .




Can someone please explain to me how to upload fotos ?

no worries. You have a whole life to perfect brewing aya.

Try brewing the spent material you have left with the remaining 223g.
3X3hr boils, filter with a shirt after each boil. Combine boils. reduce.

No filtering after reduction, 223g you should be able to get down to 250ml no problem. Just reduce slowly.
From there i'd say start with maybe 75ml & adjust from there.

Keep the brew frozen inbetween uses.
From here on out though i'd avoid premixed caapi & leaf & go with shredded or whole caapi. It's much easier to filter & makes for a cleaner brew than powder.

I was unclear in my original post: It was a 50/50 mix, 86g total of whole caapi and psychotria leaves. And I didn't use a fine filter (it was unfiltered). That's why I was wondering if perhaps nothing had really been extracted (only perhaps 2 hours of water passing over the leaves).

Okay thats a much better starting point.
Try shredding the caapi by hand. Mash it up with a hammer until you can pull it apart into thin shreds. Then do 3x3hr boils & reduce to the same amount of caapi used (ex. 50g to 50ml)

Brew the chacruna separately. 45min boils work well with leaf. 3x45min with filtering after reduction.
reduce the same as you did caapi.

Then take your caapi dose. Maybe start with 50g caapi only & see what it does. If you don't feel effects, use more another day.
once you get your caapi dose dialed in, start with caapi & 50ml chacruna brew.
Next time use more chacruna, etc. until you find what works.

Its best to work with 1kg+ of materials. (1kg vine 1kg leaf) because you can brew a little to figure out the potency of your batch & then go back for more. With small batches you don't have much time to get that dialed in & may have a more or less potent batch next time.

Either way don't let a few failures discourage you. If you work at it over time, you will eventually learn everything you need to know, find high quality materials, & be able to get your brews working nicely.
Don't be afraid to try other vendors if one isn't working for you as well