Maybe you are dehydrating the goo with fesh EA? Fresh EA may be absorbing water.

Resting the extract in the fridge before salting will get water out of the EA (water solubility in EA goes down with temperarure). The current TEK suggests this for newcomers.

I think you want the xtalization temp to be greater than or equal to the resting temp. This way, I think water will remain dissolved in EA. I would not xtalize at a lower temp than extraction/resting temp because of the risk of water dropping out of EA when colder and potentially mixing with the crashing product forming goo (possibly).

Edit: I wonder if a source for goo is resting/decanting in a warm environment (e.g garage in the summer and then xtalizing in a colder environment where water will come out of solution (e.g. A/C house or fridge). There may be a buffer because citric acid mono hydrate could absorb water amd form a higher hydrate in solution, which may explain why goo formed in some examples that did not have excess citric acid.

I was thinking the same thing. I find it confusing though that the mescaline is in the EA and not in the goo. Do you think I should add the leftover goo to another extraction attempt, try to extract any possible mescaline left by using the method you described earlier in this thread to skelly0311 or discard the goo as the mescaline crystallizes now in EA?


As said in my first post I tried this but got afraid because of the condensation that occurred. I should try again and decant directly after taking it out.

I also need to figure out why I have excess water. It is currently very hot where I am at (over 35°C/95°F during the day). I have no AC and let everything sit at the current room temperature my living room is at. I have been adding the citric acid in the evening letting it sit overnight when the temperatures drop to around 25°C/77°F. So maybe that makes the excess water go out of the EA. I also did not add huge amounts of citric acid as I was going for the slow crystallization attempt. For my next attempt I will let the extract sit in the fridge over night and add citric acid in larger amounts in the morning to see if I can avoid the goo.

I hope to learn to do the TEK properly soon! Thank you for your thoughts on my situation.

You can also try to add fresh EA again on top of the goo and force stir it into solution. Add some citric also. Goo may break up and xtalize nicely if it is water based. You may have dislodged a small ammont without stirring before which subsequently xtalized. By stirring you may get it all to interact with fresh EA/citric.

Yes, the -10C delta between decanting and xtalizing, together with not having excess citric to maybe absorb water, may be why you got goo from excess water.

Condensation is not an issue for me, just work relatively quickly. You should see some water from the EA on the bottom and walls, that would be a good sign.

Thank you for the advice. I will try getting more out by using fresh EA. For my next attempt I will definitely let it sit in the fridge. I will report back when I get new results.

The dreaded goo! I am 100% sure the water was decanted out properly! There was a fair amount of sacrificed solvent left in the original jar with the small, light green water layer. After decant, citric was added and it went immediately foggy and bubbled a bit. I took this for a great sign at the time, and was excited to see crystals, but alas, a day later there is just a layer on the bottom that looks bright blue when flashlight'd. A few things I could have done wrong looking back:

1- The cactus used was dehydrated extremely well before grinding. Perhaps too dehydrated? Is this possible?
2- The jars used were previously cannabis jars and despite proper washing, once the solvent went in it *appeared* in the green light that there may have been a small amount of cannabis crystals at the bottom, dried on to the jar. Perhaps these crystals held some water even though dried onto the jar? Or cann just having some particulates stop xtalization?
3- the citric acid used had an expiration date of 6 months ago on the bottom of the container. I didn't notice this until after use, when looking for clues of what went wrong. Could old citric acid maybe not work properly, or could it have absorbed some water during its apparently longer then recommended lifetime? It just said "pure citric acid" on the label- for sprouting.
4- I warmed the final salting jar up in a hot water bath after fully inspecting for water droplets on the bottom after decant to get it up to room temp. The walls of the jar were warm to the touch after the water bath. Could this stop xtal growth which seems to happen on the walls of the jar?

If I were to repeat this experiment I would be careful to not repeat these mistakes. Do any stand out as the definite culprit?

It looks like the best advice now is to decant off the solvent from the goo and add fresh Ethyl and hope this sucks some water or citric acid from the goo? Is this still best procedure?

