Yeah, I got some browning. Took pictures: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...mp;m=1102283#post1102283

150mg seems like a reasonable threshold (90mg HCl equivalent), but it can vary a lot from person to person and within a person (diet, etc).

highlightprotein, Yh look I think you have the right attitude, start low and build up.

However keep in mind, Mescaline appears to be one of the few forgiving psychedelic in terms of dose and ease of trip. Of course everyone metabolizes differently and a trip is subjective to each individual etc.

I think 150mg is more a threshold dose for citrate. Having said that there is nothing wrong with putting your mind at ease and testing your next dose at 100mg.

Cool, mine looks exactly the same. I think I read through the CIELO thread while I was not logged in and didn't see any of these pictures .





Ok, I think I'll do at least 125mg, maybe 150mg if I am feeling confident. Thanks.

Using San Pedro instead of Bridgsii, I made the 69ron paste and microwaved it. Unfortunately I came across those clumps again. Basically it started clumping after losing around 40% of the water, and just got more and more clumpy until I had evaporated 66% of the water.

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. I'm going to see if I can upload a picture...

I will continue with the extraction to see if I end up with goo again. If I do not and instead get crystals, perhaps these clumps/balls do not matter. If I get goo instead of crystals, perhaps the Bridgsii is not responsible but rather this clumping/balling in the microwave.

Testing uploading a photo...

Edit: sorry I can't seem to do it. I click on Reply, then click the "add attachment" check box, and then I click Post button, and it asks me to upload a file. I try to upload my .png image, but the only button I see is "back". I click that and then it loads this page but there is no picture attached.

Is it because I am a new member?

I think you'll find those clumps shouldn't matter.

My theory based of my results anyway, is the goo is from excess water in the EA but i think others have had other results.

To add photo's i think you have to use a third party host website (like picfat) to upload to then insert the image link in your post.

Do you have anything you do to try to overcome this problem?

For example might it be worth the trouble to dry out my EA with anhydrous magnesium sulphate?

Have you seen goo with non-Bridgsii before?

Do you think the goo is basically as potent as the white crystals, or are they a lot less potent? I have a gram or so of the dark crystals I got from scraping the goo.

So i can only speak for myself I got goo once when i first did Cielo because I added water with the EA. It was stupid and I did it because i thought I over dried the base/cacti mix. I wasn't aware so much EA was absorbed with the first pull by the mix. Anyway...

That was the only time i got goo, I tried to rectify with freezing and CaCl2. In the end i was left with a Mescaline Citrate goo and a seperate CaCl2 goo (probably reacting to water and other gunk). I did not add enough CaCl2 so there was still floating ice crystals from excess water in the EA. It was very hard to separate the Mescaline goo from the CaCl2 goo. Since then I have not had any goo no matter if it's a bridgesii, pachnoi, peruvianus or even a cuzcoensis. However, my EA is 100% EA and i always microwave a min 66% of the water added for the paste.

We did talk about drying the EA with CaCl2 before the first filter after the initial EA pulls. I can't remember where we landed with this I think it was successful and didn't affect yields. I also tried it with the Hamarla EA approach and found it caused crystals to form instead of goo (harmala citrate in EA always forms goo unless its dried). Which may strengthen the case to try it for Cielo Tek if goo is an issue for some. I was working on the Harmala EA approach around the same time, so i might be getting results mixed up. Hopefull Loveall chimes in.

At a guess I would say your goo may still be very potent, I guess only one way to find out for sure haha.

Clumping can decrease yields. I wonder how/why you get clumping? That should not be happening. I would not proceed if clumps are present. I would fully dry the paste (e.g. in shallow baking dish in oven at lowest heat) and grind again to remove the clumps. Them add water to (hopefully) re-form a smooth fluffy paste. For some reason, a little water helps mescaline move from the plant into EA. Maybe you can try this with your spent paste (dry the solvent in a well ventilated area though). It's always a good idea to keep everything until a new process is working. You can also try an EA pull right after grinding before adding water, see what happens when you add citric to that pull.

What kind of lime do you have? It is Ca(OH)2, and not something like CaO, right?

Do you stir the paste very well before microwaving? As you stir initially, the paste will 'resist' stirring, then over the next few minutes of vigorous stirring the texture will change towards a fluffy consistency that is easy to stir. Next, as you begin to microwave and stir this, it should liquify, them as more water is lost while stirring it should become fluffy again.

You can skip the microwave step if it gives you clumping issues, that process can still give xtals. EA will get a lot greener, and the xtals will be smaller and have off colors, but I still get xtals consistently this way.

We did dry EA chemichally but didn't notice any improvements to yield (got xtals either way). Experimentally CaCl2 pellets where best (mush easier to decant, less of a mess, not acidic). You can try this, see if helps.

For sake of trying to be consistent with my 1st extraction, I will proceed this time with the clumps. My first extraction was Bridgsii and this 2nd extraction is San Pedro. I would like to know if perhaps these clumps are responsible for the goo, or if perhaps Bridgsii is.



I have a product called "Picking Lime", it says it's ingredient is "Hydrated Lime". On the description it says that "pickling lime/hydrated lime is the common name for food grade calcium hydroxide". When I mix the cactus powder into the water/lime, it starts bubbling which I assume means that it is successfully freebasing the mescaline.



