lol, yes - age and oxidisation I'm sure. Inspired by a youtube extraction video I bought a kilo around 2009-ish from Peru via Internet (and my first two cuttings of Pedro and one of Bridgesii to kick-off my cactus garden). Did 2 of the usual Xylene A/B's and decided that process was not for me despite a love for the 'sanchez' it produced. So I left the bag in my garage uncared for and forgotten until I read about Loveall's experiments with CIELO and I got inspired and hauled it out to try his tek. Despite all it delivered around 1.2-1.9% Citrate! All gone now

Now I do all my new powder (my own plants) from pieces dried in a dehydrator at around 30-40°C max so the powder is nice and green (and a rich dark deep green in EA - and that rich red-purple colour if you shine a torch on it from the front).

Merkin, I have also gotten a tan product with the older brown powders. Effects are identical to the white xtals from fresher green cacti powder as far as I can tell.

Cheers and thanks for sharing your results 🙂

Finally got some crystals from Fumaric Acid version of CIELO
No stirring at all, room temp EA liquid. Mostly fine crystals/powder started precipitating around 1hr but some longer shards grew in the centre of beaker base. ~30hr to clear cloudiness.

Any idea what HCl equivalent this is regarding dosage? There are 2 options for M Fumarate in Orchidist's calculator - not sure which one this would be.

Bridgesii - Yield 2.320g from 100g powder [full plant including core]

Wow that's an amazing result with high yields. The wiki has the equivalent salt info and also a link to a calculator.

Do you know which bridgessi clone you used? I assume you kept it in the dark (how long?). Wes it the top part of the plant?

Hey Loveall - I got this Bridgesii in 2007, no idea about any specifics. It looks pretty much like all others I see pics of and very much same as one I got a few years back called "Ben" but haven't harvested him yet. Thanks to my gardner's "initiative" I have about 4 clusters of it growing around my garden, all replanted ~ Nov 2016. They were trimmed off the top of the plant at the time. The mother plant is quite huge and ~3-3.5m high. The 'cuttings' are approaching ~2m+.

Current powder was from two stalks that broke off due to pressure from another plant in May 2021 and have been in dark since then (still pupping).

Since all the Bridgesii I have harvested all originate from 1 plant it makes sense that the yield is consistent. For the Citrate its around 2.8-3.1%.

Thus far I always have replanted the tips from all cuttings (didn't know that might vary from the rest) as it makes nicer looking plants. Since they were originally cut from the top of the columns I guess that would qualify them as tops.

My Pedros are 3 original plants so I need to figure out which is which in terms of yield or not as I cannot remember which is from which original. Didn't pay attention to details like that when I started planting. So far only one cutting has given a decent yield, 4 others all less than 200mg Citrate.

These pics show the mother plant itself - and some details (and you can where it was 'topped', and one of the replanted pieces that broke (pink arrow) and is now part of the powder. It has blossomed only twice since planting, one flower each time. As you can see I planted the mother in a stupid position (under trees, too close to wall etc) as I had no real expectation for it based on reading 'alkaloid content' figures on Internet. The last pic was cut off the mother plant (August last year), and it has been dried and powdered but not extracted yet.

Hope I'm not spamming off topic here. I will compile a report from all the pieces I harvest and extract for that other thread.

Its nice to have a powder with known yield to experiment with other acids like the fumarate - just one less variable and a reason not to doubt myself when yield is dismal

Only noticed the fumarate crystals in the last batch when I decanted - I couldn't see them in the green/red murk so it was a nice surprise.

The calculator had two options for the Fumarate (1:1 and 2:1) - I am not sure which this one is. But I will assume the 75% you gave on the Wiki for now.

Not spaming at all 🙂

That whole plant 3% yield is amazing. Could be double for only the outer skin, that approaches ~4% HCl equivalent which is legendary status I think, only heard of Ogun yielding more.

What beautiful plants, thank you for the pictures!

Some more pics: the 'family' - all the tops of the harvested pieces that were replanted. Some of the Pedros broke and fell, hence the damage. They all have rooted and grown for a year or so but I am running out of good planting space! The yellow guys all grew their way out of the wrapping in the garage darkness and some of them I planted. They are slowly going green. On the right of all the tops you can see some little Pedro pups that have recovered their color completely.

The Bridgesii are very hard to 'de-core' without feeling like you're wasting potential material - you can see how large the core is compared to the surrounds on the slices about to dehydrate. With Pedros its easier because they have a large diameter, but once Bridgesii have dried a bit there's not much 'flesh' to work with so easier to just grind. I separate most of the little sticks from the core out with a kitchen sieve. Definitely without that the yield % would be higher, but ultimately it the yield weight that's important

Thanks Merkin. Beautiful pictures.

All, I have updated the TEK to make it more robust to water management and hopefully make goo less likely for beginners.

- Made 24h fridge rest before salting default. This helps remove some water from EA.
- Default citric ammount is back up to 5g per 100g of cacti from 2.5g. Excess citric deems to help with excess water (citric acid hydrate?) and/or xtalization. This also ensures excess citric for people with very active cactus powder seeing 2.5% yields and higher (typical has been 0.8 to 1.5% for the majority, but there are exceptions such as Merkin).

Let me know if there are any questions or anyone disagrees. With proper technique the resting can be avoided, but it helps make the TEK more robust foe the general public.

Has someone tried to do a CIELO extraction using instead of the initial water another kind of "water".. I mean , same liquid volume but using a cactus tea extraction that has been done previously.. this way you can extract more actives using same solvent....I know EA can be reused but..just thinking...

