Hi guys,

swim has attempted gibran2's extraction and has encountered as issue. upon basification the jar has not gone black, it has instead become lighter, it now looks like milky coffee.

swim did not follow the tek to the letter (slaps head). It said to add 1g of fumaric acid to the caapi and then to 500ml of water.

swim was using 100g caapi so instead used around 1.8g of fumaric acid.

swim noticed that the tek did not say specifically to add more fumaric acid when adding more water but assumed that you must so on the second two boils he added 1.8g of fumaric acid each time so a total of 5.7g of fumaric acid was added. swim is aware pH works on a logarithmic scale so proportionately increasing the amount of acid may not have been necessary but he thought it would not make a huge difference. In retrospect swim is thinking that the blunder was in adding two more amounts of acid with each boil.

swim then reduced the total volume but overdid it a bit and it ended up as 200ml instead of 400ml.

the 200ml was poured into a jar, swim noticed a small amount of brown sediment in the pan and took care not to allow it into the jar.

swim then added 5g lye to a small amount of water and added to the jar. It went white and cloudy at the bottom of the jar as the base was poured in and upon stirring it has gone its current coffee colour with a bit of froth on top.


Swim doubled the volume of the water in the hopes this would help, it didnt, swim also added another 5g or so of lye and this did nothing also.

swim is thinking the solution is not sufficiently basic for the alkaloids to precipitate as swim has added to much fumaric acid.

swim thinks he should add lye until the solution goes black as in the picture? or has swim ruined his hypothetical experiment?

Do you see any alkaloids at the bottom or anywhere? if you do just let it sit in the fridge until majority of it has settled. if you don't then keep adding lye water. I basically did the same thing you did and i found that my extraction took a lot longer to settle enough to continue to the next step. the whole extraction took me about a week but i got a good yield.

First of all… don’t panic!

The change to a milky color indicates that harmalas have precipitated and are in suspension, so you will get some product out of this.

If you use more acid, then you (obviously?) need to add more base to neutralize the acid and freebase the alkaloids. You probably didn’t have to add additional water, but that shouldn’t cause any problems.

Anyhow, depending on the concentration of alkaloids, stirring the milky solution may cause them to aggregate and settle. If not, that means they are too fine to aggregate, so you’ll just have to let the solution sit for quite a while – maybe up to 24 hours – to get the alkaloids to settle.

great thanks guys, its starting to seperate already but the liquid is dark brown, swim will add base until it becomes black and hopefully get some results!

Don't go by color of the liquid. This varies, depending on the caapi. If you've added enough base to cause all the alkaloids to crash out, then you've added enough. There is no benefit to adding excess base.

dammit, swim added more just prior to reading that! swim cant see anything in there, it just looks like coffee.... does the fact that it is more opaque and lighter in colour mean they have precipitated? also my jar is now full to the brim, is there any harm in adding lye directly to the jar as a solid? also it is red caapi if that helps.