If your talking about this part :

[...
Remove Excess NaOH, Salts, Etc.

After most of the precipitate has settled, siphon off the cloudy liquid. Reserve this liquid for an overnight settling.

Add about 200ml water to the precipitate, stir, and allow to settle again. Remove and reserve liquid. Repeat this step one more time.
...]

Just keep the liquid you'd normaly discard to let it settle (1 night IE) to be sure to grab any sediment left in it.

I'm confused by these two parts. Am I supposed to be saving all of this liquid till the end to set in fridge overnight and then see what falls out or is some of it being used immediately in the process?
Remove Soluble Impurities

Siphon off the clear dark-brown liquid and discard.

Add about 200ml water, stir, and allow precipitate to settle again. After 20-30 minutes, the precipitate will have settled, but the solution may still be somewhat cloudy. Rather than wait 12+ hours for everything to settle, siphon off the liquid and save it. Repeat this step two more times

Remove Excess NaOH, Salts, Etc.

After most of the precipitate has settled, siphon off the cloudy liquid. Reserve this liquid for an overnight settling.

Add about 200ml water to the precipitate, stir, and allow to settle again. Remove and reserve liquid. Repeat this step one more time.

I get it at the end your supposed to save this liquid for overnight settle ng but what about this liquid in the near beginning? Your not told to save it for overnight just to save it though I've read this thing at least twenty times and don't see where else in the process your told to use it.

Any help would be great as I'm about to attempt this in a few days

When you base, harmalas precipitate and you let them settle in the bottom.

So you have 2 choices :
➀ let it settle for at least 12h and then discard liquid and keep sediments.
or
➁ let it settle 30min, separate sediments (you keep) and liquid. Normaly you discard the liquid but as all harmalas didn't settle (only the biggest bits had time to settle not the smallest) so you keep the liquid and let it settle over night to get any harmala left in it.

And each time you clean harmalas by addind 200ml water, you use the same process.

ThNks for the help I understand better now but I have one final question. So at the end of the process you will have two different rinses saved right?

1. Being saved at the beginning of the process in which you were speaking of the 200ml water and saving it every time. These rinses will still need to be can through the rest of the process of adding acid and then basing again if I'm correct?

2. Then the rinses from the last part of the process which will just need to sit and then be cleaned a few times?

when drying the final product, Is it ok to speed up the process by placing in oven at lowest temperature for a bit? Or would the heat not do it any good?

So I boil 3x with a little vinegar in each boil combined and tried to base but nothing crashes out. I used 112g yellow caapi and although I see stuff at the bottom.of the jar after letting it sit for a hour it looks like plant matter and definitely isn't the color in the pics of the tek its like a very dark color.

The base soup isn't black though its a brownish color. The first time I added 5g lye nothing crashed out so I added another 5g and I t sit over night and still nothing unless what I'm looking at is in fact alkaloids. There a very dark brown almost black color.

I'm getting the same problem, I am using 50g yellow caapi,

It stays brown and nothing crashes out! I received my yellow caapi yesterday, im wondering if you got it from the same source here in UK and its BUNK

this has happened to me, the stuff that has crashed out looks dark and planty but just persist, the goodies are in there.

filter, then acidify the precipitate, filter and then base again and you should get a cleaner extract that looks as it should.

Ok mate, thanks, will do as you have advised

good luck

I got my yellow caapi from a different source and its my first time working with it in anyways so I don't know what IRS supposed to look like smell like etc.

This batch is dryer then mimosa and smelled like spices.

I'm going to follow the advice and hope I yield enough.

3rdl!!! So glad I listened to the advice man. I thought all I had was plant matter
and was gonna just toss it till I read your advice. The reason I was so concerned was my caapi was a mix of shredded and powdered so I thought it was all powder that had settled but I followed your advice and just kept on moving through the tek.

I Now have quite a nice amount of harmalas sitting in the final rinse. One thing I found was I literally had to siphon off all liquid as if I tired to pour any off everything would just mix back together. Tedious but worth it.

The glass I used to crash the alks out in has about 1 1/2 inches of harmalas in it.

I'll be removing as much water as possible and letting them dry shortly and will report back with final yield. If I have no fan to speed drying how long can I expect it to take for them to dry and be ready?

excellent, im glad it worked out for you.

I used to siphen off the liquid with a baster but then i started to use a bigger 1L measuring jug to precipitate and if you let all the alks settle for a full 24 hours you can normally just pour off a large amount of the water without the alks mixing up with the water again.

im not sure how long it will take to air dry, i usually pour off as much liquid as possible and then pour the alks/water into a pyrex baking tray and put it in a heat bath. This method is quite quick at evaping the remaining liquid, in the future i hope to get a vacuum filter which would be ideal.

yesssss! mines fine too. read that yellow takes longer to settle. thanks 3rdI

I am about to separate the "black/clear" liquid off from the alks at the bottom of the jar. 267g of Yellow Caapi. It has sat overnight just to be sure. Is there any reason to save the black liquid in this case? It appears to me not to be really clear. I added 5g lye and nothing, then +5g after a few minutes and I saw a little stuff swirling but it was not milky like the pics. A half hour later I added another 5g lye. More alks show but still not milky. Then there was a thinner layer of very clear yellow/brown liquid on top and this is how I thought the black would appear if done correctly. But the black remains as the biggest portion in the jar, fine. Anyways in total I have added 30g of lye and it has sat overnight. There is a deffinate layer of alks in the bottom but its just not as visable/distinct as i thought it would be. The same yellow/brown layer is on top still. Is this all I will get or should i save the black liquid? This obviously seems like to much sodium hydroxide but i wanted to get it to look like the pics. Thanks.

Also my bark was boiled 6xs one hour each (still getting color)in vinegar/shredded bark/water solution about the ph of 4. I couldnt get it to go lower so i just added the 25 ml each time instead of the 75 I used the first time, it achieved the same 4ph. I just wondered about the amount of bark vs the tek. Again 267g of shredded yellow Caapi. I saved the bark and froze it just in case but i didnt want to use more energy with diminishing returns. Thoughts?

can you check the PH of the solution?

if it is sufficiantly based then i would just filter, acidify the precipitate, filter, base the liquid and you should get a cleaner precipitation

Thanks. I dont know why I didnt think of that and post it. It is only 9.2ph.

i took it up to 12.2 which should deffinately be high enough correct? I didnt read the paper on the first page of the thread but it mentioned something about ph11. I guess i will just let it sit again. Or add more? seems ridiculous to add more than 110g of sodium hydroxide though. Thats what it took to get to 12.2. Is my solution just too concentrated? it was 227g of bark not 267 like I stated previously. Looks like i should have read the page first? harmine/harmaline says to raise ph to 8.75 to get 92% harmine and 8% harmaline. Oh well, live and learn. Unless this is just to separate the 2 and not talking of the original extraction.?

Correct.



You should always read the entire tek a few times before starting to make sure you have a good handle on what you're about to undertake. Seems a little unfair to ask for help when you haven't read the instructions.



Yeah, just let it chill after it's mixed well. The more acid and water you use, the more sodium hydroxide it will take for the ph to raise.



The 8.75 ph is to separate the alks and is mainly used for rue extractions. With caapi, you typically want a full spectrum extract.