I tried this TEK with Bridgesii. When I added the citric acid, I saw immediate clouding, so I was hopeful, but then no crystals formed.

This was an experiment, so I wasn't really disappointed. However, I had read the thread, and having worked with cactus for a long time, I decided to wash the jar and evaporate the results.

I ended up with a clear, slightly tacky residue. I didn't think it was anything to get excited about, so I just dissolved it in my tea one morning thinking I might get a microdose. To my surprise, it wasn't even close to a microdose. Perhaps it is a Bridgesii thing, or perhaps it is an older cactus thing.

The Bridgesii I used is a very large plant, about 15 feet tall with multiple branches. I grew it from a cutting I set to cure about 20 years ago. It turned out to really like the spot so I let it grow.

I have not had any extracts from this plant analyzed. It is consistent though.

Hello and welcome!

Thanks for sharing you experience - so you say there were clear effects from your product? Did you weigh it before it went in the tea?

From the description of your plant, and given its age and the species, your surprise is not too surprising
Bridgesii seems to be about the most consistent of the columnar cacti for activity.

Thank you DFZ.

I started with 100g of dried Bridgesii and 25g of CaOH. I thought it was too wet, so I microwaved it 3 X @ 1 minute each to reduce the water. I know that wasn't your question, you are asking about the weight of the extract.

The result was a very thin, clear layer in a smallish Pyrex dish - about 5 in X 5 in. It was very thin and so clear (with a slight brownish tint) I could have easily missed it. Because it was so tacky, I decided to just dissolve it in hot water and use that for my tea.

Yes, you are right about the plant, it has been consistent over time and I have been surprised at lightly cleaned extracts that were much stronger than expected before. I guess I should have known better.

I really appreciate the work that has gone into this TEK. Although ethyl acetate isn't readily available here, I've tried most published approaches in the past, so I had to try this one. The lure of clean crystals of mescaline citrate was too hard to pass up.

I'll try again with some other plants I have, pachanoi, peruvanius grown from seed, and some crests and monstrose plants. Perhaps one of those will work better.

Seems like a theme is emerging where San Pedro gives xtals but other species may not.

Also, it seems that whatever precipitates from the citric acid salting clouds is active, even of xtals don't form.

I think it is worth trying a brine wash of the EA before salting. Perhaps that is needed to get xtals from plants other than San Pedro.

11/25 Edit: I take this back. _Trip_ and others have gotten xtals from other species (see info below)

At least for me, when I did my 7th pull I saw clouds immediately, but after 10 minutes on a stir plate I did not see any crystals form. However, leaving it out for 24 hours yielded ~0.24g of crystals. In the future I'm thinking of just letting everything sit for 24 hours regardless if I see crystals form or not.


Would you please describe the process of a brine wash of the EA before salting? Would it be simply adding an equal part of NaCl saturated water to the EA, followed by aggressive stirring on a stir plate for 10 minutes, and then decanting the water layer? My understanding is that EA will absorb some of the water. Will this cause any problems later when precipitating with citric acid?

Brine wash: Yes, use saturated NaCl water and shake well. EA already has some water from the paste, and based on experiments it does not interfere with xtals crashing (chemical dry did not improve yields). Can repeat a couple times. Volumes don't need to be equal.

Decanting won't be enough, you would need to pipette the bottom brine layer out or use a separatory funnel. With the right equipment it is a fast to do.

This is a standard step in the lab and done on mescaline synthesis workup. IPA is used there, and hopefully brine does not pull FB from EA either.

I'll give the brine wash a try the next time I extract from Bridgesii. I have a gravy separator I can use for this purpose. I've ordered some Pachanoi, and I would like to try the regular tek on it for my next extraction. I'm curious to see if this goo problem is due to using Bridgsii or if it is due to some mistake I am making during the extraction.

Do you think a simplified defat with EA or even limonene before basing with CaOH/DH20 might help with this goo problem? I suppose I am guessing that whatever compound that is resulting in the goo is not an alkaloid but rather something that is soluble in EA by default. Also I'm assuming that the natural salt form that mescaline is in is not soluble in EA.

EA seems to evaporate really fast. If we could just throw some into the un-based cactus, shake vigorously, filter it, and then finally wait a bit to evaporate any left over; then this process would not take that long or require that much effort.

I tried to defat with EA and saw no significant improvement or product coming through. However, I don't get goo either.

Will be looking forward to any new results. Small chance some product moves into the brine wash, but like I said, I don't think so based on Mindlusion's work with IPA and brine.

I personally have never gotten goo, except with excess water when first testing Cielo Tek. I have since done 5 other pachanoi, 4 Bridgesii, 1 cuzco and 2 peruvianus and have always gotten crystals for all species.

I should try the brine wash, but I have had no issues with crystals. I do try to get as much water content out as possible in the microwave, use excess citric acid 15-20mg per g of EA and I also powderize the citric acid (from salt like to powder; which i doubt makes a difference).

Great info _Trip_!, how much water do you have when starting to pull? The Tek currently recommends 1:1.cacti powder:water after microwaving and 1:3 of not.

highlightprotein, I re-read your extraction thread/notes. One thing that was out of the ordinary are paste balls/clumps from the microwave. How much water did you remove? Did you use short microwave bursts and stir in between? How many watts is your microwave? Also, the EA extract should filter very easily. You seemed to need a lot of filters. Perhaps over microwaving was an issue here. It may also explain why you were getting product after 7 pulls.

