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Preserving harmala brews at room temperature

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RhythmSpring

RhythmSpring

Established member
Hey, can I have a little guidance on keeping brews from spoiling?

I made a Banisteriopsis muricata brew a couple weeks ago (3x3x3), and stored it in a bottle at room temperature, and it got moldy after like a week or two. I thought there were antifungal compounds in ayahuasca, but I guess not. Maybe I should have mixed in some antifungal admixtures...

What about Syrian rue? Do you think it would have any better chance staying good at room temperature? I know it's also a potent antibacterial/parasitic/viral... is it antifungal? Do you think it would stay better longer? For how long? How do you keep your brews? I don't want to do refrigeration for personal reasons.

Btw, this line of thinking of antifungal compounds as preservatives has worked for me in the past. Like, if I were to make a soup without garlic, it would spoil as normal, within 3-7 days in the fridge. But if I make it with a ton of garlic, it stays good indefinitely, never molding.

Anyway, what say you?
 
Ive never seen caapi grew get spoiled. I keep mine in bottles for years. the shamas keep em in bottles too, by the hundreds, in plain ol room temperature
 
I know! That's what I was going off of. I'd seen them do that, too. Like, coke bottles in the jungle.

But for whatever reason, specks of white and green have appeared on the surface and more... it looks gross.
 
My uninformed opinion is that you can try two things:

1) Pressure cooker canning. Small chance that it makes a mess in the pressure cooker, but I believe it should work, especially in a brew that already boiled for a long time and is not foaming
2) Steam dry your extract to a reside and store that. Simply put your aya in a small pot over a larger pot that is steaming. The heat and steam will carry the water away. Low temp oven should work as well. Hopefully it is not impossible to scrape up for storage. Re-dissolve I'm water to drink.

I haven't tested any of this, but that is where I would start. I'm not aware of any reports of DMT loss in the PC and folks use it to extract rue so no concerns for harmalas.
 
Syrian rue brew definitely can go mouldy. It might be a concentration thing. 50g rue in 2L water is clearly too dilute, for example. Adding acetic acid to 1% concentration prevents this quite effectively, however. Acetic acid is one of the classic food preservatives, of course.

Maybe the caapi brews kept in the bottles are more concentrated; however, I have read that some brews were analysed and found to contain fungal mycelium and others had fermented (yeast) to some measurable alcohol concentration. The information is around here somewhere but I apologise for the lack of a reference.
 
RhythmSpring said:
Do you think the fungus would be safe to drink?

:sick:
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I'm unable to comment further without finding the actual data and, unfortunately, I don't have much of an idea where to start looking right now.

Filtering and boiling the brew again would seem like a good idea in any case.
 
These brews always go moldy left alone. Syrian rue especially—I had a brew go bad in two days once, because I was so stupid as to leave it in a dresser drawer.

Mold needs four things to grow:
Moisture, absence of light, warm temperature, and biological matter to feed on.
The only two of these factors under our control are temperature and light, and so if you're trying to store brews at room temp you'll always be fighting an uphill battle. Your last option is to keep a uv lamp on the brew 24/7. But then you risk degrading the goodies inside.

Maybe you could try adding garlic, but... would you really want to drink the result of that combination? You can look into other natural fungicides, but if you have a bone to pick with refrigerators then your best bet is to only make as much as you are immediately planning to drink (my favourite option :) ).


P.S.: toss that brew. Better safe than waiting for a liver transplant! I have heard that the toxins in mold are invulnerable to heat.
 
bismillah said:
P.S.: toss that brew. Better safe than waiting for a liver transplant! I have heard that the toxins in mold are invulnerable to heat.
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That is the wise advice. For example, several moulds, including some species of Trichoderma, produce gliotoxin which is just generally nasty. Gliotoxin is thermally stable to about 160°C, although its solubility in water is limited. And the range of potential mycotoxins is vast.
 
I brew peganum, decant and filtered, then reduced until the liquid get quite thick, but still liquid. Then I add 20% of strong alcohol (vodka in that case). Keeps for ever.
ps: to give an idea of the concentration i used: 1 drop = 0.1g of seeds.
300 drops = 20ml = 30g of seeds
 
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