These brazilian people at ..w.flordaalma.org/index2.htm
infuse the caapi material resulting from cooking Daime in pure alcohol
to recover further essence for their alchemical perfumes.

We also need to think about whether or not it’s necessary to extract every last molecule of alkaloids from source material. Is there really anything wrong with discarding spent caapi that may still contain a small amount of alkaloids?

Which is more wasteful: Extracting 1g of alkaloids via 4 hours of boiling (and discarding the remaining 0.25g of alkaloids) or extracting 1.25g of alkaloids via 15+ hours of boiling?

Yeah gibran I definitely think its an important question! But if there where non-wasteful tricks to get more of those alkaloids out without much work/energetic usage, I think it would be worth experimenting with

its more than a small ammount of alkaloids..and its more than just longer boils..its the reboiling of the collected sediments somehow..I dont know why..I think its that the harmalas bind to the tannins and drop out..collecting them and reboiling in new clean water though then adding to the other washes and reducing seems to hold them better in the solution.

All I can really say is that this brew is nearly double the potnecy of both 3x3 boils and acidic washes with 3x3 boils..

fractal enchantment and Ms Minxx's claims of a significant difference between 9 and 15 hours of brewing do merit some attention though. I feel like it probably isn't the harmalas contributing to this though.

what else do you think it could be? there is alot more in caapi other than just THH, harmine and harmaline I know that..

..and yeah 15+ hours is along time to brew..Powdering it completley might cut that down..not even sure if its that or the rebrewing of the sediments..or both. Either way Im not worried abotu the cooking time in my situaion becasue we brew large ammounts at once and we dont cook anything else..this is basically all we ever use the stove for other than occasionally heating tea for 5 minutes so I dont feel we waste any more energy than anyone else since we dont cook food ever.

Yeah frac Im definitely not judging you or anything like that, I think we all have our own "mid-way" and strategies to be reasonable in using up resources, and I agree cooking a larger amount at once will be more efficient. Though considering not everybody is in the same situation, I think it would be beneficial to research how to be the most efficient with this. Also because a lot of people might benefit from such information, and with many people doing it, the energetic reduction impact is larger

What about soaking the remaining caapi in vinegar then basifying it ?
Or a long 5 or 7 days cold water extraction ?
I really don't like the long hours of boiling...
Need an alternative.

I actually have no idea. Of course, I improperly worded my thoughts. What I actually meant was, I don't think the remaining harmalas could make that much difference.

This article looks like it might support your idea that the harmalas are binding to tannins, and the additional cooking time might be destroying those tannins, making them more available.

It also fits with olympus mons discovery that using a tannin-binding step produces a stronger brew.

I still have a bunch of the sediment that collects during decanting I was planning on cooking with another brew. Instead I'll try dissolving it again and run another egg through it to see if it picks up more tannins. That would explain my aya journey that went for more than twelve hours, if the tannins reduce bioavailability and the sludge is made up of tannin-bound harmalas.

As I’ve said before, it seems that there might be alkaloids or other active substances that are not easily extracted. It’s possible that such substances could mostly remain “bound” somehow to the plant material for a long time, and be “released” only after many hours of boiling. This is pure speculation.

I typically have done extractions using five 45-minute boils. The water from the first boil, while hot, is deep yellow and transparent. As it cools, it becomes very cloudy and brown. I’ve assumed this means it contains lots of alkaloids.

By the fifth boil, the water is transparent and practically colorless. On cooling, it remains transparent. This seems to be a good indicator that it does not contain many alkaloids.

I never decant prior to basification – all sediment is retained, so there is no loss of alkaloids via this step.

Without actually extracting the alkaloids from a brew and weighing them, it’s hard to say what might be happening with very long boils. Subjective effects may tell us that something is different, but it’s hard to say exactly what that “something” might be.

Regarding energy use – it really doesn’t matter how often you use your stove. The fact remains that 15 hours of boiling requires roughly three times the energy (at three times the cost) of 5 hours of boiling. Whether or not this makes economical sense depends on how much caapi you’re processing, the cost of caapi, and the cost of energy.

