Thank you, thank you, thank you for this endlessness. I was just sitting here with the same issue I experienced the first time when I attempted this extraction. Goo in the bottom of the jar. So I went onto the nexus to find out what I am doing wrong as I really stick to to all the steps as described.

Initially I used 2.5 gram of citric acid per 500ml of EA. So I tried what you did and added 2.5 gram citric acid and stirred aggressively, but nothing happened yet. So I added another 2.5 gram (So a total of 7.5 gram citric acid per 500ml of EA) and while stirring the snowglobe finally filled with snow .

I am not sure why it doesn't work for me when using the suggested amount of citric acid. Maybe something is off with one of my components?

Edit: Update, I filtered, dried and weighed the very fine crystals. I got 1.22 gram from 50 gram of Bridgesii powder. I still dissolved some sticky stuff that was stuck to the jars due to the aggressive stirring. Once the water has evaporated, I will update the yield. I am super happy about the outcome.

Here's the fruit of my labor .

It could depend on the initial paste wetness? Some people (e.g. _Trip_) like it less wet.

I'm going to add a picture of _Trip_'s dryer paste as a reference in the TEK.

Interesting, has it happened with different cacti so far?

Do you have a pH paper? I wonder if it takes more citric acid for your extract to become acidic. I think trimescalielne goo forms in near neutral conditions. Maybe you simply need more citric acid to make your extract acidic?

I've been doing what I like to call the "spoon test". Basically, when mixing the cactus powder with everything, before I begin adding EA and decanting, I spoon up a glob of the cactus powder mixed with water and lime and turn the stainless steel spoon upside down, so the glob of cactus powder is facing down. depending on the batch and how much water I add, the glob sticks to the spoon for about 3 to 10 seconds. This is how I quantify the consistency of the paste. I only have three trials to go off of, and one of those experiments I screwed up, but it seems my yields have been a little higher when the glob falls closer to 3 seconds. I'd be interested to hear what others think of this.

Yes, this powder was from a friend's Bridgesii.

I haven't got pH paper, but I have got drops which seem to be not practical for this purpose. I think I will get some pH paper for my next extraction as I really want to find out what's happening.

So far I have always tried to add as little as possible of any ingredient and stuck to the suggested measurements as I do not yet 100% understand what happens on a molecular level. I was worried to contaminate the final product somehow, but after going through most of this thread I learned that I can add a bit of citric acid.

Next time I plan to check the pH of 2.5 gram citric acid per 500ml of EA and then again after adding another 2.5 gram of citric acid. I'll update my findings here.

Just on the side, is there anywhere a video that explains a bit of Chemistry basics? I was good in Chemistry back in school, but that's a long time ago and the knowledge got quite rusty.

Edit: I still got ~280mg from my evap dish, leaving me with a total of ~1500mg crystals.

There should be instructional chemistry videos. I don't have any links handy at the time.

The nexus also has some intro to chem info, relevant to our extractions. Some of the TEKs also explain the chemistry.

Happy for your result. 1.5% crystal yield is great.

PS: I don't think you will not be able to measure the pH very well since it is only a color change on the pH strips.

Thank you Loveall, I will check if I can find some educational material on this topic. This thread and this forum really rekindled my love for chemistry!

It's even 3% yield, since I started with 50gram of cactus powder, so I am more than happy . This is also what this particular cactus yielded in the past (not for me), so I am confident that I got out most of the alkaloid.

Since the pH drops might not give a proper indication I will just add twice the amount of citric acid than suggested. I won't stirr vigorously though, just enough to dissolve the citric acid. If I will see crystals grow one could draw some conclusions from there.

If everything goes well I will bioessay 450mg today.

Wow, so happy (and a little jealous) that you got such an amazing plant! I've never come close to 3% after many extractions. And since it is whole plant yield, the skin is probably at 5%+

For higher yielding cacti more citric acid makes sense. If the plant has an abundance of alkaloids in general the pH won't be as low as usual with the standard amount of citric acid.

Hope you find a time for wachuma-ma and have a great union with the medicine 💚

Thank you Loveall, I hope a cutting of this or a similar cactus will find its way to you eventually .

I just returned from the mountain and feel full of energy. It's just giving and giving

Do you see the water immediately after the pulls? Or do you see water after doing the frig rest?

