May SWIM use STB with phalaris grass? Or would it be better to do A/B?

FASA sounds the most promising..haven't tried it yet though..startd an A/B on some arundinacea a few days ago, but it takes soo many defatts..id rather save my solvent for mimosa and chaliponga..gunna try FASA soon though..

oh and dont expect a clean N,N profile.. there is lots of 5meo usually in there as well..I wouldnt be too worried about the others..I am thinking that after a few recyrstalizations the other minor alks will be fractioned out for the most part, leaving mostly N,N and 5meo..heres to hoping anyway..

thank you, I will take a look at FASA.

I asked the same question a month or two ago and was told FASA, and to use d-limo to remove the fats...

hopefully within the next week my elf will yield something from phalaris, he is trying a few teks on it right now..but is in the middle of a mimosa and chali tek as well and its taking up his jars. He is going to try this tek from another thread becasue he lacks fumaric acid for FASA..


[quote=InfundibulumIn SWIM's opinion, the following may work;

1. Use preferably fresh material or freshly cut and frozen. SWIM has had minimal success with fresh phalaris grasses and no success with dried. It is possible that while the plants dry they also degrade their alkaloids. Not all the plants are like that (chacruna and chaliponga are supposedly fine but in practise we do not know how much is lost due to cell death). Allowing the grass to freeze-thawing some times will help burst the cells and release the goodies.

2. Soak in acidified 70% alcohol+strain. Repeat 2 more times.

3. Let everything dry totally. It will leave a gooey mass which contains the dmt in salt form and other crap and oils and fats.

4. Wash the gooey mass with water a few times. dmt will be picked up by the water and fats will be left behind.

5. take this water that contains dmt and basify it. the dmt freebase precipitates out of aqueous basified solutions.

6. Presto!

[/quote]


..so far 10 grams of phalaris was collected and frozen and thawed 2 times and then chopped up vry fine and boiled 2 times in vinegar/pure ground water..the liquid was reduced and put into a jar in the fridge.
It will be evaporated down into a goo tommorow or the next day over the stove and washed with pure water 2 times, and the water basified with sodium carbonate, and put in freezer to precip crystals hopefully..than clean the crystals in 99% iso..recrystalize. Not sure what it would a yield would be like from only 10 grams though..maybe 20-50 mg..

I find it hard to believe that it could be that easy, but it seems it could work. The main thing is that it's innexpensive to try on diff harvests of grass etc..I would rather save the more expensive solvents for more reliable plants until I can get something I am happy with from grass.

PLEASE GUYS, COMMENT YOUR AND YOUR ELF's RESULTS... IT COULD BE VERY IMPORTANT FOR MANY PEOPLE!!!

what about gramine? Wont it end up in your final product if there is any?

I have readed about gramine in phalaris too... but I didnt know what It was...
Here gramine-wiki says that is "used" for defense (bad thing ), but also says that is synth by life beings to produce tryptophan (good thing )...
So, what the hell gramine does?

Gramine is poisonous to many animals. We don't know if it effects humans and to what extent.

Here is a thread that talks about it: http://dmt-nexus.me/foru...aspx?g=posts&m=69055

I have yet to see a successful extraction done on Phalaris. If there was a better way to isolate JUST the N,N DMT..... 5-MeO-DMT will overpower DMT very easily, so you are basically extraction something that will only really be able to be used as 5-MEO-DMT.

Yes, the gramine could be a problem...extracting tons of grass and recrystalizing a few times I think would really get the ratios of other alks down hopefully..the 5meo I am not too worried about, i enjoy it at low doses. I am not planning on ending my relationship with mimosa, not at all.

Anyways, I took my vinegar water extraxt of phalaris, and evapped it down to a goo yesterday..I then added some pure mineral water to the goo and stirred it up..and as it settles the fats began dropping out of solution, leaving a clear yellow water, with all the fats and oils at the bottom..

I am getting over the flu so havent toutched it today at all, but I think I will just suck up the water with a baster and evap it again and do one more water wash, and then basify it..see what happens..

edit..I was under the impression that gramine has too high of a boiling point to be vapped at the temps that DMT is vapped at...so maybe smoking is ok, but I would still like it removed..this makes it a bad candidate for an aya analogue, for now anyway.

Over the years successful phalaris a extractions have been published, such as in the early psychedelic review. J. Appleseed is such a person who has reported success.

The way to do this right is not well known, the grass is far too weak to just process some material. Appleseed reported that his best method, after years of work, was to bring water to a boil and to put the grass in and simmer for only 10-15 minutes. Then remove the grass, or more gunk and some undesirable alkaloids can appear.

The way to make this work for extraction, because Appleseed worked on brews for the most part but did report some extractions, is to use a large volume of water and then take FRESH grass, but only the top two tender new leaves (do not waste your time with the whole plant or with lower leaves) take many lbs of the fresh leaves and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Then when this is done you take that grass out and repeat with the next batch, after a several repeats of this you will have enough alkaloid in solution to do an STB.

Defatting is not needed if you STB properly, for anything. Chlorophyll and lipids cannot survive the caustic pH involved.
After that the freeze precip is the best option.

It is hard work, not nearly as easy to work with as MHRB, but it is abundant in much of the world and can be used successfully if you do it right.

SWIM said this about that : I have been successfully extracting Phalaris A. cv. "Big Medicine" for awhile. Johnny Appleseed tested (GC/MS) many strains of Phalaris from all over the world and found the "Big Medicine" strain to be the highest in DMT while not containing even a trace of Gramine. While testing these different strains he also learned alot more about the variability of alkaloid content. Most important is do not freeze the plant material. The extraction should be done with freshly harvested material only. Freezing reduces the alkaloid level by up to 80%. Time of day when harvested can make a big difference, early morning or late afternoon being best. Application of stress just prior to harvesting also makes a big difference.

