Boiling the kettle for use in a hot water bath seems to suffice and get it to boiling point. But of course make sure you have good ventilation and a mask.

I used a blender on the paste. It changes things, water is well incorporated and less water seems to go further. My paste got a little wet lol.

May help open up the process window. Definetly gonna test more.

Also others have mentioned using a blender when pulling, so maybe both the paste and pulls can be done in the same spot under electronic blending.

I have used a blender during pulling only and it was quite fine. Definetly stronger mixing than i could do by hand. Still i just used the original paste recipe with like little more than 250 ml.

Nice take on heating _trip_ did you use less solvent or just do same amount? Anyways i could also try, because i now finally get crystals with freezer decanting, but yield was still only like 1% and i think people get like 2-3?

Cheers

Just to be clear I use a electric blender not electric egg beaters to mix the cacti with the base water. I find because of this I have to use less water. I think I use 225ml water compared to 300ml for 100g (its been a while since a Cielo extraction but i believe that figure is correct). As for EA i actually do use a bit extra, I usually cover all the paste in EA when its in the french press then add more EA until the EA is 1/3 of an inch above the paste. A hotwater bath filed with boiling water form the kettle works well to heat it and it often boils a little. As for yeild twighlight person I think it's more genetics but doing these variations its been a while since I've tested even a pedro below 1% (hcl equivalent). Note I always use dry green layer only. IIRC I've hit over 5.5% (hcl equivalent) which is over 9% citrate.

If you have to do a freezer rest your paste is too wet. With the right paste you dont even need a fridge rest.

The freezer rest is a bandaid, not a fix.

Note that the tek calls for a lot less water now.

Thanks both for your reply. I think my yield was 1 %, but only HCl equivalent, so it was even less with citrate. Hoping very much that I can soon get some more, but will let my cacti sleep.

Maybe you remember I was worried about one, that did not go dormant. But now even in that basement he has been put to sleep.

To Lovall: I did that and I got the very nice CIELO crystals! So for me now everything fine. But if you think it could be less water then it could be worth a try. Do you have any idea about the ml? I always started with the 250 ml per 100 g and then normally went to easily 300 ml.

Cheers

It is not possible to give a ratio because of plant variability. The tek currently asks to start at 150ml of water for 100g of cacti and to add more water slowly if needed to get the right consistency. 200ml is typical but can vary a lot.

BW, how did you squeeze the cheese cloth with cactus paste? With your hands?

Stainless steel potato ricers are quite handy things, but try to get a robust, well-made one with no sharp edges (speaking from experience here - the handles of cheap ones can bend, and shoddy engineering leads to cut fingers).

I just used a regular towel for like also drying your hands after washing / drying dishes after washing. Then simply put wet powder inside and twist it to a ball. Then indeed just used hands to squeeze as hard as possible.

With 100 g cactus maybe it makes sense to make 2 small squeezes, because the bigger the ball gets, the less pressure you have. But still takes just like 60 sek for any batch-pressing.

And there will always be a little EA still hiddn in the ball, that's why the first squeeze might only give you 50 % back, but afterwards it will always go down to a baseline of around 20 ml per squeeze maybe. If it's quite "dry" again, it looks just like my picture = forms a solid ball, that you need to first manually break up again for next pull

Interestig idea, but the ones I found seem too small.

Hand squeeze, nice.

Any idea of the dimensions? I'll go and measure mine and edit the values in presently...

EDIT: the more robust one has an internal diameter of 9cm and a working depth of about 6cm; this makes for a working volume of approximately 375 cm^3, so it might be OK for a smaller extraction.

Largest potatoe ricer masher I can find is 15oz (440ml).

I bought it, should be able to extract 100g of cactus powder. Thanks DFZ.

I tried the potato ricer, and also cheese press squeezing. Not practical in my opinion. Simply hand squeezing with a nylon bag worked best for me.

With the drier paste queezing as hard as possible does not add too much water to the extract and super lazy xtalization without fridge rest was successful.

Also, the pulls are more efficient. Five pulls got all of the 2.5% yield, and nothing measurable in subsequent pulls. Without squeezing in a bag, 5 pulls give me 2.3% yield for this cactus (Peruvian torch), and the rest comes in subsequent pulls.

The hand squeezing step takes less than a minute, and it is satisfying to ring out the last of the EA.

The TEK is even faster now since 5 pulls are plenty. I wonder if 4 or even 3 are enough. Will run experiments. Also, EA recovery is now 95%+ instead of ~90%.

Thanks, BW, the drier paste and hand squeezing are substantial improvements Please thank your friend for me!

- Less EA pulls to fully exhaust the paste.
- Almost complete solvent recovery
- Less volume of used EA to wash. I accumulate solvent and will now need to wash it half as often.

Note: I updated the TEK to reccomend squeezing in the French press since we also reccomend a drier paste now. Not adding the hand squeezing for now.

Sakkadelic would be proud

Sweet I'll have to reattempt this with much less water hopefully I can get it working without issue of goo.

Thanks for testing out the potato ricer, Loveall - hopefully you can put it to some other good use. Besides pressing potatoes you can also make noodles with the device. I'll still be testing mine out with things like pressing brewed harmala seeds and sea buckthorn stem bark powder. Did you put the full 100g cactus powder's worth of paste in for the test, or was it scaled down a bit?

Great to see how we've homed in on an additional efficiency improvement in all this - BW deserves an extra scoop of ice cream for this at the very least

Scaled down to 50g.

Solvent from the drier paste need some water to be neutralized during reclaim. Updated the tek to add a tablespoon of water with the washing soda.

Updated again, to finish neutralization reaction quickly more water helps.

It turns out washing soda is good at checking water content in ea.

I say this becaise some begginers still get goo from time to time.

Interestingrly, washing soda does not dry ethyl acetate to the point that the salting reaction is suppressed (unlike MgSO4 or CaCl2)+. Since the solution cannot get too dry it is foolproof.

Observations after adding ~2% washing soda by weight to extract:

- Very wet extract (Goo risk): A separate layer of water forms. This happened to me earlier in this thread. I was not aware of the results below. Decant to remove water and repeat washing soda addition to check wetness again. Note: The paste was way too wet and needs adjustment next time.
- Wet extract (Less goo risk): After adding washing soda some if it becomes sticky, but some remains as dry granules. No separate water layer forms. Decant the now drier solution and salt. Note: the paste was slightly too weet, make an adjustment next time.
- Moist extract (Mimimal (zero?) goo risk): None of the washing soda becomes sticky. Simply decant it off and salt. This extract would have xtalized without issues. With experience this check can be skipped. Note: Congrats on not having a paste that is too wet. If the paste gets too dry, loose paste particles can clog filters excessively during extraction, adjust water if desired, but filtering should be easy (a little bit of clogging is OK, but rest extract to check for debris).

Both the wet ad moist extract work well with the classic tek with a fridge rest. If one is confident they can get a moist extract without debris they can salt immediately (no fridge rest, no washing soda test). It is quick to test the extract with washing soda though.