Fermenting Sceletium/Sinicuichi In Winter

[Guest Øskorei]

Didnt you call someone a little bitch for asking about a topic covered in another thread??? oh yeah, that was me...

Guilty as charged. No record of that post though, eh ?

what is logical about doing something pointless? I don't understand why you are trying to delevelop a new method without understanding the goals and principles of what you are trying to get in the end result. Decarboxylation wil not happen at 100degC, so why bother?

So I've not recalled the precise temperature for alternatives to fermentation, damn this old man's memory - however my comments/queries on alternate methodology (to fermenting) are borne from the recent statement:

Torsten: The aim of fermentation was primarily to get rid of the oxalic acid in the material. Oxalic acid decarboxylates at about 150 degC, which is why you can also just dry your material and then heat in the oven at 150 for a couple of hours.

There's not any proclamations from the Ø to perpetuate any 'new' methods, it was more a 'chucking around' of ideas & seeking feedback/discussion from some pioneers in the field, mostly for my own edumacation where fermenting had created problems (as mentioned). My ONLY crime here is that I misquoted/misread the temperature. 'Twas less about 'adjustments' and more about momentary lack of attention-to-detail. Please excuse my falliability.

Ø: So yea, marbles or orther such filler might work, to reduce the chamber's 'free space'. But what of water ? Surely that would mean a far less overall desired temperature ideal..........

T: The temprature is dictated by outside heat, not by the fermentation.

Indeed... outside temperature dictating the mean average temp inside the jar. A more consistent area of liquid/solid mass would promote a more regular temperature cycle, compared to a half-empty jar of plant matter(&juice).

Anyway, it's all about the ethneos, hey guys ? I'm just trying to sort out my first home-spun batch of kanna.

[Auxin]

Decarboxylation wil not happen at 100degC

Decomp isnt the only thing to consider. At 100° C it begins to sublime, sublimation is optimal at 157° C (note: sublimation of oxalic acid damages ovens), much above 157° and it begins to decompose ('decarboxylate') primarially into large quantities of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Dont bake it without ventilation! Oxalic acid fumes, carbon monoxide, and formic acid (another decomp product) are bad to breathe. I'd also avoid using vaporizors even with fermented products, smoking might not be as dangerous (carbon monoxide is flammable so some would be burned away at least).

Dont ask me for improved methods tho, S. tortuosum has never been in AFSR so I dont have it

[Torsten]

I think the quantities of gases evolved during baking small batches are no threat to health and neither are the traces in the final material. They might take the shine off your crome oven handles, but that's about it

[hebrew]

i often speak with an xhosa initiate in South Africa and one day we were talkgin about sceletium this is what he wrote to me about the fermentation of sceletium

Dear........

