Phalaris Aquatica extraction

[titus]

A friend has been growing some phalaris aquatica cv. Australian from seed recently, for about 2 1/2 months. At first, fertilizer was not used, however in the second month a strong solution of carp-based fertilizer was used every one in a while. The grass had been growing in shade for the whole time. In the week prior to harvest, my friend stopped watering the phalaris, and some significant stressing was observed. They harvested around 35g at 6am, and froze the grass before going back to sleep. Later that day the extraction was done, the method of which wasn't precise by any means, but it went a little like this:

- finely chop the frozen grass and add to 1L of a weak citric acid solution
- boil until reduced by 1/4.
- filter off grass and set aside the liquid, then add the grass material to another 1L of new citric acid solution
- boil this until reduced to around 500mL
- filter, then combine the boils and boil down to around 250mL.
- add to a jar and combine with 30g sodium carbonate, being careful not to add too much at once.
- enough peanut oil is added to reach the top of the jar, and it is left to sit for 1/2-1 hours.
- peanut oil is removed, and salting is done 3x with small amounts of white vinegar.
- enough sodium carbonate is added to the vinegar pulls to make a paste, and to this a small amount of naphtha is added, stirred thoroughly, then filtered off. Around 3 naphtha pulls were done.
- naphtha pulls are added to a small jar and put in the freezer.

So far, my friend has noticed a significant amount of white crystals forming at the bottom of the jar. They removed a small sample with a razor to check its properties; it was solid at room temperature, but quickly began to melt when a small amount of heat was added. My friend isn't totally confident this is DMT + some 5-MeO-DMT (as one would have to get quite lucky to get a good yield from seed-grown phalaris), but they are hopeful. If it is, they are now very grateful for their new phalaris friends

 

[Seeingisbelieving]

I am super stoked for your friend lol! GO SMOALK some grass with your buddies and report back ASAP!

 

[titus]

My buddy is going to bioassay in about a week, and in the meantime they'll do a few more pulls (especially on the sodium carb paste that was kept after being washed with naphtha; my friend suspects there would be a fair amount of freebase still trapped in there).

 

[emtisoul]

Any news for the bioassay?
Also if i dont want to use naphtha to pull with, is there any alternative solution.
I have soda water, sunflower oil and vinegar. Is it possible to extract with just what i have?
If so does this extraction safe? Considering there maybe toxic alkaloids like gramine?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

So far, my friend has noticed a significant amount of white crystals forming at the bottom of the jar. They removed a small sample with a razor to check its properties; it was solid at room temperature, but quickly began to melt when a small amount of heat was added.

This sounds like hydrated sodium acetate.

 

[titus]

I forgot about this thread, sorry about that! So, an update:
This extraction didn't work, the product was definitely not dmt or anything related. The 35g was obviously wayyy too small for an extraction, although the method for the most part was fine. I tried another extraction recently with around 100-150g worth of fresh phalaris that was collected over around 6 weeks. Every 2 weeks, I would collect around 50g of regrowth, freeze and thaw it a few times, then boil it. Basify with sodium carbonate, extract with vegetable oil, then save and freeze the oil. This was done 3 times (the last harvest I only got 35g, but it was dried and the grass was heavily stressed), and then a vinegar salting was done with the combined oil pulls. The vinegar was then basified with sodium carbonate (not made to a paste this time), and around 3 pulls were done with naphtha. This was then evaporated, put in the freezer, evaporated, etc. until I got precipitates.

This time, I was lucky enough to get something, although it was a tiny amount (see photo). It was a sweet smelling, yellow oil at room temperature. I tried smoking it, but all I got was a sweet taste, but no significant vapor. However, this isn't really a disappointment; the period during which I harvested the grass (December-Jan) is reported to be a fairly poor time for tryptamine content in the Southern hemisphere, and the highest content was recorded during April (which is fast approaching!).

