don't toss it!

try brewing it, try gel caps, if all else fails mail it to me

i ate 15g of it last night between some in gel caps and some in a smoothie and definitely noticed affects, but it felt more like 30 or so grams and not 50.

Yea, this is the conclusion I've come to. I've been treating it as 2x and that seems to be a better predictor of ~ where the amount I eat will put me. I'm not complaining...but dose wise I think it's good to know, especially if you're brewing or introducing people to aya.

I,ve been having good results from the plain forest rx aya
Powder in capsules. It's seems to be quite effective in fact as a
Daily supplement . I,ve been using it for over a week and
Have noticed profound mood and general overall attitude improvements.
No side effects to speak of .

I took 50g of the 4x Caapi on Saturday and it all went extremely well. One thing I did notice, the harmala tracers that I typically get with high doses of caapi weren't present at all. Has anyone else working with it had them?

I tried 15g of frx 4x just mixed with water, and chugging the resulting sludge. 15 min later, 160mg of clean mescaline fumarates were taken dissolved into water. The caapi definitely potentiated the mescaline to a degree, but in less of a visual way, compared to previous mescalhuasca attempts. I would say it was roughly 2x the potency of just mescaline alone. Produced some very nice waves when i was peaking. I will try again with real whole vine black caapi once it arrives in the mail, to do a comparison once i can get a dosing schedule worked out with the new vine.

Someone said in another thread, i believe it was apoc, that the frx caapi could be nothing more than caapi vine bark, with added harmine from syrian rue. The bark is inactive compared to the insides of the vine, so i hope that's not the case. Still, further research needs to be done in regard to the alkaloid profile of the 4x. Especially since its been such a hassle to extract in the first place.

Anyone have any ideas about possible alternative methods to get the goodies out of the bark? Possible solutions i see is washing with a solvent that maltodextrin is soluble but not alkaloids before extracting, or using a solvent other than water to pull the alkaloids but not the maltodextrin.

I've read on a splenda extraction tek from instructables, that maltodextrin is insoluble in acetone. Would a drytek freebasing with lime and dehydration after freebasing work to pull harmala freebase with acetone? Anyone have solubility information for harmalas in freebase form in acetone?

I've done some tests using methanol and got a decent yield from a 100g extraction as I stated in a previous post in this thread. I tried cleaning up a gram of the extract and got less than 100mg of goodies. It was so little that I didn't worry about collecting it to weigh.

I haven't bioessayed the crude extract yet but when I do, I'll report back.

Here's the thing though, i speculate that if the alkaloids in the 4x are in a certain salt form, could they be insoluble in methanol? Perhaps the salt frx chose to use in their extract is insoluble in methanol, so the low yields could be from just the plant material alone.

This is all assuming though, that you used dry methanol, and that methanol behaves the same way as other alcohols, when washing certain alkaloid salts. IE they are insoluble in the methanol.

Perhaps, basification is necessary, i think i'm going to do a drytek with acetone on the 4x and see how things pan out, possibly salting out of the acetone with fasa if possible. I'll start it today, and hopefully in a week or so i can report back.

I don't buy that Forest Rx (or Ecuadorian Rainforest LLC as the case may be) is adding harmine to some inert compound, considering ALL their other products are properly legit. I'm assuming the vine source they are using simply just contains harmine and probably in rather low amounts. You'll notice the purity cert says part used is "bark" I'm not sure exactly what that means but I bet that has a lot to do with it.

Just a guess, but the vine proper is probably getting sold to ethnobotanical vendors and/or used for local ayahuasca ceremonies and Forest Rx/Ecuadorian Rainforest are probably using the leftovers from the harvest, which could account for the low cost and lack of other alkaloids.

Perhaps, still it kinda sucks that its probably bark, that's mostly inactive, compared to the real goodies contained within the vine. It does seem rather unlikely that they would try to adulterate the product with extra harmine, but not impossible at all. It was rather cheap as well, i did not have high expectations when i bought a kg for $30 a few months ago. Hell, its hard to find a kilo of real potent vine for less than $100 it seems.

Regardless, its good to try different techniques to see if there's any way we can coax the alkaloids out in higher concentrations/greater purities for analytical purposes.

Okay a little digging found this nexus thread:
caapi bark

which mentions:
What deserves the name "ayahuasca"? - Questionning uses of the term ayahuasca

So according to this, it is common practice in Ecuador to remove the outer bark when brewing.

Since Forest Rx is sourcing their "ayahuasca" from Ecuador, apparently they are just buying the bark, which is not used in the brews, and extracting that.

The bark must only contain harmine (as shown by the tests endlessness did. Thanks for that).

In Ecuador the bark is just throw away material apparently and this is the reason they can sell it so cheap.

That pretty well clears this up in my mind. If you want whole vine product, it seems it's best to order from a ethnobotanical vendor at full price.

Great little process of deduction dreamer! I'm still very happy with this, though will still be working with normal vine brews as well.

any updates on brewing/extraction techniques with the 4X? I brewed 100G 3x3, reduced to 500ml, first time out tried 100ml (20G worth) and had barely enough MAO inhibition to feel threshold effects from 6G of brewed mimosa, which usually blows me away. planning on going to 150 ml next time. What shocked me was how incredibly salty the 4X brew was. I figured this was the maltodextrin, any ideas on a better way to get the harmine out of this stuff? heard a bit about possibly extracting using IPA here and there, is this a good route to go? perhaps soak 30G, evap IPA, consume resin?