It is important only to use developed specimens 3-5 years old. Root development is really important for alkaloid content. Alkaloid content is highest at the time of flowering and because you need to harvest the whole plant roots and all, you might as well allow it to develop seeds for replanting. To properly prepare the material for fermentation, you will need two good grinding stones - one flat and relatively smooth and the other oval shaped and large or small enough to be held in one hand. Only use basalt, which is hard and does not powder and spoil the plant material by mixing with it - basalt is formed from very hot siliceous material that comes up from under the earth's mantle - it is quite different to volcanic material that contains a high degree of ash. Make sure all the soil is off the root - rinse with water without wetting the rest of the plant and towel dry. Remove flowers and/ or seeds from the plant before preparation. Now knock the shyte out of the whole plant root and all (this can be very cathartic when one is pissed with work or life in general, hehe) - the object is to hammer the juice out of the fatish leaves and to split the root completely open until it breaks up into shreds and exposes the damp interior. Don't worry about the juice - all the active alkaloids are in the plant material and not in the juice. Now get hold of a good white, blue or green plastic bag - the colour doesn't matter as long as it is not a clear bag. It should have no holes in it - get a sizable one from your local supermarket. Now pick up all the plant material and put it in the bag. The bag needs to have some fresh air enclosed in it before sealing tightly. The reason is simple - all the irritant oxalates (oxalic acid) are going to be chowed up by microorganisms present in air and which any person is not likely to see. So make sure it is a good dollop or two - and make sure your bag is big enough at the outset. Now put it in a protected place where it is likely to get good sun during the day. It must stay there during the night, too - the alteration in diurnal temperature is good to leech out the oxalates. The entire fermentation process must last a full 10 days. Every second day open the packet and turn over the material - the microorganisms only have access to the exposed upper layer, so turn the material on the bottom to be on top. Reseal with a good dollop or two of fresh air in the bag. It is important to close the bag properly so that the damn critters don't escape (grin). Continue in this way until the tenth day is reached. Now throw out all the material on newsprint and dry quickly in good sunlight. If it happens to be raining outside, for example, one can delay for a day or equally put it on the newsprint in a place inside where you know the sun usually comes through. Don't for any reason dry in an oven - it makes the material absolutely unpalatable and it tastes worse than shit. (grin) Once crispy dry, put it all - roots and all - through a fine sive (but not the finest sive coz when it is too fine it is difficult to use sub-lingually). Put it on a nice clean piece of thick aluminium foil and turn up the corners to allow all the fine material to fall to the middle and mix it all up well so that leaves and roots are equally and evenly mixed. Now, get yourself a tea bag. Carefully slit it open at the top and throw out the tea and any powder that might be inside. Take a couple of pinches of the mixed ground material and line the inside of the bag to about a third of the bag - don't make too fat nor too thin coz once you wet it the contents will shrink slightly. Reseal the bag without folding the top over the Sceletium layer. One can use a needle and thread to close it, too, and fold down to just above the Sceletium layer. Now get a little bit of purified or distilled water or just cooled boiled water from your kettle and put it in a glass or cup and dip the bag in the water a couple of times just to wet the bag and the contents within without making it too soggy. Now slip the bag under your tongue and just press your tongue down hard on it and kinda suck downwards. Please do this on an empty stomach coz if you have to swallow some of the juice it will produce terrible nausea if one has eaten before. The object is not to have a lot of juice swilling round one's mouth - hence wetting the bag. The mesembrine is taken up under the tongue and goes via the Vagus nerve to the heart and direct to the brain. 15-20 minutes you will begin to feel the full effects starting with a numbness in the mouth. Eventually, the bag with lose its slightly bitter taste and then you can remove it, but don't throw it away - there are still smokable alkaloids present. Dry the bag in the sun and then remove the material - it smokes smooth and has has a nice taste and Khoi used it as the original hemp mix. It is slightly sedative, although not unpleasantly so. If one has used acid or shrooms the day before, one is more sensitive to the effects of sucked Sceletium the day after - it is colourful and takes away all the day after blues associated with tripping and raises one's mood and energy level slightly. While under the effects of it, one is not likely to feel hungry - it induces a mild anorexia, which disappears as the effects wear off. After a good night's sleep one will awaken feeling on top of the world and feel quite energetic and composed the next day.

If you have any more questions, just send them on

Happy Sceletium,

Cheers,

m

make of it as you will

hebrew

in regards to aptenia he says

aptenia is worth a try and prepare it just the same as sceletium.

i got a shit load of aptenia out the fron to fthe house but from what i have heard it is noway in the same leauge as sceletium

Edited July 15, 2007 by hebrew

[apothecary]

Damn hebs!

Amazing post. That kind of thing reinspires me to work more with sceletium!

How come this guy isn't a member here?

[hebrew]

apoth... he knows about SAB but not sure why he doesn't post here.

[planthelper]

thanks for that post hebrew, your mate knows his scelly very well!

very inspiring, thx again.

[hebrew]

no problems, yeah he knows his shit thats true.

knows a fair bit about dreaming herbs as well i should get him to write something about silene as well.

i will find his article on xhosa initiation pretty interesting

[Torsten]

Great post, but there are a few discrepancies I'd love to discuss with your friend.

1 - I have not found any difference between the aerial parts only compared to whole plant material. Most commercial producers don't use the whole plant. It seems to me a waste to use the root unless you have excess plants.

The stems is a different matter though. I found leaf-only material to be quite useless.

2 - putting the fermented mush on newspaper will result in all the juice soaking into the paper. In an earlier line he said that the smashing and stirring of the brew is designed to draw the alkaloids out of the material. So if you draw them out into the juice, and then soak them into the newprint, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose?

3 - I am pretty sure the miroorganisms that do the fermentation are anaerobic. I am doing this from memory and I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure the species responsible for gobbling up the oxalic acid has been identified. This would be in the literature. Most of the people I know who ferment do so with as little air as possible and those who do use air often fail with toxic slime disasters as the result.

Also, the required microbes are apparently in the soil, so thorough washing may not be quite that desirable.

4 - "The mesembrine is taken up under the tongue and goes via the Vagus nerve to the heart and direct to the brain. "

Interesting trick. A little removed from reality though

I really like his emphasis on the sublingual absorption method. Many things that are highly effective when snorted also work very effectively when taken under the tongue and this appears to be true for scelly as well. Pity that the rest is like a swiss cheese, so I'd prefer for someone else to confirm the sublingual benefits before spreading it as gospel.

