Glacial acetic acid is much too strong for acidification. You only need about 3% acetic acid to convert harmala alkaloids to their salts.

I don’t think you ruined them, but they might be very concentrated. Dilute a small amount – the solution should be yellow.

Do you think it could work with citric acid ?

First, fantastic Tek! Second, I apologize for tossing my problem on to the pile of questions, but... I'm confused. And I only ask because I've read every single post in this thread, and it doesn't seem that many others are having a similar issue.

In short, it seems my alks won't settle after precipitation. They hang, suspended, after the first basification. I've added a bit more NaOH than was called for, as I thought that might be the problem, but no luck. Over 24 hours after the first addition of NaOH, the alks had settled to the bottom, but loosely. There was still a great deal of dark solution mixed in, and it was impossible to pull off all the waste liquid off the top without starting to suck up significant quantities of alks. Boo. I took as much as I dared, losing some alks in the process, then added back 200mL of water, as directed.

Unfortunately, it's the same problem as when I first added the base: the alks now simply sit suspended in solution. Visible, but they *will not* settle. This is what they look like now, having been left to settle for over an hour...

I'm embarrassed to even have to ask, as the simplicity of this Tek is one of its most beautiful features... but I'm stuck. Anyone have any advice?


edit - sorry for the monster pic! I thought the forum might auto-resize. ;p

I had the same problem with sodium carbonate, are sure your base is lye?

Another thing you might want to try is adding even more lye.

Quite sure, but good to check. It's NaOH that has worked a treat for DMT extractions. What's more, I was also concerned I hadn't gotten the pH high enough, so I added roughly 3g more lye to the initial basification. When that produced no results, I let it settle as much as I could, drew off the top layer of dark liquid, and added back ~200mL distilled water, per instructions. When the alks again seemed to be trapped in suspension, I added a bit more lye solution to this phase, with no visible change.

Thus, I think it's safe to conclude that additional lye is not the answer... But that leaves me back at square one. I've let the solution settle for over a day - since I posted that picture yesterday - and now, the precipitates have settled into a loose layer at the bottom. Unfortunately, this layer is *loose*, and as you can see from this new photo is not truly settled, but merely floating near the bottom.

The only way in which I deviated from the Tek initially was that I powdered about half of my bark, which I realized only afterward may have been a critical error. It resulted in a thick, silty sludge that was very difficult to filter out of the resulting tea. Is it possible that this vine dust is helping the alks remain suspended? Unless someone has other suggestions (please, have other suggestions), I'm going to just let this sit in the fridge for several days while I start another run from scratch.

Thoughts? ...and thanks, tele, for the reply!

You are lucky that is only the first basification step. What you should do now, is just remove the black liquid and replace it with water like the tek says. After the solution is clearish, you acidify and remove the impurities. Then, possibly, after you re-base, you might get proper precipitation happening. But powdering the bark was bad idea, even if it wouldn't contribute to the consistency of the precipitate. Just proceed with the TEK and I think you'll be fine.

Can't say one has done this but if you are discarding the base water and keeping the precip by not just dump it through a filter?

Then wash the filter with water to get all your goodness off and repeat as necessary...

I’m not quite sure why you think there’s a problem. In your photo it looks like you have a very nice layer of alkaloids that have settled. They don’t have to settle into a solid mass – they’re going to be “loose”. Just remove the liquid above them, add fresh water, allow to settle, decant again, etc. Repeat until the water is fairly light and most soluble impurities have been removed.

Your second photo is exactly how it should look after the first basification and settling.

just do as tele and gibran2 said. it will settle much better after you put a fresh water in. just be patient. I had the same "problem" not problem really I only thought it was as you do. Do not worry the picture looks perfect.

Haha, will do. Thanks to everyone for the swift support... I love the Nexus. I guess I had formed an impression that the alks would collapse swiftly and firmly into a dense pile at the bottom. Why? I dunno'. This is what happens when you let your presumptions do your thinking for you - take note. I'll proceed with the Tek as prescribed, and post results. With luck, sometime, someone else will have similar misgivings and benefit from the public airing of my foolishness.

Just completing a ~150g White Caapi extraction at the moment, looks like a decent yield, will report back

if only 3 acid boils of 30 minutes are sufficient to extract alkaloids from caapi (as salts in water)
why the preparing of caapi tea is done with 3x3h simmering (with or without acid)?

either 3x3h is unnecessary long, or
3x30minutes didn't extracted all the meaningful alkaloids.

