Happy new year to you all.

Back in May last year my first brew failed. Here is the thread: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...t=65307&find=unread.

My first brew failed, i think, because of a weak mimosa brew. I did an egg white tannin removal, and i think i removed all of the goodies in the process.

I managed to find time for my second attempt at the end of December, but as the title suggests it misfired again.

Brewing method
This time I boiled up 250g caapi and 250g of chacruna - 3x4hr boils, with 5% acidity vinegar. We brewed it over 3 days, and at the end of each boil did a freeze/thaw. The caapi and chacruna were brewed together.

I used tap water this time - does this make a difference?

The final reduced brew was split into 4 portions - each portion containing 62.5g of caapi and chacruna.

Precautions and plan of action
I was drinking with my brother on this occasion. Based on my experiences in May, my main worry was that the caapi was weak (we were using the same remaining materials from the first brew) and our MAOs wouldn't be properly inhibited.

To combat this I also brewed 9g of syrian rue. (ground rue in a tea strainer and then thrown away afterwards. 1x 2hr boil and reduce, without vinegar)

The rue brew was a back up - to guarantee MAOI. The plan of action was to take one of the main brews each, and if that didn't work to take a rue brew, followed by the remaining 'main' brew.

The ceremony
After preparing our space, burning some palo santo and sage, and a long calming meditation later - we finally came to drink the first brew. The taste was horrendous, much worse than the fist time. My brother really struggled to keep it down. 1.5hrs later and nothing was really happening. I did feel calm and sedated, more so that the first time in May, but like in May I was meditating the whole time and focusing on my experience - looking for any deviation from the normal - so any perceived changes could easily have been down to this.

I did feel slightly nauseous and early on I got the shivers despite it being fairly warm, so I thought the brew was working. But everything subsided.

So after 1.5hrs we redosed with the rue, waited 20 minutes and drank the final dose. My brother threw everything up at this point - purely because of the horrendous taste. I waited another hour and it was apparent that nothing visionary was going to happen.

Over the evening I had 125g caapi, 125g chacruna, and 4g rue.

Afterthoughts
The experience was very pleasant, I loved the brewing process and the ceremony behind it all was calming and worthwhile - it's just a shame that it happened yet again. Like preparing for a launch that doesn't lift off.

The only conclusion I can find is that my materials must be junk and I should buy some more and try again.

Some people have suggested doing an extraction on my materials to get a clearer idea. Can anyone point me to any good threads for this?

I was probably mao inhibited from the rue, but by that point it was too late and the 62.5g of chacruna in the last portion was too weak to provide any light.

As a plan of action for the future I am going to brew a large batch of rue tea and work with it, going back to vaping freebase, until I get a feel for MAO inhibition.

But I really want to work with caapi, so I'm going to buy some better materials and try again.

I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any.

xx

I was having trouble with mis-fires at first as well & what worked best for me was to get a feel for harmalas on their own first.

My suggestion for you is whatever you choose to use for harmalas, get a large batch. This way you do not have to keep testing for potency & you have a good idea how strong your plant material is every time you brew.

Once you have the hang of harmalas at different dosages & know how a strong brew should feel & what dosage you are comfortable with, bring either purified DMT or MHRB brew into the equation slowly over the course of a few experiences until you get the desired level of effects.

Unfortunately there is no easy dosage guide for brews or pharma & alkaloid content varies so much between batches you just have to feel out what works best for yourself & learn as you go.

Thanks concombres, thats what I'm planning on doing.

Are the effects of harmalas similar in rue and caapi? I suppose that they will have their own unique experiences, but is the feeling of MAO inhibition similar across different compounds? I ask this because I suspect my caapi threshold is fairly high, at least it has been with this batch. Which makes experimenting with caapi, and finding my threshold fairly expensive.

If i make a large batch of rue tea and get the feel for my threshold with that, will the experience translate into caapi aswell, or will I have to get to know them both separately, so to speak?

I'm more interested in working with caapi really, I think.

Thanks again for all your help.

It is a very sound advise to which I may add some of my personal experience.

Due to inconsistency of materials misfires happen even to shamans. I managed to get my first good brew on the 8th attempt raising gradually the Caapi quantity to almost half a kilo.