[planthelper]

ok, i found my write up on how to ferment sceletium, based on the traditional methodes.

promoting this old post gives me once more the opportunety to talk about something, what i think is worth more investigation. i think it's possible that whilst one dries out the fermented material, some areas concentrate the actives.

let's say, a dry rim forms when you are drying the material, and everytime the (still wet) material get's stired, it re'wets the rim. over time this area seems to accumulate more and more of the actives, so one could conclude that with further investigation and experimentation, a methode could be developed which would produce extra strong sceletium resin.

my theory goes, that somehow when the material dries out, the actives rather bind themselves to an area wher already actives have dried up before.

the idea to this happend accidently, when i bioessayed some scelly via pyrolisation.

i noticed a small chunk of crusty material, in the jar i used to ferment and dry out the sceletium.

smoking this chunk via a waterpipe, resulted firstly in some scary (breathing depressed) moments, but after this, 30min of absolute bliss, including cev's. every thought i had, shaped itselve into a cev!

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...rment+sceletium

[XipeTotec]

Now put it in a protected place where it is likely to get good sun during the day. It must stay there during the night, too - the alteration in diurnal temperature is good to leech out the oxalates.

do you guys agree with this (it is referring to the fermentation process)... or is it preferred to keep as warm as possible 24/7?

also, in another thread... it was recommended to leave stems out.... as mold is more likely to form on them (as they are woody), but others recommend leaving stems, and roots in... especially as they are said to contain higher alkaloid content. Also, torsten suggests leaving 10 mm gap from top... is this necessary to allow space for gas to form... or could the gap be less?

Edited January 8, 2008 by XipeTotec

[Conan Troutman]

I dry my ferments in a pyrex oven type dish and always seem to find an almost xtal substance forms on the sides of the dish..why I haven't tested this separately don't ask me! next time...

in the right conditions you shouldnt have to worry about mold Xipe, just make sure you use an amount of root in the process!..

[KlUe]

I doubt the stomach leather pouches used for fermenting sceletium traditionally were all that hygienic.

Lol, for some reason this just reminds me of my Fiji trip and the unhygenic brewing of Kava by the locals.

[planthelper]

I dry my ferments in a pyrex oven type dish and always seem to find an almost xtal substance forms on the sides of the dish..why I haven't tested this separately don't ask me! next time...

in the right conditions you shouldnt have to worry about mold Xipe, just make sure you use an amount of root in the process!..

and to my theory this xtall material and the stuff around it compromises of the strongest material.

the tiny x talls will dissapear in the later process, however look out for the firm and resin like material which might collect in form of a rim inside the glasware. somehow this crusty material seems to concentrate the actives, it was this crust which gave me cev after smoking it.

Edited January 12, 2008 by planthelper

[Maurice]

I'm a newbie,

and am rather frustrated with the absence of understanding of lactic acid anaerobic fermentation of vegetable process.

The primer for this understanding is "Wild fermentation" by Sandor Katz.

The use of a traditiional crock for Sceletium fermentation is appropriate,

as is the use of heat (rather than sunlight)

and the material needs to be in an anaerobic environment (use of crock or food grade pale, with plate and stone weighing material beneath liquid {use of marbles rather primitive} , and I disagree with Tortson that root soil has bacteria, general knowledge of vegetable fermentation indicates bacteria reside on leaf/fruit matter,

and that I suspect that different chemistry is occuring when comparing heat and fermentation for prep of kanna.

Dogs bury bones to anaerobic ferment the meat, so lets take our cue from mans' best friend!

[Monk]

Maurice, your post really got me thinking....and googling. Check out what I found:

Lactobacillus Eating Kidney Stone Oxalates Study

That clearly indicates that various Lactobacillus sp. decarboxylate oxalic acid. So you're right. And we all should be consuming more yogurt, kefir etc. especially those of us that consume odd plants with hefty oxalate content...most of us.

But then I found this:

Bacillus subtilis YvrK Is an Acid-Induced Oxalate Decarboxylase

Bacillus subtilis is a common soil bacterium found on and around roots. Furthermore, the article says that, "Reports of oxalate decarboxylases have, with the exception of the guinea pig liver enzyme (15, 19), been restricted to fungi." Considering that there would certainly be various types of fungi present on and around plant roots, there's gonna be other organisms taking care of business too. So Torsten and others that indicate that the roots help make a better product are correct also.

This seems to be one of those friendly, happy times when everybody is right and the disagreement only elucidates better info. Bravo

[XipeTotec]

Maurice, your post really got me thinking....and googling. Check out what I found:

Lactobacillus Eating Kidney Stone Oxalates Study

That clearly indicates that various Lactobacillus sp. decarboxylate oxalic acid. So you're right. And we all should be consuming more yogurt, kefir etc. especially those of us that consume odd plants with hefty oxalate content...most of us.

