How to keep harmalas from redissolving

[YuxibuSounds]

Hello everyone,
I keep having a problem whenever I try to extract harmalas from caapi.

After basification the harmalas crash out, settle and I siphon away most of the water containing the NAOH.

As soon as I proceed to add a bit more distilled water to clean any possible NAOH leftovers, some of the harmalas immediately redissolve on the water.

I find it curious since with Syrian rue I can repeat this procedure 3 times and the harmalas keep crashed out from the solution.

My question is, how can I avoid this but still make sure there is no NAOH contaminating my harmalas? Will salt help to keep the harmalas out of the solution? Honestly when it comes to caapi I don't tend to do any purification at all, so my intention before this problem came up was to do one more water rinse, filter out the harmalas and dry them.

How to proceed?

 

[Varallo]

The best way is to not use sodium hydroxide but Ammonia, then after you have precipitated the freebase you can just let it dry, the excess of ammonia will also evaporate and leave you with a clean extract with no residual base.

 

[YuxibuSounds]

Cool. I remember reading about some users using it long ago and thinking "I really don't get what's the appeal of working with something so stinky".
I guess I found out through necessity.
I'm definitely going to explore that route since it's so cheap.
What % of dilution should I use?

 

[Varallo]

I would go for a rather concentrated bottle, I use 20 percent but I’m not sure if that is available where you are, I think 5 percent would suffice.

 

[modern]

I use lye or sodium carbonate to measure my caapi teas. The issue you are having might be your water is too acidic? Also even if it does 'dissolve' a bit let it settle for a few hours and it'll precipitate if the ph is still high enough. Also be aware that with the caapi you will have other harmalas which might be much more soluble like harmon and such. I know I get a brown precipitate which is strange.

 

[YuxibuSounds]

I would go for a rather concentrated bottle, I use 20 percent but I’m not sure if that is available where you are, I think 5 percent would suffice.

I have 25 avaliable near me.

I use lye or sodium carbonate to measure my caapi teas. The issue you are having might be your water is too acidic? Also even if it does 'dissolve' a bit let it settle for a few hours and it'll precipitate if the ph is still high enough. Also be aware that with the caapi you will have other harmalas which might be much more soluble like harmon and such. I know I get a brown precipitate which is strange.

My pH meter is not working anymore after so many years out of use. Already have one in the shopping list, waiting for the right moment to make an order.
After removing most of the lye water I added 40ml of fresh distilled water and saw 2/3 of the alkaloids instantly dissolving.
I added 20 ml of sodium carbonate saturated water after the remaining alkaloids settled but nothing else crashed out.
I'll siphon the water into another cup and add some lye to see what happens.

 

[modern]

A clean up that may work better for you is manske. Take your precipitate and add minimal vinegar to dissolve it all then add salt and if it reached saturation and you can see grains on the bottom after a while add a little water. Worked well for extracting thh without having to use ammonia.

Strange that you have 2/3 dissolving but if you are overshooting your ph to around 14 maybe you are precipitating something else? My first extraction I tend to get quite high yield of brownish precipitate but then after 1 or 2 a/b with vinegar filtering and lye again I end up with tan/white harmalas usually only 1/2 the original yield.

 

[doubledog]

Are you sure that redissolved stuff is harmalas?
Imo there is some material in caapi which precipitates in high pH, but is redissolved when washed with water and is not harmala alkaloids.

 

[Varallo]

I have 25 avaliable near me.

This is great

Are you sure that redissolved stuff is harmalas?

I wonder this too, especially since it’s redissolved in water that would probably be pretty basic because of the residual lye.

 

[YuxibuSounds]

Are you sure that redissolved stuff is harmalas?
Imo there is some material in caapi which precipitates in high pH, but is redissolved when washed with water and is not harmala alkaloids.

It really looked like it, but I can't be absolutely sure.
But I've definitely had this problem with caapi before, while when working with Syrian rue I use the exact same procedure this never happens.

I attached a picture after the basification, when part of the alkaloids where still in suspension.
Under a black light both the suspended alks and the ones at the bottom would give off a fluorescent greenish color.
I know a picture is not enough to quantify the held but it gives us a rough idea.
Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture after the first water rinse, but after filtering out whatever was left after the rinse I was left with a miserable yeld. It is still drying at the moment but it doesn't loolike there's more than 200mg in there, and that's a lot less that you would expect looking at the first picture.
I'll post the exact amount once I scrape it from he coffee filter.
I kept the water solution and added more lye, left it settling overnight but nothing substantial came out (second picture, but it's a bit unfocused) wich is really weird and leaves me suspecting those where not harmalas after all.

 

[modern]

How concentrated is your caapi tea? I remember reading some very high yields in the past but I buy direct from farms here and they are thick 10 year old cuttings and only yield MAX 1.5-2% dry after pulling exhaustively in pressure cooker. You also need to cook down quite a lot to make sure that it is concentrated enough. So if I were you I'd expect yields in the range of 1%.

BTW you mentioned that the precipitated give off a green color under black light that means you didn't alkalize enough and the solution is still acidic or at least not alkaline enough to become freebase and precipitate. There should be little to no black light color maybe an extremely faint blue/green. If you didn't toss anything out yet I'd suggest you add vinegar and filtering then reducing until a brown color but not thick syrup like. And then test with black light should give a strong greenish/bluish color add lye until you get precipitate and the color become very faint and leave it overnight to settle completely. (usually a couple hours is enough)

 

[YuxibuSounds]

How concentrated is your caapi tea? I remember reading some very high yields in the past but I buy direct from farms here and they are thick 10 year old cuttings and only yield MAX 1.5-2% dry after pulling exhaustively in pressure cooker. You also need to cook down quite a lot to make sure that it is concentrated enough. So if I were you I'd expect yields in the range of 1%.

