Im not 100% sure by looking at the picture. It could also be relfection. I did do an inspection and didnt notice any water. But i guess anything is possible and obviously sime water must of snuck its way in.

And yes, i am xtalizing in room temp.

Ethyl athetare can have as much as ~5% water before it forms a separate layer of water.

In other words, some water can "dissolve" in ethyl acetate.

The ~5% changes with temperature. That is why water drops out during the fridge rest. The fridge rest gets the water below 5% in the EA (pushing it out as droplets + a new layer). Say the fridge rest makes it 3% water (something like that, I made that number up). Then, we raise we the temperature again, and salt in a situation where all water (3%) stays in the ethyl acetate because it is below the "saturation" point of water (5%).

Looking at a single layer EA, the water content can be anywhere from 0 to 5%. There is no way to tell by eye though. When it is near 0, we call that dry ethyl acetate. We have found that when pouring out the manufacturer's container (fresh EA) it is usually on the dryer side.

So say, you have a layer of ~20ml of water. If you add ~400ml of fresh/dry ethyl acetate the water should dissolve into the new ethyl acetate and the water layer "disappear".


Unfortunately, you somehow had water in your salting jar. It probably slipped in as you where decanting. Some water sticks to the walls, but other water can flow under the EA and be difficult to see. You may have missed this water under the dark green extract. The warmer temp you pulled at may have made your extract darker and wetter than usual, but after the fridge rest you should have seen the water layer you are seeing now. Did you shine a light and tilt after the fridge step like you are doing now?

Ahhhh okay, i see.👍 Thanks for clearing that up and teaching me something new. Sorry i am a bit tired, it is like 1 AM where i am 🥴

Yes, i did. I also shined a light through the jar as i was decanting it out with my pippette. Maybe somehow the water came from the sides or something.


So my next move is to decant most of the EA and adding fresh EA? Would there still be anything in the EA that im decanting?

The water layer is quite small, i think probably like 3ml (probably even less like 1-2 ml) or so. It looks abit syrup like as well.

If you have room in the jar you can simply add fresh EA to that. I would be generous with the EA, you can always reuse it later and you want to soak up the water well. Shake/swirl slightly. If it clouds again and the water layer dissapears that is a good sign. Xtals should form slowly after that 🤞

Awesome, thanks. I will definitely do that. I will be most generous with the EA 👍👌

Ill keep you updated on what happens.

Thanks again, i appreciate the help 🙏

One more question. Did you check with a light + tilt the jar that was going to be salted before adding the citric acid? In other words, did you verify decanting was successful and there was no water layer before salting?

Just a further note about 'dry' solvents - quite a few solvents can absorb moisture from the air as well as from a liquid water phase with which they come into contact. This is what distinguishes a 'wet' solvent from a 'dry' one. There are various ways of drying solvents - i.e. removing absorbed water from them - and the optimal method varies depending on the solvent in question.

So i quickly got up and decided to just do this before anything bad happens.

When i turn the jar now i do not see the liquid moving anymore. It seems to have hardened up now.

Here are some photos.

I think it looks good. That hardening is the insoluble mescaline citrate. It didn't form the long needles because it "crystalized" in a different way I think.

Let it rest for a few days. Is it sticking to the glass? You can try to knock most of it loose with a knife so anything that can be dissolved in EA goes into it (e.g. stuff between the product and the wall).

You must have had a water layer before salting (as suggested by the bottom of the picture you took right after salting). Did you check for a water layer right before salting?

There are ways to recover this hard product. After resting for a while to make sure crystalization is mostly done, decant, rinse with ethyl acetate. Stuff that is hard and stuck to the walls can be dissolved in warm water and then evaporated in a shallow dish (that should make nice xtals and make it easy to handle).

Also, from the post salting picture it looks like you only had half a quart of EA extract. For 100g of cactus, at least a quart is needed to get most of the yield. You probably should have used more EA in each pull. You probably got most of the mescaline, but some may still be in the congealed paste.

Yeah water must of got through somehow. Im going to leave this jar until thursday night for decanting. Is there a max time limit for this tek to keep it in the EA?

I did losen the hard crystalization a bit. Last night i poured some of the solution into another jar so that i could add plenty of EA. The other jar seems to be crystalizing as well, which is great. Ill post pictures of both. The original jar picture is before i dislodged the hard xtals.

And as for the amount of EA i used during extraction, i definitely used a quart. I did 7 pulls, 1 X 200ml and 6x 125ml. I think because of the temperature here the EA evaporated quite quickly and therefor it was less in the jar.

But lets see how everything goes now that it seems to be xtalzing.

Thanks for the help.

Regarding adding more EA to ensure excess water is soaked up...

I haven't run CIELO in over a year due to taking my time integrating many intense mushroom and mescaline journeys from 2020-2021. But in the months of 2021 when we were developing CIELO, I had a lot of repeated success. The process back then did not include a frig rest to check for excess water. So, as I've read about people's experience with CIELO over the past year, I've wondered why I had so much success whereas others end up with goo? Was my success due to good technique, lucky cactus, good weather?