But then I found this:

Bacillus subtilis YvrK Is an Acid-Induced Oxalate Decarboxylase

Bacillus subtilis is a common soil bacterium found on and around roots. Furthermore, the article says that, "Reports of oxalate decarboxylases have, with the exception of the guinea pig liver enzyme (15, 19), been restricted to fungi." Considering that there would certainly be various types of fungi present on and around plant roots, there's gonna be other organisms taking care of business too. So Torsten and others that indicate that the roots help make a better product are correct also.

This seems to be one of those friendly, happy times when everybody is right and the disagreement only elucidates better info. Bravo

in theory, could adding a probiotic to the jar promote decarboxlation (is that even a real word?)?

[TAG]

Howdy,

Im a relative newbie too, but I have been fermenting kanna by putting small quantities in freezer bags and squeezing the air out, then letting it sit in a warm spot for a couple of weeks. Seems to work.... The beauty of the bag is that it will expand as gasses are created.

On the point of a warm spot in winter. Why not leave it on your PC, or monitor (if you have CRT)? Or, generally if you are after keeping something in a jar then what about one of these USB Cup Warmers (http://www.mrgadget.com.au/catalog/mrgadget-usb-cup-warmer-p-544.html). Im pretty sure I have seen them in Coles / Woolies for about $20 too. You could probably make the unit variable in temp by putting in a suitable variable resistor (make sure it can handle the amperage and be rated at at least 12v - someone with electronics skill could probably give you specifics!).

Hope it helps

Edited February 28, 2008 by TAG

[XipeTotec]

another idea i had was for poor weather days and over night was keeping jar inside a yogurt maker... I also posted in another thread that a good heat source might be inside a car on a sunny day not that i'd know, i dont seem to good at the whole process

Edited February 28, 2008 by XipeTotec

[Yeti101]

I find (for small quantities only) a zip-lock bag in my jeans pocket for a few days produces superior results to jar fermentation - so long as the bag stays closed.

[Guest Øskorei]

I find (for small quantities only) a zip-lock bag in my jeans pocket for a few days produces superior results to jar fermentation - so long as the bag stays closed.

Yea, IF it stays closed. Try explaining smelly green goo dripping from your crotch area.

[Maurice]

Still not convinced of the need to use soil as an innoculant to ferment kanna.

Every plant in the world has co-exitent bacteria for fermentation under the right conditions.

Anyway, I have spent years fermenting my own olives, kimchi, kraut, dill cucumbers, etc,

no great mystery, but lots of artfulness. Heat is definitely important, however my olives take

6-12 months to ferment in a cool cellar, rather than the 10 days for cucumbers in summer.

I use a crock from Bendigo pottery (Vict, Aust), which costs about $150, and is one of my wisest

investments ever. They are about 10 litres volume, ex water tower, fitted with special fermentation weight.

Bendigo pottery provides these for olive fermention.

Kanna is no different, this vessel may be a bit large for small quantities, but definitely way to go for larger

quantities.

[Monk]

in theory, could adding a probiotic to the jar promote decarboxlation (is that even a real word?)?

I suppose so, but I don't think it's necessary as plant surfaces are rife with Lactobacillus sp.

another idea i had was for poor weather days and over night was keeping jar inside a yogurt maker...

Great idea! I found a pretty good yogurt maker for about $30.00 and it's gonna be one of my next investments I bet it will increase the speed and efficiency of the process in season or out of season to keep the material at the ideal lactic acid bacteria temps. over the course of the fermentation.

Still not convinced of the need to use soil as an innoculant to ferment kanna.

No one is saying that it's 'necessary.' They are saying that adding the roots improves the end product. It may be certain compounds in the roots or certain organisms on the roots or both that does this.

Also, no one is trying to convince any one of anything. Certain individuals with a good deal of experience at fermenting kanna have shared what has worked best for them in order to light the way for others with less experience. I'm sure with your experience at making the above mentioned food products you can appreciate the importance and value of this. As for me, I'll take experience over theory any day of the week.

EDIT: Then again, when I doubt things, I test them (hint, hint )

Edited March 4, 2008 by FM.

[t st tantra]

is that a new yogurt maker for $30?

where are such things purchased?

sounds useful.....

t s t .

[Maurice]

is that a new yogurt maker for $30?

where are such things purchased?

sounds useful.....

t s t .

You need to understand fermentation and I thus reiterate Katz' book, which also discusses making yoghurt.

The issue is aerobic (yoghurt) V anaerobic (olives, cucs, kanna?), and my opinion is that ethno fermentation

of kanna was anaerobic, so a yoghurt maker will ONLY work if the material is weighted below liquid (OWN)

during process.

As for the ANGLO mentality of either/or,(cowardly avoidence of paradox/adversary) re science V art, the ancients understood

the avoidence of barbaric ANGLO brain chemistry by assuming both this/that. And isn't that the point of psychadelics??