I stirred very well before microwaving. It takes me about 12 minutes to stir in all 39g of cactus powder into the lime/water mix. For me the texture becomes very "smooth". I suppose it reminds me something of avocado paste in that it is both green and smooth. I'm not sure if this is the same as "fluffy" or not. I do think it looks similar to the picture in the CIELO tek: https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...3405358_copy_800x600.jpg

After the 69ron paste starts to become "smooth", I notice it is kind of hard to stir it. It feels more like I am just pushing it around rather than actually stirring it together, if that makes sense. It becomes smooth once I add in around 80%+ of the cactus powder.


But when I microwave it, I would say for the first 40% of water loss it appears to be the same consistency, just with browning. But from 40% to 66% of water loss it starts to clump/ball up. In other words my paste does not first liquify and then return to its pre-microwave state upon further microwaving.

Do you know if new members can upload photos? I would rather upload directly here than use a third party image hosting site. When I tried to upload a photo it only presented a "back" button and upon clicking it no photo was uploaded.

Ok, all that checks out. I agree that guacamole is a good way to describe a well mixed paste. I suggest you skip the microwave step, clumping is not normal. Or, is there a different microwave you can use?

I've only got clumping once when i added the powder all at once instead of slowly over 8 minutes. But after microwaving it was all good no change to end result.

I just did a fast crystalization with 15mg citric acid per gram of EA. After 10 minutes on the stir plate it appears to be nice white crystals with no goo! I'll leave it undisturbed for 24 hours before I will officially confirm but I am optimistic.

I tried to keep this extraction pretty much identical to my previous extraction: 39g cactus powder, microwave, chilled EA, fast crystalization 15mg/g. The only thing that I can think of which was different was 1) using San Pedro this time instead of Bridgsii and 2) dehydrating cactus at 165f instead of 95f. Of course there may have been other variables I disturbed but just can't think about.

But at least for me, I will temporarily conclude that Bridgsii was to blame for the goo. I know __Trip__ has had success with Bridgsii though, so perhaps not. To be fair, perhaps my next extraction should be with Bridgsii and I could try washing half the EA with brine but not the other half, like Loveall suggested.

This time, when I filtered my EA from the french press, the EA did not get stuck in the coffee filter. Last time I had to keep changing coffee filters. I'm not sure what could have been different this time except for Bridgsii vs San Pedro.

Additionally, I did a 7th pull (with chilled EA and aggressive stirring for 5 minutes) this time and it still looks like I am getting yield. Although the yield visually looks small. I need to wait until tomorrow to weigh it though. I'm going to do an 8th pull tomorrow with room temp and aggressive stirring (right now I don't have any mason jars) to see if I can get any more yield.

Congratulations highlightprotein it sounds promising.

I'd be surprised if it was the Bridgesii, I've tested a couple different stains of Bridgesii and done multiple extractions with them and never had goo, but, perhaps some contain more of some sort of plant material that's causing the goo issue.

It would be interesting to see how your next Bridgesii extraction goes. Anyway good luck with the last of the crystals crashing out.

Ok I figured out how to post a picture. I bought a really shitty camera just so I could do this, sorry that the quality is so low. I was kind of concerned about using my cellphone for uploading pictures here.

Are you guys able to see the balls and clumps in the photo? What do you think- is it normal after microwaving or is that not a good sign?

Unfortunately I only yielded 0.18g of mescaline citrate from 39g of cactus powder. (For my bridgsii extraction, I got over 1g of brown crystals from the goo plus 0.15g of yellow crystals from the 7th pull). Perhaps I got some PC san pedro this time, or maybe the clumps from my microwave messed something up.

The solid that caught in my filter turned out to be rather chalky instead of crystally. I added it to hot water and rinsed the mason jar with hot water, combining both and evaporating for some light yellow/white crystals.

The 7th pull I did this time had a very small amount of crystals that wouldn't register on my scale. So I think the 7th pull was not necessary.

I still have about 70g-80g or so of cactus powder from this san pedro batch. I think I'll retry but not microwave it.

I get what you mean by clumping now, I get a little bit of that but it usually goes away as I'm stirring between bursts in the microwave as it drys out and gets 'fluffier'. I often get a little bit of clumping when doing the EA pulls but haven't had much of an issue getting the same yields (for the same strain). I've also had it clump pretty bad when I dumped the powder all into the calcium hydroxide/ water mix at once, but with a bit of stirring the yield wasn't affected.
It might be part of your problem but maybe not.

.18g would equate to .46% it's not the worst result. One strain of PC pedro I had only gave .155% and a cuzco .133%, if that makes you feel better.

Out of the Pachanoi I've now tested in my collection most are under 1% or just over 1% I only have one in my collection that has achieved 3.55% (mescaline citrate percentages).

Thanks, good to know. Next time I will try without microwaving and see if it makes a difference for me.



How do we calculate yield given that the mescaline citrate is less potent than the HCl? Do we simply do 0.18g / 39g == 0.46% or do we have to account for the mescaline citrate vs HCl?

Assuming my Bridgsii goo is active, I had a yield of 2.8% if I recall correctly from that one, so a big difference from this 0.46%. But perhaps that goo is not pure mescaline.

This hobby is a bit expensive . So far I've spent somewhere in the range of $250-300 on cuttings but have only collected 1g+ of goo and about 330mg in crystals (I still have some cactus powder left, assuming the same yield it will net me another 300mg or so of crystals).

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BTW I've decided to try 150mg for my first time today based on Loveall and your feedback.

For safety reasons, DMT-nexus attitude rules only allow discussing seeds and plants (things that are alive). I can say that growing plants is very rewarding.

For a bunch of us, psychedelics are a gateway drug to gardening 💚

Sorry about that; I will edit it out.

BTW have you seen the picture I uploaded of the "clumps"? What do you think- is it within the range of acceptability or is it not ok?