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Pressure Cooker No Good w/ Caapi????

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Bezerker

Bezerker

Rising Star
I've been trying to use a Pressure Cooker(PC) to get the actives into solution from B.caapi vine.

First using "McKenna Red" young vine. Yield was around .04%....real shitty. I figured it was really weak vine.

Second attempt using "Trueno" black vine (5-7x thicker than the yound red vine) and I also did an additional cycle with the PC (15psi for 15min) for a total of 4 cycles. I haven't finished the extraction, but it already looks weak. If I don't see some substantial precipitate soon, I'm just going to chuck it.

So I'm wondering why? The PC always works great for other stubborn alks, ie. cactus and syrian rue.

All I can think is the extraction is more dependent on duration of exposure to the heated acidic water, than the temperature.
OR, The PC is destroying the actives, but I doubt it.

Gibran's tek gently boiled for 30mins and 4 cycles. 2hrs in solution

I PC'd for 15min at 15psi for 4 cycles. 1hr20min because the PC had to heat up during each cycle for 5min.

Traditionally for Aya 3 cycles for 3 hrs each. 9hrs in solution

Any ideas???
 
Never used a pc for caapi extract ..

Last batch of vine I attempted to extract via a gibran easy caapi extract using 5 boils, I got nothing .. apparently the vine was weak ...

Perhaps that is what you are experiencing too ..

Only way to come to any real conclusion would to be to use the same material again, only doing it with a few boils.. and see if anything else comes out ..

keep us updated
 
I have successfully used a pressure cooker to extract Caapi into solution several times. I have never extracted the resulting tea but after reducing, it is a tan opaque color indicating a reasonable concentration of actives and it is certainly potent when consumed.

I use finely shredded Caapi and do 3-4 cooks of 30-45 minutes each with only water, no acid. What is the consistency of your vine? I would imagine if it is less shredded, more cook time is required.

Using a pressure cooker should be more effective at extracting the alkaloids into solution so at this point it seems that you might just be dealing with weak vine as mentioned.
 
If you have a UV light handy, you could check if the solutions glow. Should be a crude way to see if your still pulling any harmalas, or if your vine is weak and none of the pulls are very fluorescent.
 
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