Well, here is where it gets as unscientific as it can get..
This is actually an extract from the leftovers of an Ayahuasca bottle.
It had about 30ml of thick liquid full of sediment, and a big chunk of sediment in the bottom of the bottle.
I added 10ml of 20% acetic acid in 100ml hot distilled water and poured it in the bottle, proceeded to break the solid chunks with a fork and then shook it really well. I divided those 110ml into 3 washes that I then combined filtered a couple of times.
I then added 40g of lye into 200ml of water and after I'd cleared I poured some in the acidic solution bit by bit until nothing was crashing out. That resulted in what you see in the first picture. After that photo was taken it took almost 24 to settle on top of my subwoofer that was wobbling half of the time.
The thing is, I've done this a lot of times and either there are very little actives and there's a small amount of precipitates after basification, or there's a lot of them like you can see on that photo.
From there usually 2 scenarios occur:
Either I do a couple of water rinses, filter, dry and get loads of harmalas that produces really amazing changa..
Or, as stated here, most of it disappears after the first rinse and I'm left wondering why.
The procedure and the materials are always the same, but the results differ and I cannot find the variable.

BTW you mentioned that the precipitated give off a green color under black light that means you didn't alkalize enough and the solution is still acidic or at least not alkaline enough to become freebase and precipitate. There should be little to no black light color maybe an extremely faint blue/green. If you didn't toss anything out yet I'd suggest you add vinegar and filtering then reducing until a brown color but not thick syrup like. And then test with black light should give a strong greenish/bluish color add lye until you get precipitate and the color become very faint and leave it overnight to settle completely. (usually a couple hours is enough)

When I moved the lamp really close to the cup I could see the suspended harmalas with a really intense grey color with a faint green hue on it. There was no color on the solution.

I didn't throw it away, but now it is quite diluted and with a bunch of lye on it, wich makes it a pain to work with.

By the way, the collected harmalas yelded 130mg.

 

[modern]

Well, here is where it gets as unscientific as it can get..
This is actually an extract from the leftovers of an Ayahuasca bottle.
It had about 30ml of thick liquid full of sediment, and a big chunk of sediment in the bottom of the bottle.
I added 10ml of 20% acetic acid in 100ml hot distilled water and poured it in the bottle, proceeded to break the solid chunks with a fork and then shook it really well. I divided those 110ml into 3 washes that I then combined filtered a couple of times.
I then added 40g of lye into 200ml of water and after I'd cleared I poured some in the acidic solution bit by bit until nothing was crashing out. That resulted in what you see in the first picture. After that photo was taken it took almost 24 to settle on top of my subwoofer that was wobbling half of the time.
The thing is, I've done this a lot of times and either there are very little actives and there's a small amount of precipitates after basification, or there's a lot of them like you can see on that photo.
From there usually 2 scenarios occur:
Either I do a couple of water rinses, filter, dry and get loads of harmalas that produces really amazing changa..
Or, as stated here, most of it disappears after the first rinse and I'm left wondering why.
The procedure and the materials are always the same, but the results differ and I cannot find the variable.

When I moved the lamp really close to the cup I could see the suspended harmalas with a really intense grey color with a faint green hue on it. There was no color on the solution.

I didn't throw it away, but now it is quite diluted and with a bunch of lye on it, wich makes it a pain to work with.

By the way, the collected harmalas yelded 130mg.

Did it also have dmt in it? Did you also pull that?

The sediment is likely plant material that very slowly precipitated over time.. I always have a layer of brown junk on the bottom of my jars even with lots of filtering.

I don't know how else to help but those cheap ph papers are very helpful to me. I use each strip around 5 times since I just need a small sample.

130mg seems quite low for a thick liquid of ayahuasca since I get around 150mg from 20mg of just brown tea without thickening... Maybe they use another vine/plant in addition to the aya or are just heavier on the dmt?

IDK dose for smoking as changa but you can probably split that into 2-3 doses of sublingual for smoking after.

 

[YuxibuSounds]

Did it also have dmt in it? Did you also pull that?

The sediment is likely plant material that very slowly precipitated over time.. I always have a layer of brown junk on the bottom of my jars even with lots of filtering.

I don't know how else to help but those cheap ph papers are very helpful to me. I use each strip around 5 times since I just need a small sample.

130mg seems quite low for a thick liquid of ayahuasca since I get around 150mg from 20mg of just brown tea without thickening... Maybe they use another vine/plant in addition to the aya or are just heavier on the dmt?

IDK dose for smoking as changa but you can probably split that into 2-3 doses of sublingual for smoking after.

Yes, after all all the harmalas settle in the bottom I siphon the solution into another container, add more base and pull 3 times with limonene. Then I back salt with acetic and do a sodium carb. paste.

My favorite blends lately consist on 1g of this full spectrum Ayahuasca extract, 0,5g of harmalas from the same Ayah and 2g of spice combined into 3,5g of herbs (mostly caapi leaf, mullein and lungwort). This then can be scaled up or down depending on how much i get from each extraction.

Imagine an Ayahuasca ceremony condensed into 40 minutes, this is it. Sometimes I was lucky to be able to work with really great medicines from the shipibo or huni kuin, and that brought things to a whole other level.. really deep healing experiences.
Also, limonene extracts seem to make shine some facets of caapi that the pure harmala extract simply can't capture.

I think I will still blend the harmalas in my next changa batch but I'll wait until I know how much of the limonene extract I got until I decide. I'll also save the basified tea until I get myself some strips or a proper meter.