Checking my notes, I was always generous with the EA when pulling. Typically using a total of ~670 ml for 50 grams of cactus. This is roughly 41% more EA than the standard recommendation of 1 quart EA for 100 grams cactus. Perhaps this excess EA helped to ensure water was not an issue for me.

Which leads me to the suggestion that we recommend excess EA when pulling, frig rest plus decant, then topping off with fresh EA to ensure we have some minimum ratio of EA to cactus such as 1,300+ ml of EA to 100 grams cactus. Seems that if we're reusing the EA anyhow, then using excess EA is fine.

Thoughts?

Shroombe, how about the pull and xtalization temperatures you were at? If the pulls are colder than the xtalization, that gives more room to not have water (and vice versa). Also, if using anhydrous citric acid that may give more room (food grade is usually monohydrate I believe?). If I recall you preferred 15 mg/ml citric, that may have been absorbing more water.

I think those are good suggestions. Another possibility is to add citric acid saturated dry EA to both soak up water and salt. But I also think if the fridge + decant step is done properly there are no issues, and I want to keep the TEK focused on that.

I think that in this case, the decant was not done properly (see the water layer right after salting in the zoomed in picture of post #38, it was likely there before salting). So I would like to focus on getting this right in the TEK without adding other options.

Maybe we can add a check in the TEK to tilt the salting jar before salting and look for a water layer with a flash light. Madhattress, can you confirm that you did not do this check?

There is no time limit. Sometimes a very small amount of xtals precipitates with extra time (not worth the wait in my opinion). More time is no issue.

Ok, you should get about 90% of EA back or so. It's just that in your first picture it looks like you only have a half of a quart or less? Maybe I'm thrown off by the jar shape?

You can keep on knocking loose the bulk of the xtals stuck to the wall with a knife. You can later do the water + evap later on the smaller bits you don't dislodge.

I'll ask again, did you check for a water layer right before salting? Same kind of picture you took after salting and not getting xtals (tilted image with light).

Hi there,

Okay I will do that.


After the decant I did check for water with the use of my phones flashlight. I did not see any water, or maybe i was not looking hard enough. But i did try my best to avoid any water coming in there. Even last night it took me quite a while after inspecting and turning my jar in angles to actually see that layer. I dont think I tilted my jar to the extent I did last night which was almost on its side.

When I was decanting i actually tilted the jar to the side and was looking at the bottom while i used the pippet. I was guiding the pippette away from the water layer in the corner and then we left a small amount containing the water in the original jar. I am not sure what happened but clearly water got in and I must have missed/not seen it somehow, the solution was quite dark so could have missed it.

As for the pulls i did, I know i did 7 pulls and measured it with a 125ml measuring cup( the first pull was 200ML. I first put all the pulls into 2 liter jar and then after decanting I put it into a 1 liter jar.

The only thing i can think is evaporation when I decanted and when I did my pulls. The weather here in S Africa easily gets to 33-35C this time of year.

Anyways, regardless of my little water issue i ran into, can i just say how awesome I think this tek is. Really well done.

In comparison to the AB tek, it really is a breeze.

Both teks are just great in their own way, but this one is just so much less work. Even if the end result isnt as pure/potent as the AB, its really not an issue just to up the dose a little to compinsate.

I have had the most fun doing these two extractions and i am so amped to do more of them both. 👌

Keen to see the end reult of this extraction 🤟


Also one more question, is the only reason for mixing the final xtals with water and re-evapartion purely for aesthetic reasons?

It is both for aesthetic purposes (especially if you dissolve all your xtals), but also/mainly to recover the stickier xtals stuck to the jar walls. Instead of scraping the last bits for a long time you can easily dissolve in water.

And thanks for sharing your results. I think next time you will tilt the jar more and catch all the water and not have this issue. Also, use enough EA to end up with at least a quart of extract. A little experience goes a long way.

As far as purity, I think CIELO gives cleaner crystals right away. AB needs a cleanup because the water evaporation concentrates other stuff, and some dark contamination always results (for me at least).

To be clear, the difference in dosing guidelines between AB and CIELO is due to the salt form, not purity. The nomenclature/convention is:

- Purity: goes down only with stuff that is not the mescaline salt (plant oils, proteins, etc). Usually not a big chunk of the product (<10%) if cleanup is decent. Shouldn't affect dosage much.
- Mescaline HCl vs Mescaline Citrate conversion: Different because HCl is lighter than citric acid, but is not related to purity. Affects dosage by a factor of 61% even if both salts are 100% pure.

Oh okay, i see. I just thought because there was citric acid in the product that it was bulked up by that, therefor not as potent.

But thanks for the info, just gotta keep on learning some more. 😌 Keen to get the next Cielo tek just right 👌🤓

Well, yes, CIELO is not as potent (different salt form), but it can still be more pure (fewer contaminants). Hope that makes sense.

Yes it does 👍 🙂

Will post my results soon.

Cheers 🌸