I'll try and do the same thing as I did with this extraction over the next 2 months, collecting grass every 2 weeks, although I'll probably just freeze the grass until one final extraction this time. Since I've already harvested 50g, this should get me around 200-300g of phalaris, which I hope will yield something a bit more substantial. I'll try to give an update once this has been completed. Fingers crossed :d

 

[titus]

Any news for the bioassay?
Also if i dont want to use naphtha to pull with, is there any alternative solution.
I have soda water, sunflower oil and vinegar. Is it possible to extract with just what i have?
If so does this extraction safe? Considering there maybe toxic alkaloids like gramine?

You could use d-Limonene in place of naphtha (orange oil is ~90% d-Lim as far as I know), but it's pricy. If you turn the vinegar pulls into a paste before completely letting it dry, you could use acetone, but beware that this will pull gramine, so only do this if you're sure of the tryptamines in your grass (I wouldn't recommend this).

 

[emtisoul]

Nvm
Please update us with the news if there any

 

[dreamer042]

Cut the oil, replace the soda carb with sodium hydroxide, and pull directly to the naphtha. Save yourself some trouble and potential product loss in all those extra steps.

 

[Bisy]

Cut the oil, replace the soda carb with sodium hydroxide, and pull directly to the naphtha. Save yourself some trouble and potential product loss in all those extra steps.

I have to agree here. We are very excited about your ambition and support your endeavor entirely. But I just don't think we are ready for food safe experimentation with phalaris. We need to figure out how to get consistent yields, or just useable yields first. If you do an extraction and feel like you've got something significant, try to repeat it with food grade process.

 

[neurobloom]

I've tried the oil tek on 400g phalaris before using olive, sodium carbonate and white vinegar. I end up with some semi-crystalline hygroscopic light brown residue that smelled sweet and floral. On vaping it on a peice of aluminium foil it barely had any effects. The same grass cooked into a tea and drank with harmala extract was definitely active and made fora a very pleasant trip so i dont think the problem is in the grass alkaloid concentration but it's in the extraction technique. I will soon extract again with dichloromethane and see how ot goes.

 

[titus]

Cut the oil, replace the soda carb with sodium hydroxide, and pull directly to the naphtha. Save yourself some trouble and potential product loss in all those extra steps.

I have to agree here. We are very excited about your ambition and support your endeavor entirely. But I just don't think we are ready for food safe experimentation with phalaris. We need to figure out how to get consistent yields, or just useable yields first. If you do an extraction and feel like you've got something significant, try to repeat it with food grade process.

Yep, I would think so too. Besides not necessarily working great, the oil was just a complete mess... but I tried another method recently and got something interesting happening. I boiled around 50g of brachys + aquatica in 3L of water (with added citric acid, amount not specific), and reduced it to around 100mL. Then I added sodium carbonate until the solution was neutralised and went a bit further until the solution turned dark. I then evaporated this in the oven at around 70C until the solution was pretty thick and there were fats and whatnot crashing out of solution. Now here is where things get interesting...

I poured off the solution into a container and added some acetone. I'm not sure on the amount but it was around twice the volume of the reduced solution. After it was added, the container was shaken pretty thoroughly and to my surprise, when the layers separated, the bottom had congealed into a solid mass. This meant I could pour off the acetone, add more and repeat. The acetone definitely picked up some of this fat, but for the most part the fats were insoluble; they were very soluble in neutral water though. From here I evaporated the acetone until I could no longer smell it, although there was still water. I then took this solution and added a small amount of warm naphtha, separated, removed the naphtha, and repeated around 3 times. The combined naphtha pulls were evaporated and yielded maybe around 10mg of a light yellow oil. I didn't bioassay it but I soaked it into a tissue then lightly feathered a lighter below (yes, this is not the best idea), and a thick white smoke was produced. I tried feathering the lighter below other parts of the tissue just for completeness's sake and nothing happened.

This was just a small test, but it was a lot more promising than anything I'd ever gotten from my previous method. Has anyone else ever noticed fats congealing when acetone is added to solution? This seems like it might be pretty useful.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Interesting results, that sounds worth duplicating.

The acetone definitely picked up some of this fat, but for the most part the fats were insoluble; they were very soluble in neutral water though.

Then it's not fat, at least not the bit that dissolves in neutral water. Maybe protein or carbohydrate. The 'fats' meme is getting a bit tired. ←That was meant to be a link but I couldn't find the right thread!