I'm sort of curious about a few different extraction aspects that may or may not be possible right now and I am not extremely well-versed in all areas of the chemistry atm, so sorry if I sound slightly dimwitted when I ask some of these questions, but I digress;

Is it possible to use fumaric acid in the acidification step of ACRB? How low should the pH be for ACRB powder?

Also, I remember skimming over a thread about basing ACRBE with sodium carbonate since the different plant constituents may allow for a lower necessary basing point; would this be possible? SWIM would love to be able to substitute the lye with sodium carbonate any day!

Would the herbal percolator be worth SWIM's time on say 500g or 1kg ACRB? He has heard of it's success in brews, but it looks quite potentially time-consuming for larger amounts

And lastly, I'm guessing if the FASA method is being applied here, defatting is unnecessary? If anyone could help SWIM out, that would be awesome, respectively.

Welcome to the nexus.

Okay, now I'm not a chemistry expert, but here's a few things I've noticed about ACRB. First, sodium carbonate works just fine. To acidify, I like using vitamin c. Never done fasa and don't know anything about the herbal percolator, but after many times making brews and changa via the 3x boiling method, I read this thread https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=62377 about microwave assisted extraction. Anyway, today I made a brew with 5 g ACRB with minimal water and no acidification, in the microwave for 1 minute. I consumed 140 mg of manske extracted harmalas (also 1 min in microwave and salted) followed by my acacia brew. Very powerful. So long story short, you can do the initial extraction in the microwave, very fast, and judging by the taste (or lack there of) it may not need to be de fatted either.

I should note also that last night a freind and I consumed 10 g each of acacia prepared in the normal brewing fashion with 6 g of rue each. Today's brew was almost a powerful.

Hope this helps

I explored the microwave with ACRB here in a q21q21 variation: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=61121 and though some think it is just heating the material and unnecessary it is the water molecules vibrating that creates the heat from inside the material thus breaking the cell walls. Lysing the cells seems to be an issue for ACRB (thus all the freeze thaw additions to ACRB teks) The debate over it wasn't worth getting into for me but it seemed to work very well even though I don't have conclusive proof if the MW had anything to do with it.

For my latest rue exploration the crockpot is my friend. I have an older one that gets it to a low bubble and I can let it go for longer while I do other projects and reduce on the stove when I can stand over it.

If you haven't checked out the q21q21 tek please do. I loved not using toxics A LOT. I did a FASI (99% IPA saturated with fumeric acid) to get the alks out of the limolene. Most writings concern FASA but I didn't have the materials ready to dry the acetone and it seemed easier to cut that step out.

Oh really? I read from another thread about the possibility of microwave-lysing, but I was worried about product degredation. How do you prefer utilizing MAE? Would freezing, thawing slightly, then placing in the microwave be the best roundabout way to do it? and how long do you microwave x quantities of bark to avoid possible degredation?

And is the vitamin C contributing as ascorbic acid or citric acid? I have citric acid on hand and figured using about 1 1/2 tbsp. per L of distilled water, but I also have Vitamin C if that served the purpose as easily.

FYI here's the herbal percolator thread in case there's a possibility of using it in conjunction with the MAE method for potential ease of efficacy. The Herbal Percolator

I find that excellent that you found notable success in brewing yage via MAE BundleFlowerPower! I wonder what the potential possibility is of doing MAE's on larger-scale acidification's; that would be enormously helpful! Those little vibrations must definitely make an incredibly fast difference in how well they lyse the hell out of those cells!

Okay so this is how I did it.

Acacia:

I took 5 grams of ACRB, chopped it into small pieces. Placed in a glass with about 1/4 cup of water (less will probably work), I didn't even acidify (only the rue) it or freeze and it. Just chopped and nuked. My intention was to do the bare minimum and see if it would work. And boy did it!

I turned it on for 1 min. The material started out on the bottom of the glass, by 30 seconds, it began to rise to the top of the water, one peice at a time (I assume as it rose, it was fully or almost fully extracted?), by 1 minute it had all floated to the top.

I then filter through a cotton ball. The water was very clean looking, only slightly tinted pink. It tasted much better than normal, I could have consumed an entire cup. It also produced a very powerful experience. Like I said, the night before I consumed 6 g of rue and 10 g acacia and this was nearly as powerful.

Rue:

The night before the above acacia experiment a friend and I consumed 6 g each of microwaved rue tea with 10 g each ACRB, which was prepared normaly. When this worked, I decided to nuke the acacia as discribed above.

So for the rue, I had placed the 12 g of un-crushed seeds in a coffee filter which I then fashioned into a tea bag. I added the vitamin c to the water, filtered and added the tea bag and nuked for 1 min, then filtered. I have since done this without a tea bag and the seeds rise to the top as they are heated just like the acacia.

You don't need much water at all, 20 ml of h2o can hold something like 5 grams of harmalas.

I'm not sure which type of acid vitamin c is but the harmalas seem to have a more electric feel when prepared this way. There's a thread here on the nexus about reducing harmaline / harmine to THH by prolonged boiling. Maybe this also happens when microwaved?

My next experiment will be to do the ACRB in the microwave again in acidified water to compare any differences. But it's not necessary.

I hope others try this for themselves.

I'm hoping LSA can be extracted this way as well, by using several short rounds of heating instead of one long one.

So I'm just curious since this is only SWIM's 2nd time doing this and he lacks a pH meter (and only has strips from pH 4-9 lol), how much Vitamin C should he use for each L/distilled water? And the same goes for the sodium carbonate? He can't seem to find a post on the nexus anywhere about how much Vitamin C/sodium carbonate specifically to use and doesn't know how to figure out for himself via mathematical formulas how to adjust the pH in accordance with pH and pKa levels. If someone could point him out to the formula or the quantities required, SWIM would be extremely ecstatic with exuberance!

The strips will be fine for acidifying, ph 4 or 5 is plenty. For the sodium carbonate, dissolve it in water and add it little by little, until it turns color. It will turn a milky color when it is sufficiently basified. I did it by eye so I'm not sure the exact ph that it does this, perhaps someone else can chime in. I do know that school supply stores sell ph strips that go from 2 - 14 I think.

Alright! Many thanks for the help BundleFlowerPower!

One last comment I'd like to make though is you know SWIM means using the sodium carbonate in substitute of the lye when basing as well as converting forms in the end, not just to convert from fumarate to freebase? He's just making sure this was what you thought he meant, but either way he'll be seperating a small amount of soup from the majority so he can basify it with sodium carbonate and see how well it works He's wondering why no other teks or threads seem to say much on the subject

No problem my freind. I'm really no expert but one time I used lye, it seems too toxic with too many fumes for me. Sodium carbonate just seems so easy to make, does an efficient job and is less toxic. I used to use the ph strips but after a couple times you can do it by eye.

Having said all that, I no longer do extractions on light bearing plants. I only extract harmalas now and consume the light in tea form.