Hi all,

Swim is trying hios first caapi extraction but it is not going very well. swim accidentally added too much acid in the boiling phase and thought his extrraction was ruined. To his delight when he added the vinegar to convert to water soluble salts the whole thing started looking more like the pictorial and there was hope. the wedge of brown sludge went black and settled, the liquid was transferred and base was added and the alkaloids crashed out of solution as freebase and were white-ish in colour. the liquid had a pinkish hue.

Now swim is removing the freebase as described by settling and removing liquid then adding water. It has taken a huge number of washes to get the pH down to 7-8 ish but the precipitate has now gone brown and doesnt look like the pics.

what should swim do? he is thinking add vinegar and freebase again, could any impurities have come with the liquid when it was first transferred?

Has the freebase become water soluble when the pH was lowered somehow?

I dont understand why you said you added too much acid, and then added vinegar... Vinegar = acid...

Anyways, brown precipitates is normal, its just plant impurities.. Also its normal that precipitates seem lighter in color when you see them precipitate, but when you filter/decant them, they seem darker. Anyways, redissolve in vinegar, filter a few times to remove some of the color (funnel and cotton plug works good. Just run a bit of warm water after its all filtered, to not lose liquid to the cotton), then reprecipitate by adding a base

Freebase wont be water soluble, you need to add an acid for it to be in salt form and therefore water soluble.