Cold water yage

[Daytona Dan Jackson]

I reckon I've read a great deal about ayahuasca but haven't come across much hard information about whether or not a cold water caapi extraction is worthwhile.

To what extent it would work compared to the 10-hour boil?

I'm a bit of a conservationist and would like to conserve energy when I can ... though other times in the jungle we boiled our tea down over an open flame.

Our next jungle trek will be accompanied by yage and mhrb and there was hopes it could be done with nothing but alkaline water - possibly even using the percolator method for the mhrb. Then an egg white clarification on the bark tea.

Most things I've read suggest boiling the vine for a very long time and I'll do that if I have to but I would be more inclined to do a cold water shake and store for a week. Dan has some very nice pieces of yellow and black caapi.

btw, Daytona Dan is new to this forum. Check out some of his botany pics: post-43393.html?f=53

A great sporting day to ya all!

 

[Daytona Dan Jackson]

well I kept digging and though I knew this would work I found that not only will the percolator method work - it will make a very strong brew (part. w/ caapi and mhrb) esp. if you use a good bit of water and reduce or use around what you want the final volume to be and then run that water through the percolator a couple (or few) times.

this works as well or better with powderized mhrb - and the finer the caapi the better obviously.

Dan also has quite possibly the perfect thing for crushing his vine: Creek Indian pounding stone with accompanying pestle / hammer.

it's possible the percolator method for this kind of brew has been discussed but let me warn fella travelers that when done properly it can be super potent - from both force and light. Some reports of this was talking in terms of more than doubled potency but Dan and his group of adventurers will take our time in determining the differences.

 

[ophiuchus]

hopes it could be done with nothing but alkaline water - possibly even using the percolator method for the mhrb

is that to say that the percolator doesn't use heat? i was under the impression that a percolator brews and rebrews (constantly re-cycling the brew) passing it through a heat source. maybe i just read something in your post incorrectly. but did you figure out whether or not ayahuasca can be made without heat?

 

[Daytona Dan Jackson]

hopes it could be done with nothing but alkaline water - possibly even using the percolator method for the mhrb

is that to say that the percolator doesn't use heat? i was under the impression that a percolator brews and rebrews (constantly re-cycling the brew) passing it through a heat source. maybe i just read something in your post incorrectly. but did you figure out whether or not ayahuasca can be made without heat?

It indeed can be made with cold water ... though starting with hot (not boiling) water is likely better at pulling out more alkaloids. of course, these kinds of nebulous hypothesis must be tested.

The percolator I'm talking about is a home-made version using a 1-liter plastic bottle, a cottonswab and a cloth to put on top of the herbs.

here's a diagram of this:

http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/9402 ... cwpnx8.jpg

 

[ophiuchus]

interesting. looks to be more like a regular brewer or a french press (referring to coffee) than a percolator. this was my idea of a percolator, though if one is using cold water, the process by which it actually "percolates" must be different.

from an internet article on how a percolator (coffee) works: "In the bottom section of the percolator the user places the correct amount of water for the amount of coffee to be made. The basket, into which the ground coffee is placed, is held aloft in the pot by a hollow tube, at the bottom of which is a stand. Water in the bottom of the pot is brought to boiling, or nearly so. The heated water is forced up the center, hollow tube. At the top of the tube the heated water is dispersed downward, often by a small glass dome in the lid. This water then, by the force of gravity, goes through the perforated lid on the basket containing the coffee grounds, dribbles through the coffee, then leaves the basket through little holes under the grounds on the bottom of the basket. That brewed coffee is then mixed with the water heating in the bottom of the main pot where the process begins anew. All of these parts can be seen here, the basket assembly shown inset is not to scale, being larger than shown in the picture."