Enoons Cold Caapi Tek

Note:

This page is a transcription of Enoon's Cold Acetic Acid Extraction of Caapi Tek . The content is to remain accurate as such.

Initial Notes

I performed a cold acetic acid extraction of white Caapi from the MHUK vendor. A previous extraction via Easy Caapi Vine Alkaloid Extraction Guide boiling 5x45min yielded ~ 1.2% alkaloids after several prufication steps. So I want to see if I can reach the same with a cold extraction.

Method

Step 1 - Shred Vine

Begin with whole or partially shredded vine and shred it up as much as possible. This will allow the alkaloids to migrate to the solution easier.

Before shredding.

After shredding.

Step 2 - Collect and Add Acid

This is added to my favorite PP container and approx. 300ml of 3% acetic acid is added.

Shredded Vine in Container.

300ml of 3% acetic acid.

Vine and Acid combined.

Step 3 - Soak

Allow this to soak at room temperature (RT) for 3 days / 72 hours with occasional shaking.

Step 4 - Filter and Collect

After soaking for 72 hours, filter the liquid and set aside. Add another 300ml of 3% acetic acid to the vine and allow to soak for another 72 hours.

Fresh acid added on the left, the first pull on the right.

Step 5 - Repeat

Repeat step 4 again 4 times for a total of 5 x 3 day soaks.

Combine the pulls and reduce a bit. After you have reduced the pulls to a manageable level, base with sodium carbonate or lye.

The orange liquid is decanted off and the alkaloids are washed with fresh distilled water 4 times. Using sodium carbonate will require you to perform more cleaning steps than using lye but it will work in the end nonetheless. Your end product should be white or off white. If it's darker like in the pic below, another A/B step for getting rid of the impurities is in order. Please refer to Easy Caapi Vine Alkaloid Extraction Guide for purification procedures.

From left to right: Na2CO3, decanted water, free-base harmalas in suspension after 2 washes. Notice the based alks (using Na2CO3) - to get a cleaner product A/B steps are required.

Step 6 - Filter

After you are finished rinsing/washing the alkaloids, it's time to filter them. If you do not have a food dehydrator it is recommended to hang the filter to allow it to dry from all sides. Alternately you can try to decant as much water as possible and let the rest evaporate on a pyrex dish.

Alkaloids caught in filter. These are before final cleaning, hence the slightly darker color.

Yield & Conclusion

Yield: After 5 x 3 day pulls, the yield was 1.2% which is the same yield as doing 5 boils.

Conclusion: Save some energy and soak your vine at RT!

Note: I suggest using lye as in Gibran's tek, for several reasons: a) precipitates usually settle in a way that makes decanting easier. using Na2CO3 can cause a strange kind of emulsion. b) precipitates are much cleaner and require much less A/B steps. Using Na2CO3 is possible but you will have to put in more effort to get the same purity, because for some reason the precipitation with Na2CO3 catches a lot of insoluble stuff that colors your product and adds dead/inactive weight to it making dosing more inexact.