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whats this red stuff?

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burnt

burnt

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Senior member Chemical engineer Chemical engineer extraordinaire
SWIM would like to figure out what this supposedly inactive red stuff is in peganum harmala that some extractors have reported.

SWIM has imaged observing this red oily material after recrystallizing harmine (extracted via salt precipitation and basification) in ethanol and methanol. SWIM would like to imagine a solution to what this material is but would like to know others stories about if the've observed it, tested it, or how they extracted it whether willing'y or unwillingly.
 
Hello Burnt!

I think some experimentation took place while you where away for a bit. Given that the "harmala red" case is usually only mentioned briefly and viraly on forums i think that the experimentation done here by Phlux must be the most conclusive on the matter. Have a look here :

Midway the thread and in the next two pages there are some methods to produce harmala red with pictures.

It seems that harmala red weas produced, but as far as i know noone has ever bothered to analyse it using equipment although i think analysis could be straightforward : analyse part of the alkaloids before and after the alcohol treatment.
 
It would definitely be great to analyse it.

Also, burnt, did SWIY see it forming form harmine? SWIM has seen it in harmine/harmaline mixtures after re-x from both ethanol, methanol, IPA and acetone. If they stay long enougg all mixtures start going red.

SWIM also remembers 69ron claiming that it was only harmaline that turns to red? He never got the chance to verify that. But in SWIY's case that was harmine that got converted to the reddish stuff, right?
 
My current batch of caapi feels very clear and euphoric, which hints to me it's very low in harmaline. I have two jars, 1 with 10g's in IPA and 1 with 10g's in acetone, where they have been for 3 days and both liquids are yellow. Rue instantly seems to turn alcohol red, so this hints to me that it is indeed just harmaline that turns red.
 
Well SWIM is going to summarize some imaginary analysis on p harmala soon. But so far in brief SWIM has observed that doing the first precipitation with NaCl and sodium carbonate (pH 8 or so) yielded mostly harmine as a brown powder. The second precipitation with more base added 9 - 10 pH yielded a yellow powder which was mostly harmaline. This is according to imaginary GC-MS analysis.

Then SWIM recrystallized the harmine in ethanol and this red stuff formed. The harmine precipitated as a more tan powder.

SWIM is wondering. Maybe this red stuff is always there but is only really soluble in ethanol. So if someone extracts seeds with ethanol one dilutes their harmaloids with this red crap (so it seems inactive at doses of 100-300mg). If someone precipitates with NaCl some of this stuff precipitates but isn't very noticable because its mostly harmine and harmaline (maybe this could be wrong!). Only when one recrystallizes is this red stuff separate from the harmine and harmaline. SWIM has analyzed this red stuff with GC-MS and there was still harmine in it so SWIM recrystallized again to get more of it. There is still some left (but its like jungle spice there is always a little of the "goods" left). But anyway SWIM thinks this stuff is also not amendable to GC. SWIM tried derivitizing it but it didn't work.

More work needs to be done. SWIM will make this imaginary work more clear when SWIM has time.
 
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