Other questions you had: It is common for the paste to absorb some EA in the first pull as mentioned in the TEK. It shouldn't happen in subsequent pulls which enables good yields. It is also common for the salted EA to be saturated and give a few more crystals after waiting for 24h as the TEK recommends (if not overly saturated the initial stir plate xtals crash many not happen). I added the 24h note to the stir plate xtalization step in the TEK (the 24h recommendation was mentioned in the main 5 mg/g option).

Because of this, I would try to make sure there are no clumps in the paste from the microwave. Perhaps then you will get easier filtering and xtals. I recommend focusing on that first instead of the brine wash.

Thanks for going through it. Sorry if it was a bit scatter brained; I wanted to include all the details I could think of so I could refer back to it for future extractions.



My 69ron paste consisted of 39g cactus powder, 39g / 0.333 == 117g DH30, and 39g / 4 = 9.75g CaOH. I microwaved using 1-2 minute spurts until the bowl lost 117g * 0.66 = 77g of water. It took me about 5-6 spurts in the microwave. I stirred thoroughly after each spurt in the microwave. I'll need to check how many watts the microwave has (edit: it is 900 watts).



Thanks.



If I remember correctly, the 69ron paste didn't clump up into balls for the first couple of pulls. Rather, somewhere towards the end of the microwave is when the clumps/balls became noticeable. So perhaps I could monitor this and stop microwaving when I think I see it start to clump up. Also I could try microwaving it on low power or something.

That evaporated pretty fast, I wonder if your microwave is more powerful than usual. Maybe with smaller amounts of cacti lower microwave power or even smaller bursts should be used to avoid the clumping. You don't want any clumping at all during the microwave step, that is not standard in my experience. Edit: Going by the texture may be a good idea. The paste is fluffy first, then as it is microwaved it becomes more liquid, and then fluffy again. Stop when it regains flushness. No clumps should form.


PS: And thank you for thoroughly documenting your steps. This home process is still new and you may have uncovered a learning if the microwave is too aggressive.

So I have been sticking with 1:3 (Dry cacti powder: water) for example 100g of cacti powder to 300ml water.
I microwave (at 1000 watts) in bursts of 3-5 minutes depending on amount I'm working with. If i have say 300ml of water added to 100g of cacti powder I aim to microwave (evaporate) at least 200g of water usually a bit more (some times closer to 230-250g evaporated). I always stir between bursts.

I've scaled the ratios down and up depending on how much cacti powder I have with no issues or change in end result. I'm doing room temp pulls now and no difference (although I have not done warm/ hot pulls which may cause goo?).

I have also tried with wax layer and spines added and again no goo issues, however I have not tested the white pulp yet as I usually just extract from the dry green skin layer. So maybe the white pulp could be a factor with goo but I believe you and others have tested whole cacti and still got crystals so i doubt that's an issue(for memory). I hope that helps Loveall.

And for anyone interested Cuzco is active but as active as a PC pedro.
Cuzco .08% and PC .09% HCL equivalent. Of course this can all vary clone to clone, seedling to seedling, variety to variety etc.

Oops, I have a typo above, after microwaving water:cacti goes down to 1:1 in the TEK.

The comment on the white pulp is interesting. My stickiest and less xtaline result was using whole cactus. With San Pedro outer skin I always get xtals, and with the microwave and chilled EA options they come out pretty white.

After microwaving then, yeah, I would be doing the same. Usually I microwave a bit more off. I may do a test run on some inner core/ pulp tomorrow.
I will keep you posted Loveall.

I find the same results, I get slightly whiter crystals with chilled EA but not a major difference in color.

I bioassayed the crystals from the 7th pull today. Here goes the most boring trip report ever, as I am a light-weight and have a general fear of psychedelics:

I took 10mg as an allergy test after 15 hours of fasting. I waited 2 hours but did not feel anything at all, not even placebo effects.

After this I took 50mg (after 17 hours of fasting). It's now been another 2 hours but I am not feeling anything, not even placebo.

From my 7th pull, I only have 150mg of crystals left. I think I'm going to do 100mg next weekend. Perhaps followed up by 50mg after 45-60 minutes.

After that, I will start bioassaying the dark brown crystals from the goo from the first 6 pulls.

At what temperature do you dehydrate your cactus cuttings in the food dehydrator?

I have it at 95F, the lowest temperature setting, because I'm worried it will cause something bad to happen at higher temperatures.

Does anyone use a higher temperature like 165F? I bet it would go a lot faster.

I have some pachanoi cactus I'm dehydrating now. I will repeat the extraction using an identical technique to see if the bridgsii resulted in the goo or if it was something wrong with my extraction, such as microwaving technique.


It is 900watts.

I used the highest temp on the dehydrator ~160F I believe.

900W is not a lot, not sure why you got clumps. You mentioned less burst time and more stirring in the microwave next time which makes sense. Stop when paste becomes fluffy again.

You might need a bit more for a threshold dose of mescaline citrate, it's not as strong as mescaline is in other forms.

I just finished a 24 hour dehydration at 160F. It looked to me like there was some browning on the cut up cactus pieces. Is that normal? I don't recall seeing it before when I did 95F. This time I cut the cucumber stars into 6 pieces.



My goal at first would be to take the minimum possible to generate the minimum effect possible.

Any idea if 100mg would result in some kind of threshold effect, or if I should take all 150mg? In terms of HCL this would be 60mg and 90mg respectively.

I know that Erowid says 100mg of HCL is the minimum for a threshold effect. However 69ron said he liked doing even lower than that on occasion.