Liebermann Reagent Color Chart and How to Read It
Liebermann color chart: cocaine runs yellow to orange, MDMA goes brown-black, ketamine barely reacts. How to read the result and what it cannot tell you.
August 11, 2026 · Jordan Mercer
Contents
Liebermann is a confirmation reagent, not a first reagent. It runs light yellow to orange with cocaine, brown-black to black with MDMA, and a very pale yellow with ketamine, and its job is to add a second data point to a result you already got from Marquis or Morris. It is also the reagent people reach for when they want information about cocaine adulterants, and that is the part where the guidance has changed.
The color chart
Liebermann is potassium nitrite in concentrated sulfuric acid. It starts out clear and colorless, and it is one of the fast reagents: you have roughly 40 to 45 seconds. Every reagent eventually darkens on its own, so a color that only shows up after several minutes is not a result.
| Substance | Liebermann color |
|---|---|
| Cocaine | Light yellow → orange → brick red-orange |
| MDMA and MDA | Intense brown-black to black, fast |
| PMA and PMMA | Purple-brown |
| Amphetamine and methamphetamine | Orange to red |
| Ketamine | Very pale yellow, sometimes hard to see |
| 2C-B | Light yellow through dark black with a yellow ring |
| Heroin and morphine | Purple to black |
| Oxycodone | No reaction → faint brown → reddish-purplish-brown |
| Cathinones (mephedrone, methcathinone) | Bright yellow |
| Methylone | Orange → brown |
| MDPV | Yellow → green |
| 4-FA | Orange to reddish-orange |
| DMT | Brown → black |
| MXE | Orange-brown |
| 3-MeO-PCP | Dark reddish brown |
| Acetaminophen (paracetamol) | Purple-brown |
| Alprazolam | No reaction |
| LSD | No fast, vivid reaction |
The one reaction worth memorizing
MDMA goes black quickly. PMA and PMMA go purple-brown. That difference matters more than any other line on the chart. PMA and PMMA get sold as ecstasy, come on far more slowly so people redose while waiting, and interfere with the body’s ability to shed heat, which is why they turn up in fatal overheating cases. A sample sold as molly that reads purple-brown instead of black is a serious warning.
The catch is that acetaminophen reads purple-brown too, so Liebermann on its own cannot separate a PMMA sample from a paracetamol-cut one. That is exactly the situation multiple reagents exist for. Run Marquis and Simon’s as well, and read the Marquis color guide so you can interpret them together.
Orange no longer means levamisole
Liebermann is the second step in DanceSafe’s cocaine kit, after Morris. The old harm reduction folklore was that an orange Liebermann meant levamisole in the sample. That is not how the reaction is read any more.
The current guidance is narrower and more honest. A light yellow result means levamisole is not present. An orange result means levamisole may or may not be present, because cocaine on its own now produces orange reactions with some frequency. DanceSafe revised this publicly as the supply shifted.
So treat Liebermann on cocaine as a range check, not an adulterant test. Anything from light yellow to orange fits cocaine. It will not tell you what your cocaine is cut with, and it cannot see fentanyl. Cocaine is now among the most common non-opioid drugs found contaminated with fentanyl, so run a strip every time, and read it the counterintuitive way: one line is POSITIVE, two lines is NEGATIVE. Method is in our fentanyl test strip guide. For what an adulterant test would actually have to catch, see our post on levamisole in cocaine.
Running it
- Use a pinhead-sized sample. Roughly 10 mg, finely crushed. More sample makes the color harder to read, not easier.
- Put it on a white ceramic plate or the kit’s test tray, never on metal or anything the acid can eat.
- Add one drop without letting the dropper touch the sample.
- Read within the first 40 to 45 seconds and note both the color and how fast it arrived. Speed is information.
- Use a blank, a drop of reagent on its own, to compare against. Reagents are tinted and darken with age, and a blank stops you reading the bottle’s own color as a reaction.
- Read in daylight or under a white LED. Colored lighting is the top cause of misjudged reagent colors.
The mistakes that cause misreads
Reading late. A brown or black color that shows up at three minutes is oxidation, not a result.
Overloading the plate. A large pile looks uniformly black and hides the hue, which is the one thing you need when you are trying to tell black from purple-brown.
Treating pale yellow as nothing. With ketamine, the expected reaction genuinely is a very faint yellow. Compare against your blank before you call it a non-reaction.
Using Liebermann as a standalone ID. Cocaine, cathinones and several other things all live in the yellow-to-orange band.
Assuming a mixture will show itself. Darker colors overshadow lighter ones, and a small amount of a second substance may produce no visible change at all.
What it cannot tell you
Liebermann cannot measure purity or dose. No at-home reagent quantifies anything, so a strong color says nothing about how much active drug is in the sample. It cannot see fentanyl or benzodiazepine adulterants, and it cannot confirm that only one substance is present.
It is also the wrong tool for blotter. Reading an indole means Ehrlich, covered in our Ehrlich reagent color chart, with the broader case in should you test LSD.
Read it inside 45 seconds, against a blank, under white light: yellow to orange is the cocaine range, fast brown-black is MDMA, purple-brown is a PMA/PMMA warning, and very pale yellow fits ketamine. Everything else is a job for a second reagent.
Sources: DanceSafe reagent testing instructions, v17 | DanceSafe reagent reaction updates | Reagent Tests UK