There is much debate on this subject.

Some people believe that certain “mystery alkaloids” need much time to be released from the caapi. Some people just want every last molecule of goodness extracted.

I’m of the opinion that the “law of diminishing returns” kicks in after 4-5 short (30 minute) boils: You’ll get more alkaloids, but at what cost? Especially if you’re not doing large extractions (maybe 1kg or more?) it doesn’t make sense to me to waste hours of energy and time to get that last 100mg of alkaloids out of bark. Why not just buy more bark if you need that extra 100mg? It’s probably less expensive than an extra 6 hours of energy. Just my opinion on the matter – others will certainly disagree.

I'm guessing the 3 longer boils are more relevant when boiling a massive amount of caapi for a multi-user ceremony.

From what I read indeed this is the opinion of the majority here, but I'm not sure how much proof exist for that beside personal experience.

If the same ratio of caapi/water is used it shouldn't matter the quantity you prepare, 100g or 1kg.
If less water per gram of bark is used when making tea I agree longer boils are necessary (due to low osmotic pressure) to get
all alkaloids out in solution.

You used 64g/500ml in this extraction I'm making tea right now from 500g caapi using 6l spring water for each wash.
So if your tek extracted all meaningful alkaloids in 3x30minutes I should be able to do the same with my quantities (theoretically speaking, I'm still doing 3x3h).

I couldn't found any clear information about the ratio caapi/water needed for an extraction/tea (beside the THP) and I think is very important.

Ended up doing 5 boils over the course of the day. Got just over 2 grams from 153g White Caapi, not bad

nice one , congratulation

So.. I recently tried a sort of pharma. I brewed 120 g white trueno caapi via 1st boil = 1 hr, 2nd and 3rd boils = 45 min, 4th and 5th boil = 30 min, with no acid. I took half of the resulting brew, so ~ 60 g. The rest i saved, as i couldnt stomach it haha I think i brewed it a little too hot.

Anyways.. Today I performed this extraction on the remaining ~ 60 g of caapi tea I had. Worked like a charm! Thanks gibran2 for this wonderfully simple tek. I did however filter instead of decant for each step, worked fairly well, definately faster .

Next time i do this i will brew enough for 2 extracts and do one with all filtering and one with all decanting and report back with my findings.

Also:



...While i am not a regular aye drinker bye any means I will take an equivalent dose to my first experience with caapi tea and 50 mg FB in OJ, except this time i will use the extracted alks from the remaining half of my tea, again, along with 50 mg FB in OJ. And see if I can discern any noticable difference.

Now for a couple of questions...

If one were to decant the solution, Im assuming putting it in the fridge would help things settle faster. Would this have any negative impacts?
Update: I have found that putting each step, that needs to settle/have the alks fall to the bottom, in the fridge seems to make the resultant solution more "clear" than if it were left at room temp. However I leave it longer than the 20/30 minutes.

And, I think I read this, but just want to clarify...The volume of water for each of the final rinses effects the rate of return to neutral (Ph 7-, correct? Therefore, if one does larger washes, they could do fewer, right? For example in the last step "Remove Excess NaOH, Salts, Etc.", after the initial rinse it says to repeat four times with 200 ml water each time. Could one increase each rinse to 400 ml and rinse only twice (instead of four times) to achieve identical results?

Again, Thanks for the awesome tek!

The Dude

Update: So the initial yield was .34 g, from ~60 grams of non-acidified tea left overs, or ~.5%. The "rinses" yielded another .23 g. For a total of .57 from ~60 g unacidified tea left overs, or ~0.95 %.

I started an extraction on some yellow vine the other day. Within a couple hours there was a noticeable amount of alkaloids on the bottom of the extraction vessel, but the majority was still in suspension. I set it aside for 48 hours and looking at it now I'd say maybe 40% of the precipitate is at the bottom but the majority is still in suspension and the entire solution is completely cloudy. Has anyone else has precipitate that simply did not want to settle? I'm just trying to get an idea about how long this might take. I might just finish cleaning up the 40% on the bottom and leave the rest in the closet for a week or so and let gravity do its thing but I figured at least the majority would have settled by now.