Alright so this is the second time this has happened to me. Following gibran 2 easy caapi extraction i end up with a generous precipitate that is not water soluble, all plant matter removed via filtration, & yet the potency is WAY off from what one would expect from pure harmine.

The first thing that stands out to me as odd here is foil test. With DMT, heating a little bit on foil from below usually vaporizes the substance with no residue. With the caapi extract, it tries to melt. I see it go liquid, it bubbles, & then it is as if there is something soaking the liquid up, which quickly burns & creates a black residue. Same thing when the caapi extract is dabbed from a titanium nail.

I would like to clean whatever it is that is making this extract so weak from the harmalas but i am not certain how to identify what exactly the substance is to determine how to clean it up.

I suspect is is a byproduct from the reaction between vinegar & sodium carbonate. On paper there should be no solids in an aqueous solution, but mixing sodium carbonate in a solution of vinegar water clouds up the water & produces a small amount of insoluble white precipitate.

What I highlighted, did you happen to reacidify after the first basification, getting all the insoluble gunk out? Then following the reacidification is another basification, which the resulting harmalas [ime] are relatively white/tan and pretty accurate dosage wise.

Yeah i have done the second round of acid/base & washed 4-5x with clean water. The end product is a very fine, chalky, light tan powder.

I have tested small un-weighed amounts via smoking different ways but i have yet to get a distinctive harmala effect that way. Addmittenly though i have not tested this batch orally just yet. The last extraction i tried was with a different batch of vine. The precip was much lighter colored but the same texture & even at 500mg oral produced little effect.

The foil test is not hard science i know, but this is all i have to go by for now.

Oh dang, okay I just wanted to make sure. Not sure why I thought that you didn't do the reacidification hah, okay so everything's in order. Hmm

Yeah I was gonna say - try like 50mg sublingual or even orally, there should definitely be effects felt from that hopefully.

That is weird. The only thing you should get from vinegar + sodium carbonate is sodium acetate, which is super water soluble. Are you using any freaky brands of vinegar or baking/washing soda?

Also probably a silly question but have you calibrated your scale? 100 mg of some harmalas can look like 500 mg of some other harmalas.

No weird brands. I am using arm & hammer sodium carbonate. The box lists no other ingredients. Vinegar is regular 5% distilled white vinager from walmart. The only thing i can think is maybe something in my tap water. I retested to see if it was a fluke too & it deffinately was not. Vinegar water in a clean water bottle + sodium carbonate staurated solution produces a slightly discolored solution with fine white powder in suspension. The sodium carb solution was clear before adding, the vinegar was too.

I am going to bioassay again this weekend with measured doses & different ROA to see if maybe i am just applying the fail from the last batch to this one.

Im not sure though. The way that the sodium carb solution behaves when used to neutralize vinegar is really bugging me. I can only imagine using half a liter+ of vinegar that got condensed down with the brew, then basing with a load of concentrated sodium carbonate solution, then two A/B cycles with the same materials would create the same insoluble material in a much larger amount.

what color is it?

Same thing has happened on my last 3 extracts. No cloudy precip after base. I eventually get something, but it's reddish and not active.

I hope I can successfully extract again some day. I did it for years then it stopped working.


Definitely try 30mg sublingual

I got precip the whole way through. Everything went as it should up until i started bioassay & melting tests. What i have now is light tan powder.

Alright so i decided to dose 25mg sublingually. Im not sure what to expect really because i have only ever used harmalas orally.

In so far it is about the same as the tests i have done with smoked. Aside from mild tinnitus all i notice is a really weak effect that almost seems like placebo.

You say it melts and then burns... in your initial post it seems like you are comparing it to DMT, whose boiling point is lower than harmine's melting point. So if the DMT is vaporizing but the caapi extract is just melting that may not necessarily indicate a problem.

If I were you I would just eat 200 mg and see what happens. If you have enough for that. Tough to mess up the oral ROA.

Oral dosing is my next test. I know the effects of harmalas by mouth pretty well so a 200-250mg dose should give me a better idea of whether or not im screwing something up with oral or sublingual.

I can see sublingual not working real well with freebase though due to insolubility in water.

Ohh okay you used sodium carb. I've never used that, only lye.

I dont think using sodium carbonate vs using lye should make a huge difference. The extraction went as it should & has previously with lye. I used sodium carb this time because the tek here uses sodium carb with good results.

I am planning on sending a sample to energy control soon though so i should have some hard data on whether or not there is some unknown extraction byproduct coming over through the cleanup steps or my extract is harmalas with some inactive other plant alkaloids or something.

I do notice that in thispaper, there are plenty of bioactive substances mentioned in water based extractions that we typically do not associate with the psychoactive effects of vine or its extracts. Im just not certain whether any compounds like some of the ones mentioned that are not betacarbolines would carry over through the a/b & washing cycles.