I have used a typical A/B extraction process in the past, de-fatting requires too much solvent. Lately, I have been using the FASA method with great success. The whole process starts the morning before harvesting --

Shade the patch of Phalaris to be harvested, early in the morning. Make sure that the patch is not watered (if possible). In the late afternoon, remove the tips of as many blades as possible, about 10% of the whole blade. I save these tips in water until starting the extraction.

The next morning, just after sun-up, harvest all the blades. Put these in a food processor with just enough water to cover them and chop them as finely as possible.


Proceed with the FASA extraction immediately.

I have an 8' by 8' patch of the Big Medicine strain which grows year-round in my yard. Over the last few years I have arrived at this procedure through alot of trial and error. Johnny Appleseeds work was invaluable to me but now, unfortunately, I can't find his work.

My first few extractions yeilded absolutely nothing due to the fact that I was freezing the Phalaris. Once I started using fresh material, I started getting some spice, but not nearly as much as I get now, using the protocol above.

Just SWIM's experience -- I hope he helped.

***Edit *** Here's from Erowid http://www.erowid.org/li...t2_phalaris_drying.shtml

Culvenor noted that while air dry samples of P. tuberosa contain 0.05% to 0.08% total alkaloids, fresh grass may contain twice as much alkaloid than would be present if it was dried. In addition there is a higher proportion of bufotenine and a lower proportion of the uncharacterized indoles of high Rf present in fresh grass.

[Drying has the greatest negative impact on young growth and on high alkaloid strains. The effects on older growth and on poor alkaloid producers is much less.]

Donker et al. 1976 reported that drying Phalaris arundinacea hay reduces alkaloid content by around half (reduced to 59% of original.)

Hovin et al. 1980 determined that when Phalaris arundinacea is used for silage that alkaloid concentration does decrease but remains at a higher level than when air drying as hay. They recovered 93% of the original alkaloid content in ensiled chopped reed canary grass.

[Ghosal noted that in D. gangeticum leaf, the alkaloid content was three times as high when green than if allowed to dry but that dry material had a higher percentage of 5-MeO-DMT.]

Barnes et al. 1971, studying several clones of P. arundinacea, found that the total alkaloid content was 2 to 6 times higher in fresh samples than in stored frozen samples

Very tnks guys
Have someone readed about the amount of alkaloids they extracted?
I think that SWIM is going to make a extraction this comming austral spring

I was told that the rhizome was the part that contains the 'active' ingredients, is that incorrect?

That's for Phragmites Comunalis (Common Reed)
which is a different plant.

Oh! Well I'm glad I didn't just harvest a ton of rhizomes in hopes of something big...

ok, so I freebased my yellowish water with sodium carbonate and evapped it down to some yellow powder that was mildy sticky, but still able to crush up..so I just crushed it up and dissolved it in some 99% iso alcohol and stirrd it up..lots of yellow crap dropped out of solution to the bottom of the evaporation dish and slightly yellow iso was left over..it is evaportating now.

My mimosa changa is almost ready though so I dont know when I will test the mystery phalaris stuff..but will report back when I do.

I amalso going to try to get a digital cam to use so I can try the tek again and take pics if it workd out.

When SWIM tried this he boiled 5 ounces of grass in pH 4 water, and evapped his acidic water, which left him with a goo that quickly became rock hard.

He chipped at it with a razor and dissolved most of it in water, no fats precipitated so SWIM basified to pH 11 and a ton of floating precipitate formed (note that the precipitate refused to settle, but formed a heavily saturated layer on top of the sol't).

SWIM planned to evaporate the precipitate saturated layer and test for activity, but SWIM is clumsy and he knocked over the bottle (ARGHHH!). He's going to try the next time he has a chance to get the grass.

SWIM believes that the step where the acidic water is evaporated is unnecessary and time consuming so he's not going to do it next time.

"Jim DeKorne (1996) has reported that strong varieties of P. Arundinacea can be processed simply with a wheatgrass juicer to yield a liquid that is potent enough for one teaspoon to be effective with MAOIs. He has prepared a potent smokable extract as follows: grass clippings are pulverized and water is added to make a pourable mixture, which is then acidified to about pH 5. The mix can then be heated overnight while evaporation is not allowed. The plant matter is separated by first using a cheesecloth and then a paper coffee filter. 10-15% of the mass of the resulting solution of a "defatting solvent" (e.g. methylene chloride, ether, chloroform, or naptha) is then added. After vigorous shaking the water containing the alkaloids is separated from the solvent. A base is added to the aqueous solution in small increments until the pH gets to about 9 or 10, which converts the alkaloids into their free base. Extraction is then performed four times with an organic solvent, comprising 10% of the mass of the solution, first after 24 hours and then at three weekly intervals, while the solvent layer takes on a darker tint (usually yellowish or reddish-brown). In total the extraction takes almost a month and the solution should be shaken at least twice a day between extractions. To isolate the alkaloids the solvent is finally evaporated from the combined extract fractions."

Tryptamine FAQ

The above comes from a little past halfway down the page, there's a ton of other info too...

so I evaporated the iso down and was left with a tiny bit of barely yellow resin stuff..smelled like pastic..so thats a good sign I guess..but it wasnt enough to be worth trying to scrap up..I only used 10 grams of grass to start with..I got rid of it..but it did smell strongly of indols..so now I will try with 100-200 grams of grass and do an extra sodium carbonate wash at the end and see what that will yeild..