So I have been soaking 10 grams of caapi leaf in 95% ethanol for two weeks, and have some questions for those who have done this before, that I haven't really seen addressed in other forum posts.

First of all, I did not grind, powderize, or otherwise pulverize the leafs, they were somewhat broken up by hand into an average sized piece of a 10mm - 25mm or so.

After the first week of soaking, I began to notice what looks like little tiny needle / hair like specs clinging to the glass after shaking. They appear mostly clear at this stage.

As the second week of soaking went on, the liquid got darker green, and the build up of this fine powdery like substance seemed to be rapidly increasing, to the point that when the jar has been undisturbed for a few hours, it all settles down on the leaf matter, in a visible layer of what looks like super fine off white, kind of orangey/red/brown sandy material. When the jar is shaken, it all disperses into the green liquid and makes it darker and opaque until it settles down again.

Is it possible that this sandy looking substance that only formed after an extended ethanol soak is possibly some of the harmalas that have crashed out of the ethanol on their own for some reason?

Had I ground up the leaves, I would probably not have noticed this material forming in the solution, as it would have been assumed to be powderized leaf material.

I was originally planing on filtering this through a coffee filter and evaporating it on some leaf right off the bat, but after seeing this formation in the solution, I decided to filter out the leaf matter first through a mesh strainer, to preserve whatever this is. The result is a very dark green liquid on top, and a fairly decent layer of off white/orangey fine material on the bottom of the jar.



Has anyone seen this before?

Is it possible that since ethanol isn't a great solvent for harmalas, that as it picked up more chlorophyll and stuff from the leaf, it pushed out some of the harmalas?

Can a 95% ethanol solution be based? Like as in, could I potentially base this a little bit, and push harmalas out of ethanol?

I will try to get a picture uploaded of this at some point.

Here are some pictures of the ethanol solution after having been filtered from the bulk leaf matter through a fine metal mesh strainer.

http://imgur.com/a/ZLVsb







The solution looks deep red when the flash from the camera hits it, but looks deep dark green under normal lighting.



The fine precipitate material at the bottom looks the same under both lighting conditions.

This material only started appearing in the solution in the second week of soaking fairly large pieces of leaf in ethanol.

It sure looks like harmalas that have crashed out of the ethanol solution on their own.

My plan from here, unless someone has some recommendations or experience on this, is to;

Go ahead and give this a good shake, and then a run through an aeropress. This should give me a pretty clean liquid solution, and whatever this stuff is on the little aeropress filter.

I will dry them both and see what they look like under black light.


Sound about right?

Should I maybe put it in the freezer for a bit before I filter it?

So the powdery substance at the bottom of the jar glows yellow/bluegreen under a black light while still in the ethanol solution.

It sure seems like those are harmalas that have just decided to jump out of the ethanol.


I will be filtering and drying that material tonight.

It seems odd that no one would have come across this before, but if everyone is grinding/powderizing their leaf matter before the soak, then I can see how it would be missed.

Any thoughts?

Don't know if anyone is following this or not, but I went ahead and ran the solution through an aeropress, which worked beautifully, the end result being a completely clear dark green liquid, and a decent layer of this fine material deposited on the filter paper.

Here is a picture of the end result after drying;




Does that not look like harmala's?


Beuler?

So it doesn't really have any kind of smell, or taste.

It doesn't really seem to dissolve in plain water.

Water with it in suspension doesn't seem to glow under black light all that much more then normal.

I am starting to think it is perhaps small bits of leaf matter that appeared as the leaf started breaking down, combined with the agitation of shaking the solution regularly, ended up producing this fine particulate matter that increased over time.

I am admittedly not very familiar with harmalas at all though, so I am kind of just working on assumptions here.


Thoughts?

Anyone?

Nice work there furhenden, wish could help.

Why not try smoking some and see if there are any harmala effects ?

This is neat stuff! I have some leaf that has been soaking for over a year (11/14/14) and I don't see that any harmalas are crashing out. I think that's pretty unique. Also, what should I do with mine?

If the precipitate has no taste, it's probably leaf matter. Harmalas are very bitter.

If it doesn't readily dissolve back into an acidic water solution, it's also not Harmalas as they should be water soluble in an acidic solution. If the solution doesn't glow either, they are not Harmalas.

This is most likely a case of the leafirst breaking down over time.

I just wanted to circle back on this and update with the end results.

It was not harmalas, it was in-fact fine leaf matter that had broken free of the leaf in the soak/shaking period.

Thanks guys!