Also the current state of your gastro-intestinal tract is a major factor. For example, I get radically different experiences with the same brew after 1 day dieta and after 1 week dieta and a tobacco cleansing ceremony. Couple of times I have kick-started pretty powerful experiences after almost 2 hours of waiting by simply drinking a glass of sparkling mineral water. A few forum members had similar experiences with a small amount of food. Maybe alkaloids get stuck in the liver and need a bit of prodding.

Indeed having a Caapi-only experience is a good idea.

If you have enough of Caapi it is better not to use SR. Anyway 9g of SR is an awful lot. Usually 6 g does the trick. It is always better to extract the rue because it allows you to get rid of some pretty nasty useless alkaloids (Vasicine and Vasicinone).

To answer your question re. differences between SR and Caapi. Harmalas, or harmala alkaloids are a class of substances that includes harmine, harmaline, tetrohydroharmine, harmane, harmalol, etc. SR and Caapi contain them in different proportions. E.g. Caapi contains much more Tetrahydroharmine than SR, which seems to have its own psychedelic effect.

It is also a good idea to extract MHRB because it tastes much worse than Caapi no matter how hard you try to clean it. Then you weigh the spice and swallow it in a capsule ~30m after drinking the tea(my experience). You may start with 70 mg, or even less. By gradually upping the dose you will find your personal effective dosage.

Such experiments will help you to determine your personal sensitivity to harmalas and the spice.

Thanks Trickster, that is excellent advice.

I had always thought that extracting the MHRB would be a bit of a waste in these circumstances (Since a 5g brew seems to be a rough dose in pharma) but I guess it makes sense to know the exact amounts of DMT consumed.

I had wanted to keep my first aya experience as close to a 'traditional' brew as possible.

Who knew that a brew would prove more tricky than an extraction? I did't anticipate I would have so many problems. Even though I enjoyed it, the long brew times, added with the infrequent opportunities for taking part in an Aya session, have made this a long old process.

I am going to have to make some time to explore. I live in a big shared house (London prices ), and whilst my house mates are understanding, I want my set and setting to be as isolated as possible (of course with the proper precautions) My first attempt was at solo Buddhist retreat, and my second in my parents house when they went away.

Retreat hire + large amounts of caapi + misfires are making this a little bit more restrictive than I would've liked. Oh well....

Or am I being too cautious? I often solo trip in my room, with housemates knowledge, perhaps aya doesn't need to be any different? Hmm...

You could try doing a more straightforward brew instead of the egg white removal. Good to learn how to do things the simple way first because then it is easier to figure out what went wrong if a brew doesnt work. Get more complicated later if you want to....

I also believe that egg white may decrease the potency of the tea. Especially if you brew Caapi and MHRB together. I recommend to brew them separately. Then you may clean the MHRB tea with egg white.

Caapi + Chacruna or Chaliponga are OK to brew together. Actually the drink is quite palatable and even sweet.

Ideally I would try to eliminate out of the equation as many unknown parameters as possible. That is, first, I would like to analyze my materials by doing small test extractions on my sources of harmalas and DMT. If they are weak there is no point to continue wasting your time. If they are OK, then I would review my brewing technique. Otherwise I would never know where is the problem.

Even dealing with exactly measured amounts of harmalas and DMT it took me several times to determine my personal dosages. It went like this:
50 mg of harmalas + 50 mg of DMT - nothing
100 mg of harmalas + 70 mg of DMT - nothing
150 mg of harmalas + 100 mg of DMT - just a hint of euphoria
200 mg of harmalas + 150 mg of DMT - brief (20 min) euphoria with some mild CEV
250 mg of harmalas + 220 mg of DMT - 30 min euphoria with some CEV

Then I drank a glass of mineral water and the brew hit me like a ton of bricks. After a few more experiments I came down to a more reasonable personal effective dosage (150 mg of harmalas + 100 mg of DMT).

Getting back to analyzing the materials I would stress that mastering basic extractions is a very useful skill and it is fun to learn.

E.g. it is always recommended to extract Syrian Rue harmala alkaloids rather than drink the crude tea or swallow the ground seeds in capsules. It is also much easier to swallow a capsule of extracted DMT then to drink the MHRB tea.

...yeah, even an unfertilized egg is still a token of love (these are not sythezized by mashines yet afawk) and using the people's eggs to remove tannin feels utterly weird = in intezam mind set.....