When doing my caapi extractions (and preparing brew for ayahuasca) I’ve been shredding my caapi very fine, and then boiling four times, 30 minutes each. Some have suggested doing three 3-hour boils to ensure that all (or at least more) alkaloids are removed.

Since I dry and weigh the alkaloids I extract, I thought it would be easy to see the effect/yield of additional boiling, so here’s what I did:

I used 50g of caapi, split and shredded by hand. (The piece of vine is over 1.5 inches in diameter. I’ve read that older vine is stronger, and my results support that claim. )

For each boil, I added 500ml water and about 25ml vinegar. I first did 4 boils, 30 minutes each, collected and reduced to about 300ml. I then did 4 more boils, also 30 minutes each, collected and reduced.

I extracted the alkaloids from boil 1-4, and separately extracted from boil 5-8. Here are the results:

Boil 1-4 yielded 1.495g (2.99%) – 87% of total
Boil 5-8 yielded 0.224g (0.45%) – 13% of total

The total yield was 1.719g, or 3.44%. (An amazingly high yield – old, large pieces of caapi definitely seem to be stronger!)

Based on my observations, most of the alkaloids were extracted during the first three boils. The yield drops off sharply after that. Here’s what I speculate: let’s say that after 8 30-minute boils, 5% of the alkaloids are still in the vine (this is a generous estimate, my guess is that the amount remaining is lower). This would mean that my 50g of vine contained about 1.81g alkaloids. About 83% of the alkaloids are removed after 2 hours of boiling (4 x 30-minutes), an additional 12% after 2 more hours, and the remaining 5% after many, many more hours.

So how much boiling is needed? How many boils? How long?

Four 30-minute boils removed about 83% of alkaloids. Depending on the potential yield of your caapi and the amount of caapi you’re brewing, this may be adequate.

For example, if you’re brewing 50g of weak caapi that contains 0.5% alkaloids, you’ll remove 208mg alkaloids after 4 30-minute boils out a total 250mg. Is 7+ hours of additional boiling worth the additional 42mg alkaloids?

But now let’s say you’re making a large batch from very strong vine – 500g with 3% alkaloid content. Four 30-minute boils will remove about 12.5g alkaloids, leaving behind 2.5g. An additional 4 30-minute boils will remove an additional 1.8g, leaving behind 0.7g. Is 5+ hours of additional boiling worth the additional 0.7g?



My guess is that about 95% alkaloids are removed after four hours of boiling. For any given amount of time, it seems that more boils are better than fewer, so five 45-minute boils is probably ideal. If wringing every last bit of alkaloid out of your vine isn’t too important, then four 30-minute boils will pull out about 85%.

Here’s a different way to look at all of those numbers:

11.9g of caapi boiled for 2 hours (4 x 0.5) will release the same amount of alkaloids as 10g of caapi boiled for 9 hours (3 x 3).

Good work once again gilbran, it was some of the necessary tests we had to make. I suspected this would be so, and always found a waste of energy to make so long boils, but its awesome that someone really tested this. Though I guess if the bark isnt so finely shredded, there might be more need to make longer boils? In any case I definitely think its better to try to break it up as finely as possible and make more and shorter boils.

Thanks for posting the results. I was hoping you were going to be like, "even 3 boils is a waste of time", but no. I think %13 is a substantial amount. All that boiling really is necessary to get all the goods.

Nice, I'm going to try the extraction this weekend. Now I know how long to cook for
Thank you very much for doing these tests!

Yes, good work man
This overlaps with my observations, that a couple of quick boils do get most of the alkaloids out. I think i'm fine with 87%.

Great info, much appreciated for that. I assume it would be even more efficient if plant material is re-frozen in between the boils. Maybe that would get most of that 13 percent lol

good data.
i also think that the size of the bark (how finely it is shredded) will play well into this.
but what about ph? wouldn't the alkaloids free up sooner in a more acidic environment?

and finally, just a thought about saving energy (and time)
how about using a pressure cooker? i bet you could cut those 30 min boils into 10 minute boils at 15-20 psi.
just a thought.

Wow! What vine were you using? That's an amazing yield for only 50 grams of material!

Although, I don't think That I actually know what the dose for caapi alkaloids is? Certainly not 1.81 grams though, right? Making the dose less than 50 g?!

Great information. I will be doing my first extraciton this week and this helps a lot.

Peace and love!

That was some very strong black caapi. A piece from an old vine (over 1” in diameter – see photo).

I drank 15g for my first caapi-only experience, and it was very strong.

Thank you for posting this. It's exactly what i needed

Thanks for upping this post.

I noticed that the fifth 30minute boil produces also dark liquid but reducing it further by opening the lid isn't a bad idea, producing more concentrated liquid.
I would recommend 5 boils...

BTW. Why do they call it black caapi? Is it because when it's split there are dark lines in it?