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Ayahuasca: Add acid or not?

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endlessness

endlessness

Established member
Moderator Lab expert
So discussion has arisen in this thread about the necessity of adding acid or not.

I'll post the relevant quotes and Im curious of any feedback other people can give regarding this, if they tested both ways or what are their opinion in general:

endlessness said:
Spira said:
If there is no need to use acid why do a lot of recipes call for it? Common misconception?
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Yes, I think acid adding is a misconception in some cases, or otherwise it might be a guarantee of solution acidity in case your tap water has an abnormal high pH or something. Then again, if its not powdered product, strong acidic solution might help break up the bark/vine if doing long soaks or boils (mostly for extractions, because for brews, people add just a bit of acid, which I dont think it would make much of a difference in breaking up the vine)

It wont hurt to add acid but it might make the taste significantly worse. Personally I find it really unnecessary and never do it but do what you feel is the best.

In the amazon with indigenous cultures or in the religions such as santo daime, there is no acid added.

I have personally made brew with and without acid, and noticed no difference at all in potency (the one without acid had a much better taste), but I dont have an analytical equipment, which would be the only way to really prove one way or another.
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ms_manic_minxx said:
I use a water filter with a digital pH setting to get around the taste of adding acid (vinegar, lemon, etc.), now.

I am aware there are brewing techniques without acid. In my personal experience with brewing in the past, though, I have found adding acid makes a significantly stronger brew (tested multiple sessions with multiple brews). This could be a source water issue? So, the reason I mention this is to make sure people get the best results possible. (I can explain all of this in the thread if you like, endlessness? :) )

No doubt the taste of vinegar is disgusting. It's how I justified the purchase of said insane water filter. :p Really disgusting...

Just a thought: traditionally, places that don't acidify also cook with fresh vine. Being much softer, it seems like it might break down more easily? *?*
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endlessness said:
minxx, its true in the amazon some of the caapi can be fresher, this might make a difference, but some caapi, specially sent for daime churches farther away from the amazon, might be shipped and stored for a while before being brewed. How long, compared to the ones from psychonauts buying from the net, though, I dont know.. I can ask some daime friends to see if they know.

In any case its interesting that in your experience the brews without acid have been weaker. I had never noticed that in my brews, whether it was with fresher caapi or older, but it wasnt really side-by-side and scientifically rigorous tests to know for sure. I wonder if other people have tried both ways to compare and give us more feedback. I think I might start a thread about this.
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So what do you guys think?
 
Speaking generally, adding an acid will help break up the cell walls, thus enable the substances trapped inside the cells to merge into the solution. Therefore adding an acid does make sense. It is common to not add any acid though, and I personally never do it, but this may have a correlation with the time one use to cook.

Theoretically an acidic solution can be cooked in less time than a neutral solution. If one use long time on the cooking, like the 12 hours I enjoy spending, I find it unlikely that adding an acid will help much, if at all.
 
We could come up with a quantitative way of measuring this. Is there a technique to extract the DMT from a P. Viridis brew? If so, we could do two brews of P. Viridis (or MHRB), one with acid and one without, then compare the amount of DMT in each. We could do the same with the Caapi brew, although I would imagine that measuring harmaline alkaloid content is more difficult.
 
yep, this could be done, elaborately or simple. Simple would be just 2 batches of chacruna, boiled for some minutes, one with acid one without acid, then base both (ideally not with the same amount of base, but rather reaching same pH, so the acidified brew would need a bit more lye), pull with solvent, evaporate or freeze precipitate or salt out, and measure results. I think due to the presence of more plant oils chlorophyl and other things in chacruna, it would be more effective to salt out with fumaric acid, so as to not pick up many oils.

More elaborately would add a few more variables. Divide a batch of P. viridis in, say, 4 batches. 2 of them boil for 3x30mins (one with acid one without acid), and 2 of them boil for 3x3 hours (also one acid one without). Then extract, weigh difference. Also this could be tested with different acids, or with different amounts of acid. As much as someone has patience, time and material for it. The interesting thing is that it doesnt need to be made with much, one could make micro-extractions, as long as one can work with small amounts and has an accurate milligram scale

As for caapi, Im still unsure if it can be pulled with, say, limonene and salted with, say FASI, if the harmalas would precipitate as fumarates, or if not.. This also has to be tested separately. If so, same can be done with harmalas. I will only be able to make any kind of tests in a couple of months. Otherwise one could do the same but instead of solvent extracting, one could just base precipitate the harmalas straight out of the filtered caapi tea. It wont be pure harmalas but at least it will give an indication based on final weight.
 
While unscientific, my experience is that brews that I have used acid in are more potent than ones I don't.

I do a LONG brew for my Caapi, 15-24hrs. My admixture plants are almost always boiled separately w/ a very small amount of acid; I have not noticed any difference.
 
How would THP factor into the whole brew-time issue? I've done all my THP brews with acid until this past weekend. I made a 50g brew for microdosing and must say that it tastes infinitely better than any of my previous brews, even though they were given more than adequate time to simmer off the acid. I was thinking that I'd just take the theoretically exhausted caapi and do a harmala extraction on it to see if there are any actives left. I was thinking about maybe doing this with both acidified and non-acidified product from THP brews and comparing the end yield. If there's not considerable difference in the amount of alks remaining, I'd think it means acid is placebo and if there was any considerable variation between the two extractions, that would lead me to hypothesize to its logical end, which could be further tested
 
There are also some people that claim only 30 minutes of cook time is necessary for admixture plants, meaning the DMT is much easier to boil out than the harmalas... so the, eheheh, "Rules of Acid" might not apply to testing acid vs. non-acid brews for DMT content, and then applying said assumptions to acid cooks for harmalas.

*Here's a question about bioavailability. Will any acid convert the form to something more easily assimilated? Now I cook with digitally acidified water, so there is no lemon, vinegar, etc. added. If this is relevant, it might be an argument in favor of cell wall decomposition vs. chemical transformations.

I read somewhere, probably on the Aya forums, that the water available for cooking in the Amazon is naturally very acidic? Can anyone verify this?

In my personal experience, non-acidified brews--cooked with IDENTICAL stock following an otherwise identical procedure--are less than 50% as potent for me. Full breakthroughs at 200g were not possible, I only received mild effects for a shorter than normal duration of time.
 
I too want to see the result since I have journeyed on Ayahuasca analogs and want to try a caapi brew instead of a rue based decoction. Of course reducing the amount of acid would probably make it taste better in my opinion.

I used to keep freshwater fish called Discus which are from the Amazon River. I looked up some info about these fish and found the following:

"Discus naturally live in water at a temperature of about 78 to 84 degrees F. with a pH of about 4.2 to 6 containing very little dissolved salt and minerals. Sometimes the pH is higher, but Discus prefer the warm rainwater of the rainforest."

I used to push the pH low with peat moss in the filters. I wish I could recall the pH readings I would take in my tanks, but it was 25 years ago. I am guessing the a pH of 4 would not be too far off though.
 
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