In the mean time I added 10 more grams of citric and shook vigorously, hoping that would do it. Alas, it looks like no crystals and more blue bottom layer

Update: EA was decanted off and saved and fresh EA was added to the goo. It just made the goo turn to a paste, almost like a glue, that is very sticky. Also, the walls of the jar left a trail along where the EA was poured before low decant wherever the goo touched during pouring. Anyone who gets the dreaded goo, I would recommend not pouring off the green EA at all, but only using a pipette or baster or syringe as the goo that touched the walls here was very sticky and will now be extremely difficult to remove from the walls of the jar. The spoon I used to try and force the paste/goo into solution also now has a ton of this paste/goo stuck to it that seems as though it will be very hard to remove. The goo/paste is not going into solution despite stirring, swirling and even shaking the jar. The trail on the inside of the jar is also not going into solution but seems hardened/stuck to the walls of the jar.

Any advice? As of now my next step will be: decant this fresh EA and add to previous green EA now in separate jar. Add fresh EA again to goo/paste and again try and stir/agitate into solution. SO far, this has been a mess. Wish I had started with much less cactus for my first run.

Sorry you are having a hard time with the TEK. Your mescaline is likely safely in the goo.

Did you not see the goo run down the side while decanting? If not, you may have not seen water run down the side during the original TEK either. That can cause goo.

You can leave the hardened goo in EA, see if keeps on hardening and begins to break down to xtals after a few days.

However, since you have a mess with goo in different places, I would try this:

Decant all EA and let the goo dry.

Dissolve the goo on the spoon, walls, jar with minimal hot water. Reduce the hot water down to ~ 5ml to 10ml. Are you sure you added the original teaspoon of citric acid the TEK asked for? If not, this o
is a good time to dissolve 1g of citric acid to the goo concentrate.

Add fresh EA to the concentrated goo water (about 500ml to absorb all the water). You should see clouds followed by xtals forming after some hours/days.

I did see the goo run down the sides, I just wasn't anticipating it being so darn sticky and clinging to the walls along its trail as I decanted. I should have known simply by it being referred to as goo that it wouldn't be quite aqueous in nature and more sticky.

In the mean time however, I have titrated a fair amount of the goo into solution in the main jar after mixing back some of the original green EA with the fresh EA. Now there is minimal goo in that jar that I cant seem to get into solution. Will this prevent xtals from forming? Should I pour this EA into my other jars and hope the solution xtalizes there, and then proceed with the hot water method you mentioned for the stubborn goo that won't go into solution from my main jar/spoon/etc?

I wish I had seen your response here before titrating as what you've laid out sounds like a logical way to have proceeded when the goo was hard and glue-like, it is now softer somehow, almost wetter and less pastelike again.

As it stands now I have mixed all the EA. There is 15grams of citric in 1400ml of EA, pulled and fresh combined.
The jar with the goo has 800ml, and 2 other jars have 300ml each and no goo nor xtals forming yet.

What do you think? And should I add more citric to any of the jars?

I did scrape a tiny bit of the goo from the spoon with a toothpick and after drying for a few hours I tasted it- definite bitter citric acid taste to it.

No changes after over 24 hrs. Decanting the EA now to dry the goo by setting a coffee filter over the jar top and a small fan pointed into jar above that. Once I am certain any residual EA has evaped and it's as dry as I can get it, I will absorb it with 100ml of hot water, and dump that out on a glass dish to evaporate the water and collect what remains. Will this be safe to consume then?

After decant, going to add this EA into the jars with my other EA. Should I add any more citric to these jars to see if anything crystalizes? Or just leave them be and see if that does it as I have already added 15gs of citric between them (unless this is all contained in the goo)? If so, how much should I add?

Going to wait to see a response here before I do anything this time.

Yeah, should be safe to consume. Instead of fully drying I would add 500ml of fresh EA when there are ~10ml of water left. However, what you are doing will leave behind a strong concéntrate prodcut.

As for the combined used EA would just leave the EA alone and watch.

Is this your advice because there may be excess citric in the goo product?

I feel a bit unable to stop evaporation when ~10ml are left in a manageable way. If I were to dry fully and then add the dried product to fresh EA would it work? Or would I need to dry and collect it, add 10ml of hot water, and then add fresh EA?

So far nothing in one of my collection jars, but the one that I added the EA from the main jar after titrating the goo seems to have crystal growth. This leads me to believe that either all the citric is in the goo, all the alks are in the goo, or both.

Update: waiting worked, xtals formed in the jars. Snowglobe party for sure. This was my first tek and despite initial troubles I got amazing results and learned a lot. Thank you to all that helped develop it, especially you loveall.