How small was your bark broken before starting the boils, gibran?

I start with whole bark, and break it down myself. I try to get it into very thin pieces when possible. Take a look at the first photo of the caapi extraction TEK – it shows the bark prior to boiling. That’s a good point. If you’ve ever seen photos or videos of South American ayahuasca preparation, they really don’t break the vine down much at all. Such large pieces would no doubt benefit from longer boiling.

Another point to make in this thread – some of us boil mainly for ayahuasca brew, others boil mainly for alkaloid extraction. When boiling for extraction, adding lots of foul-tasting acid isn’t a problem. When boiling for brew, adding acid might not be desirable. So that brings up another group of questions: How does acid effect the extraction efficiency? Does it matter what acid is used? How much acid is optimal?

Snozz did this experiment showing a pretty huge effect of acidification for extracting the harmalas.

Dagger claims earlier in this thread, as well as elsewhere, that Harmala phosphates are less water-soluble than other salts. I've also read that Harmala citrates are very poorly water-soluble. I guess this is something we definitely need some experiments with.

How much acid will depend very much, as you mention, whether its for drinking the brew or extracting the harmalas.

For people less financially endowed, longer boils may be a more viable option.

I was slammed with 75g of this brew, and I normally like to take 125g (or MOAR), so this is very interesting. I never noticed much of a difference between three and four boils, but in my previous experiments I never tried cooking longer AND reboiling the sediments.

I have reboiled sediment in the past (whatever decanted at the bottom of my jar, thick brown sludge) to make a second and equally active brew.

Even more interesting, again, this brew was made with unacidified water, and it's already been proven here that acid boils do pull more.

It would be great if people could experiment with longer cooks and reboiling sediment!

What with this sediment thing & Gibran's test getting 83% out with four x thirty minutes boil's we may have an effective non acidified but fairly efficient brewing process that can be done of the coarse of a week in just over 30 minute installments. A brew a day, settle and decant, combine the 4 days sediments for a 5th day brewing.

freezing plants before, or after boiling also might help bust up barriers that hold in alkaloids.

so after my latest aya prep (which consisted of 3 boils of 3 hours each with no acid), the caapi was put in the freezer.

yesterday, i boiled the bark in 50/50 water-vinegar for over 2 hours. the result was not very dark or potent looking.

i basified with koh to 13 and got a small amount of yellow precip. i dont think it is going to amount to much...but will post back results.

Was your Caapi shredded or powdered?

^^ it was whole, i pounded it out until nicely shredded

why not just use a black light to see when your pulls/cooks are finished pulling goodies? U can see relative concentrations too.. Many cooks of 30 mins with slightly vit c acidified water or plain filtered water (check ph is 7 or just below..) me thinks will be key ro removing all with energy efficiency, using the light periodically to see when ur wasting ur time. Then cooks combined and a dash of vit c added to act as anti-oxidant and reduced.
A cat i knew used to get reliably 15+ % harmalas from rue like this in extracts. You'd be suprised, the goodies just keep on coming out when U looking with uv, 7 cooks was not enough sometimes, sometimes 10 or 11 haha till he got bored (was in past so if memory serves correct). Mayb your cook times seems to make such a huge difference to your brews because you're not using acid and your spring water is slightly alkaline as most mineral/spring water is in my experience. You are having to wait for the now freebased harmalas (from the basic spring water) to react with co2 in the air under a sorta reflux for the formed carbonates to get into solution..It seems the conundrum lies in the fact that the harmala salts are not too water soluble but quite water soluble. So the water added to brew gets saturated quickly and the most likely naturally occuring carbonate needs more fresh water to pull more, and again, and again..

Mayb whats important is how many cooks not how long? It only gets dependent on how long U cook when your water is naturally slighty basic and you have to wait for the co2 in the air to acidify the solution or salt the freebases through cooking?

Use a blacklight, then yer not guessing, harmalas glow sooo bright haha. You'll see stains start glowing where you spilt a brew a year ago!