Your sister has done a search of the changa forum looking for precedents of using methanol as the solvent to extract MAOIs from caapi leaves and it had no results.

This surprises Sister as methanol has a much lower bp (65°C) than most of the other alcohols mentioned in the extraction teks. It evaporates quickly without residue. It is also a lot more otc than 100% EtOH or 100% IPA in your sister neck of the woods. (70% IPA is common but not 100%, to get 100% EtOH or IPA she would need to visit the local chemical distributor)

Is there any reason this low bp, accessible, clean, alcohol has been overlooked? Is it an oversight or is there a valid reason why it isn't used.



FYI - methanol aka methyl alcohol or methyl hydrate

I use HEET from the automotive section at Wal-Mart.

It evaps super fast and very clean. It's a little bit more expensive than regular ISO but not by much.

I've been having great results with it so far.

It was first brought to my attention via Director of Sound in this thread.

Thanks Melodic Catastrophe

Sister just posted a bunch of references confirming your choice in this thread
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=18002

Methanol is far better for extractions. IPA sucks ass, especially for harrmalas, but people use it presumably because it is easier to find. Basically whoever uses IPA is fooled to believe that he makes a true 10xcaapi or 10Xwhatever for that purpose.

Basically here's no advantage of IPA versus methanol. For the solubility of almost all the salts of alkaloids SWIM has ever played with, the order is water>met-oh>et-oh>IPA>acetone

What about naphtha? Isn't that just as good?

Nope, its definitely worse.

I guess the reason many people dont use methanol is because, while it does evaporate cleanly, it is rather toxic. If I would use methanol, after it seems to have fully dried I would soak it again in some other less toxic solvent such as ethanol and let it evap, to make sure all traces of methanol are evaporated.

Also I dont know what kind of purity methanol most people can get and what common impurities are present in this commercial methanol. Considering there were no toxic/non-volatile impurities and one made sure it is completely evaporated, it should be fine to use.

I've been questioning a lot the use of IPA for caapi leaves too, because I tested and even in freebase it is not really good solvent for harmalas. I think people are wasting a lot of harmalas if they throw away supposedly 'spent' bark after IPA soak. I think people should do an A/B after the soak.

How are you smoking it? I could be wrong but sounds like the typical effects for someone that is not vaporizing but rather smoking/burning the dmt..

Regarding IPA traces, you could for example let the leaves you infused with IPA soak again in some vodka, for example, or another less toxic solvent (grain alcohol, or even plain water) and let it dry again. This would give more chance for any IPA remains to completely evaporate (though I really dont think thats your problem)

It seems whenever I torch the last little bits of changa from a bong the experience always gets considerably darker/weirder. It also seems to happen if I don't clean out the bowl from the previous smoking session.

A clean vessel is the only way I do changa.

But how does an A/B extraction work on caapi. Like just an A/B like you would do on Mimosa?

except you dont pull the alkaloids with solvent from basified solution but rather just let alkaloids precipitate and retrieve by decanting/filtering.

Is there a tek here for that?

Indeed there is a tek, right here

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...lkaloid_Extraction_Guide


Melodic Catastrophe
Sister has noticed the same thing when launching using the spice that has condensed on her glass pipe. The visuals don't seem as bright and sister seems to end up more confused at the end too . . .


FYI - and back on topic, Sister has used MeOH successfully to make 11x cappi leaves, it works like a charm.
Wahe guru!

Swim has used heet and it left some fairly nasty smelly residues swim didn't trust at all.
Swim would try methanol if it was easy to get pure.

Swim uses 190proof or even 150proof ethenol bought at the liquor store. It works extremely well, any thing else just feels like overkill.
unless you live in a dry county that should not be hard to get any where. Hell swim can't make 160proof ethanol from sugar and turbo yeast with a stove top still, then redistill it and make it even stronger so it scape faster...
But swim doesn't really even mind if it doesn't evaporate fast swim places the menstrum and leaf in a rice cooker and it works very fast at low heat with a fan on it. viola...
Simple easy cheap nontoxic effective

I'm going to try that on the rest of my caapi vine

The result is then a mixture of harmine, harmaline and a little THH or?

How would you use that powder and how much?

Methanol fumes are EXTREMELY toxic, and I've never noticed pure methanol being sold.

However, I make my own, and it does rock for extractions!

How do you make your own methanol?

In your sisters neck of the woods, they sell 99.8% methanol in hardware stores.


Reducing formaldehyde with sodium borohydride is one way of doing it . . . although not very otc.

The typical home extractor without further chemistry knowledge should not be trying to use strong reducing agents and more risky chems and processes.

I know you didnt mean bad though, Dr_Sister, and were just answering a question

having read advice many times to use heet as a source of methanol, i bought some for dissolving harmala freebase (Without salting it).

but i double checked the msds and it said it is 99% methanol, but 1% "proprietary additive"

i couldn't find out what said additive consists of... is this confirmed to 100% be safe?

EDIT: i see it has a 100% volatile/volume ratio, so i guess it evaps clean regardless. disregard.

The only thing about methanol evaporating is that it sucks in a bunch of water from the air as it does so, more so than acetone. If it's anhydrous to begin with and one uses a fan, it's great.