Still curious what to do with the dried goo, which is orange when dried and more rocky and less xtaline then what came from the collection jars. I tried washing it in fresh EA but that didn't do it. I am thinking about adding 5/10 ml of hot water, mixing with 500 ml of fresh EA, fridge resting, decanting, filtering, and then leaving for 3 days? Think that will do it? Or do you think I will need to rebase it first? Or add fresh citric after decant?
Can this be done without the addition of water? It makes me nervous to add even 5/10ml since water may have been the culprit in creating the goo in the first place.

It seems the goo formed the way it did instead of xtalizing was because of plant fats, chlorofill, or machine oil residues from new equipment that I cleaned with water but maybe should have cleaned with ISO or something before first use. When mixed with citric and water this made the goo. That's my theory at least based on this process, but from reading the main TEK thread and related comments it definitely seems like excess water slipping through the decant step is chiefly to blame. Interested to see how that understanding develops as more people try the TEK and more data is compiled.

Overall, it really was easy and straight forward, and just takes patience and care. ANyone sitting on the sidelines intimidated, if you are called to it, just try it! It's simpler than it sounds.

Feels a lot like alchemy, and I look forward to seeing how the end product influences my spiritual work and personal evolution. The goal here was to understand the chemical process of these plants and their alkaloids, ultimately to aid in meditation and attainment of deeper spiritual understanding of our reality and my place in it. May I have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, and may it be so.

Thanks again to all that contributed here and to the development of the tek.

What I did (recommended by others) was get it as solid as possible, crush it and add it back to the cactus powder paste that I was doing the next extraction with. It thus got re-based and then extracted along with the 'fresh' freebase.

The goo has reqated mescaline citrate, so decanting after fridge rest is not doable I think. That step is done when freebased (which is what Merkin followed).

Do we know if the goo is mostly mescaline citrate? Or is there a possibility that it contains excess citric acid?

That's my question as well. I washed the solid goo with 60 mL fresh EA and also scraped the bottom quite a bit. The goo seemed to crystalize but I still got large chunks and it wasn't all crystals at the end. I dissolved in hot water and evaporated. Now I have a product that is a mix of large crystals and chunks of the solidified and possibly crystalized goo. Wondering what I should do now with this product.

Thanks for this thread guys I have found reading through very helpful..

I am currently trying CIELO for the first time with 100g bridgessi (whole plant powder) and have ended up with a crystalline goo after salting, like a thick gooey oil with chunks of mescaline citrate crystals throughout the goo.

After salting and waiting 48 hours I ended up adding extra citric acid and a stir to see if that would help force any remaining mescaline to crystallize, now ~80 hours am still left with the crystalline goo layer underneath. After reading through the thread I am now assuming successful options for goo recovery are

Option 1*
Love all says ". One thing that has worked for me was to dissolve in ~100 ml of hot water, base with 10g of sodium carbonate (washing soda), pull several times with EA (verify no dropplets, rest well), and salt again with citric acid. I've done this to convert the sulfate salt to citric. This should remove whatever was in the coagulant"

Option 2*
As per Black Roses attempt

1. Decant salted EA and set aside for wash
2. Allow any remaining EA in the retrieved goo to evaporate
3. Add fresh dry EA to the dried goo (~100ml)?,stir/settle for ~24 hours,  decant & repeat x3
4. let all 3 combined EA pulls sit for ~48hours+ for xtalisation
Optionally try re x opt1* on remaining goo

Can anyone see if I'm missing something or if I can do something better?
With option 2 adding fresh EA to the goo, how much fresh EA is recommended? Black rose said he used ~80ml, I may need more as I used more starting material (cactus powder)

Thanks again appreciate any help..

You could also turn the goo into a resin (or whatever it turns into) and use that as-is an assumed lower purity resin kinda thing. Decant off the EA, add some warm distilled water to the goo to make it a bit easier to move to silicone or something easier to dehydrate it in and remove from.

I prefer option 2 to wash the goo with fresh EA (though I wouldn't wait longer than a few hours), hopefully ya get some crystals going in the larger decanted EA long-term while you also have this dried washed* goo solid product relatively quickly.

Thanks Starbob,I decanted the salted EA from the goo and left the goo product to dry. The remaining EA evaporated and the dried goo product is still sitting in the closed mason jar until I get some fresh EA, (probably another 2-3 days). Then I will try to wash the goo with fresh EA. Why do you say you wouldn't wait more then a few hours? And do you have any advice on how much fresh EA I should use to wash my goo product?