I don't know about using cactus tea to hydrate powder for a CIELO extraction. But a fun test would be making tea, drying the "spent" cactus, and then trying an extraction on the spent cactus with CIELO to see how much mescaline was not pulled by making tea.

I plan to do this with a leftover tea from February that has fermented. Will report back. Plan to add more citric than usual to salt the extra mescaline and still have excess citric.

Thanks for yur quick response..by the way..in the paper that this thread is about:
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=99212
The author wrote that the experiment showed that young greener tips produces more actives than older ones....This seems contradictory with the general consensus about potency been greater in older tissue..
I understand that young seedlings about a year from seed in spite of being more or less large can be weaker...but lets consider an old cactus that has nice roots and has been cut to produce pups...Have some pachanoi in this situation.. So the new pups powered by the big root system have grown about 70 cms in a year..using also indoor light in winter,,,

What I am trying to ask is: Are those big new pups one year old useful for CIELO? I have to cut them for lack of space...and I feel that if the roots were old...this new grat growth should have actives...of course streesing it some months in the dark..I understand that anyone using the top part of the Trichocereus is in fact using new cactus flesh regardless the cactus age...

Does any of you have use CIELO in a similar situation? on recent big nice cactus tips about one year old? If yes, did the CIELO provide the expected results?

CIELO should extract the mescaline that is available in different parts of the plant, just like any other efficient TEK. That being said, I haven't tried to reproduce those detailed studies.

Thanks, think gonna try a little experiment using CIELO with some one year old bridgesii seedlings that I have but I will lack space for them in the future. Another question if you dont mind Loveall.. Do you think fumaric acid is a better alternative than citric? Think I have read somewhere in this thread that fumaric maybe is better to avoid goo formation...

Yeah, that was not very conclusive though. I recomend citric since it is more soluble and the xtals have been bigger for me.

To avoid goo minimize the water in the extract. 24h rest in a cold fridge and decantjng before salting seems promising so far (more robust for newcomers). That is what the current TEK has.

I've tested solvent reuse 5 times. So far no issues. I do the freezer step and slush filtration after the carbonate wash/neutralization. It is hard to see the clouding when salting, but that is not a big deal. White color and yield end up the same as with new solvent, but xtals are arguably a little smaller. See image below for xtals forming in dark reused solvent.

Also, I now prefer to mix the paste in a large bowl, then transfer that to a french press. Its just easier to mix that way and less elbow grease.

Cheers.

Just an interesting anecdote - I cut up and blendered a rather woody section of my Bridgesii (an area of the stem where a pup had grown up - the 'pup' branch seems to sink its version of roots into the main stem) and there was obviously a lot more woody bits that didn't make it through the sifter after drying and grinding. I saw a lot of small green bits in there - normally I discard that) and thought I might as well try an extraction on the material (~98g).

Obviously there was no way in heck I was going to get a paste made with all the wood, but I did what I could and did four pulls on the mix - dryish loose clumps which hardly stayed together, not thinking I would get much.

The liquid was a very light green (normally its deep dark green) but also quite cloudy even though through 3 coffee filters - I took care not to let any emulsion gunge run out the beaker whenever it appeared. Probably a touch of lime got in there. I let this settle for about 18hours in the fridge, it still looked about 50% as cloudy.

This is the first time I have ever seen 'stuff' and water in the beaker, normally the EA is way too dark, but now I could clearly see bubbles of water and other stuff. I ran it through two more coffee filters and then added the citric. Clouds formed immediately, soon followed by shiny crystal growth as the cloud slowly settled.

Turns out around 1.8% yield of fluffy citrate crystals. I was quite amazed due to low expectations and no paste to speak of.

The tek is way more robust than I thought!

(forgot to photograph the "paste" - sorry!)

EA solvent was used twice before this as well - was abit yellow but still quite clear (charcoal wash).

I've always used a bowl for the paste

Wow, that is interesting. Do you think it means one can extract the main roots too? What was the yield of the woddy root parts compared to the plant soft white/green flesh?

I wonder if hydroponic root harvesting could be practical, especially for those who can't grow outside year round. Would harvesting roots regularly stimulate their growth and would that growth produce mescaline faster than the main plant growth?

Thanks for sharing your result!

It wasn't really the roots per se, it seems as a pup grows it makes a small set of roots into the mother flesh. But there was a lot more green bits in there as well from the blender and may be a combo of them and the wood? The 'roots' in this case were growing down outside the woody centre ring of the main stem. It made it almost impossible to cut with a knife so I sliced what flesh I could off the pieces shown, whittling away from the centre stem. As soon as I got about a foot away from the branch point it became easier to cut again as there was now only the usual woody centre stem.

I wonder if the roots have actives? I would be hesitant to dig one up, but maybe if I encounter one already like that its certainly worth a try.

The other part of the plant, the regular sifted powder gave 3.216g off 100g powder. It was aged since June last year. There were two pieces originally but one completely rotted and was liquid inside. Extracted nevertheless what I could and it was around 0.8% but smelled awful - I dried the mush and evaporated the dark brown liquid.

This pic will give an idea of the section that was problematic - the join (and some pups that grew in the dark).

Other pic - the "mush" - the liquid dried to crackling scraped powder like a resin tek (6.5g) - the mush was about 32g dried.

Heads up that after multiple solvent reuses I have seen "flake-like" xtals precipitate along with the needle xtals. The flakes seem to be OK and I have noticed no difference in effects, taste, or color, but of course all this is subjective. Need a better check on them (e.g. marquis reagent, etc). I've updated the TEK with this info in the solvent reuse section.