Hi everyone.

So, Ive tried making aya a couple of times with caapi leaf, both times I gave up because the ratio sludge/water was too sludgy to drink or it meant diluting it in too much volume.

Third time I decided to use the THP and midway through the experiment I decided to completely evaporate the water to leave the sludge and pop it in a gelcap.

First thing that bother me is the sheer amount of water that I ran through THP, liter after liter I kept geting yellowish fluid.
After everything was drained and reduced (took me like 3 days), I put the remaining sludge in the oven.
Once dried I weighted it and it was literally half of the amount of weigth of the initial leaf.
20grams of leaf yielded 10 grams of sludge.

Anyways, this was way too much for a single capsule, so Ive just been using it to microdose, but it would be nice to be able to fit a full inhibiting dose in just one capsule. Is that possible?
Did I mess up somehow? 50% sounds crazy high, it must have pulled way more that just the alkaloids, is there any way to prevent that or is that normal?

Is an extraction necessary to fit a single dose in a capsule? I kinda wanna keep the caapi full spectrum if possible.

Boil a large volume first, then filter through a cloth (t-shirt, washcloth, cotton ball can all work) to remove particles—that being your sludge. This may take several passes as the sludge will clog even coarse filters.
Then reduce to your final concentration *after* filtering.

The active ingredients are in the water. The sludge is plant matter.

Thanks

Ill try filtering next time, I guess Im just worried that most actives might get lost along the way since everyone seems to agree on the sediment containing them from what Ive read.

There is SOME in the sediment, but I think it's acceptable waste if the alternative is just vomiting it all up cause of the sludge. With a long enough boil, the vast majority will find its way into the water.


If you're like me and hate any amount of waste, it is possible to set aside the sludge and do a separate extraction later. The yield will be small but you'll sleep easy at night knowing you got every last bit.

One further question springs to mind - what water did you use?

Anything other than distilled/deionised/reverse osmosis, and to a lesser extent, rainwater - i.e. tap water, spring water and pretty much any potable water - will contain dissolved solids which will make up some proportion of those ten grams that you recovered.

How much did the leaves weigh once dried after the extraction was completed?

I see.

I used tap water. I wasnt expecting that to be anything remotely measurable on the end product, but I guess I did end up using A LOT of water.
Using distilled water might be a good idea
I threw the leaves away, but that would have been a better way to look at it for sure, Ill keep it in mind for further experiments.

Have been reading a lot recently as have just completed my first brew. From what I understood, after boiling the water and caapi leaf (I'm also using the leaf), you want to strain it / sieve it to get the leaf matter out, then pass it through filter ( a pillow case is what I used).

Then reduce it. There will be "some" sediment (sludge)in the reduced liquid, but this sludge is ok. Although I have read that some say to put it in the fridge and let this small amount of sediment settle so you can siphon it off. Also have read you should shake it so you get the sediment.

Yeah, Ill try doing that first filtering step and then embracing whatever sediment ends up after reducing or see if its a small enough quantity to be encapsulated.
Ive also read quite mixed opinions on whether sediment can be discarded or not.

With the percolation method is hard to know when to filter since I was constantly reducing the liquid.
Also since you are bascially passing the fluid through a funnel with some cotton thought that would be enough, but I guess not.
I might go back to the boiling route again and see how that goes.

Just to add some numbers. I used 400g of caapi leaf and I got that down to about 1.5 cups of liquid. I could have reduced it more, but I had just lost 200g of chaliponga brew after burning it to charcoal so was being extra cautious.



What is a THP?





I used about 3 litres for boiling 200g and just about 5litres for the 400g batch.

Before boiling I'd put the leaf matter with some water into the blender to get it all broken down. Much quicker and more effective than trying to manually break apart the leaves. After blending the leaves, I needed much less water for the boiling that I had before.