In my experience browsing these sites, I often run into recipes that suggest using an old T-shirt to do filtering. And seemingly in contrast, at the same time, recommending bottled or filtered water to keep the tea high-quality, free from impurities or fluoride. It seems to me that using an old T-shirt or even a new T-shirt instead of say coffee filters, is a strange suggestion. And not to mention so much of the community will chime in about respecting the plant and making sure to say Ayahuasca Analogs instead of Ayahuasca, when it seems that using an old T-shirt instead of coffee filters could be considered disrespectful. What gives?

i dont see the difference between paper and cloth for a filter, neither seems respectful or disrespectful, i think respect is more to do with intention.

i dont think aya cares how its filtered.

Why would using a t-shirt versus a coffee filter be considered disrespectful?

Once you brew and work with alot of particulates and sediment - good luck filtering that through a coffee filter. T shirts are a bit more porous and can catch and hold alot of sediment and material. They can also be wrung out thoroughly, squeezing the contained sediment in a ball to get every bit of tea.

I'd be more concerned about residual soap/fabric softener contamination if using an old t-shirt.

Wouldn't cheesecloth be a better option?

^^^^This!

T-shirts are great for those first couple filtering sessions. Once most of the sediment is gone, you can switch to a paper filter to get rid of anymore sediment (this is particularly useful when filtering Syrian Rue during an extraction...but that is a whole different subject! ). Of course, don't underestimate the power of letting the brew settle and then you can decant or suck out the brew with a turkey baster/syringe. BundleflowerPower recently had a post going around about sediment and its relation to potency... I'll link it for you if interested...

Sediment, and its effect on potency

Also, as others have said, I don't think any particular form of filtering would be considered disrespectful by any means. Pure intention goes a long way, IME!

Good luck with your future endeavors

Yeah, even after filtering all the three of the 3-hour boils and collecting and reducing the volume; letting it sit overnight still yields a reasonable amount of sediment; I mostly just do the filter with each boil to mainly filter out the bulk of the plant material itself. Whatever sediment is left has always remained in the end result.

And Spartan, yeah cheesecloth would work good man. Typically what i'll do for a plain t shirt is soak the t shirt in cold water for a few hours, then run the t shirt under cold water for several minutes, wringing it out several times. If there's any residual laundry soap, I would imagine it to be negligible, or nearly any whatsoever (I don't use fabric softener). But everyone's different, so it's all with what you're willing to use/imbibe.

I would imagine a sweaty t shirt soaked in cold water for several hours and ran under cold water and wrung out several times isn't nothing to be particularly concerned with, since we smoke various plants and chemicals and are exposed to various chemicals/substances through the environment daily; I doubt this is much of any level beyond the risk of what I stated above.

Laundry soap has whitening agents that dye clothes with UV reactive invisible dye to 'make whites whiter'
Seriously, am I the only one who went into the bathroom with a blacklight to watch the glorious fluorescent green urine stream only to have my dilated pupils be blinded by the glowing shirt I was wearing?
Take a blacklight into your laundry room with the lights out, glowing blue stuff everywhere.
What is that dye anyway? [edit: google is my friend, it seems theyre any number of mostly benzoxazol-2-yl derivatives that almost certainly havent been tested for human safety beyond allergy and contact photodermatitis risk]

I use cotton handkerchiefs that dont glow blue and only ever were washed with castile soap if its something I'll be consuming.

Hm. Fair points. Coffee filters do indeed take awhile.

Use Soap Nuts instead of laundry detergent

I think my soap is female because I checked and it doesn't have any nuts.