I just did another round using 50gram Bridgesii powder. This time I felt like trying something and added 5 gram of citric acid instead of 2.5gram. I stirred as little as possible to not agitate it too much, because I would love to see some crystals growing this time.
Well some showed up while I was stirring. Even on my spoon.

I added some pictures, one of them showing the clouding just when dropping the citric acid into the EA.

Looking forward to check the jar tomorrow morning!

Crystal formation is a wild beast. Does what it wants sometimes. Looks like doubling your citric acid caused much faster xtalization, right?

You also have high yields, so that can accelerate the crashing.

It's a function of mescaline and citric acid concentration and amount of agitation. And temperature. And pH. And can chamge with any incoming hydration of the citric acid (pure anhydrous to pure monohydrate). Also, since every cacti is different, and each segment of a single cacti can have different mescaline content, there is no way to control xtalization exactly and repeatedly.

However with excess citric acid we can say mescaline citrate eventually crashes reliably.

One day you can try the diffusion method. Simply drop the citric acid in the extract and don't stir at all. It slowly dissolves by diffusion, clouds slowly rising over time. This gives the largest xtals, but it can be confusing to people thinking their citric didn't dissolve, so it is not in the TEK anymore to avoid the questions.

The citric acid always dissolves, but some people don't always trust this or are confused because of how white/pure the mescaline citrate can be and because the excess dissolves slowly (especially anhydrous citric acid).

Thank you, these are all good points Loveall. I was contemplating some of them, but me being quite inexperienced makes me put two question marks behing every hypothesis I come up with. You just confirmed some of them. For example, we're experiencing a heatwave here (30 degrees Celsius +) and I wondered what this variable does to the process.

Anyhow, I have checked my jar this morning and got crystals (small ones though)! So happy, nearly feels like it's Christmas already .

I believe I forgot to mention that I added the crystals I got from my first run (~500mg) to the cactus paste as I wasn't confident about the purity. So my yield turned out to be a bit higher than last run and I still need to evaporate some water that I used to recover whatever was still stuck to the bottom/walls of the jar. So there's still some more to be added to the overall yield which is currently ~1820mg.
This whole process is so much fun and really satisfying in a way.

Those fluffy white mescaline xtals look amazing 😍

Great job Fridge. Even though the process is simple and low work it does require some skill.

Merkin, while my biggest EA crystals are in that same range (6-8mm), I just remembered that they can be grown larger by dissolving in warm water and letting that evaporate slowly (1 week+). Maybe that is what you saw before? You can use a short cup covered by a cloth or fabric to keep dust out. A cup helps water evaporate even more slowly than a shallow dish. Set the evaporating cup in a place where it will be undisturbed (no walking nearby or open and closing cabinets/doors, that is, avoid acoustic or mechanical vibrations). With some luck and patience you may be able to grow massive white xtals weighing several mg each.

There is not much practicallity to this other than doing it for beauty purposes. Larger xtals could be encased in resin to create a pendant, etc.

Few updates,

1) Getting multiple direct messages that CIELO is working for many people. When it doesn't work, it turns out that there was too much water (gooey product), that the starting material is inactive, or that citric acid was not dissolved in excess (gooey tri-mescaline citrate). The fridge rest has normalized the water content for many.
2) Oddly, chemically drying the extract fully does not seem to be as good as the simple fridge rest. If the extract is fully dry, citric acid dissolves a lot slower and xtalization is slower too (or may even stop). Everything is slowed down. No boost in yield. There are just no clear benefits to a chemical dry and the added materials and effort. Even though this is a standard lab practice it gets a thumbs down from the lazy. If one is waiting for clouds after a chem dry and salting, a few drops of water added will experimentally make xtalization happen quickly.
3) Here is a closer look at the mutual solubility of water and EA (see attached image). Note that the solubility of water in EA drops from ~2.9% to 2.3% going from room to fridge temperature. That's 5ml of water (about a teaspoon) that should fall out of the extract in the fridge. If the room temp is hot (eg 30C) then this could be 10ml. Clearly we can imagine an issue where someone is extracting in a hot garage and xtalizing inside an air conditioned home, then if skipping the fridge rest step, several ml of water will crash with the product - causing a goo.
4) If more than a few ml of water crash during the rest step, that extra water was pulled from the paste itself. This could be due to the paste being too wet, pushing on the french press, poor technique, etc. Not a big deal if all the water is left behind after the fridge rest. However, people should try to improve their technique so that only a few ml of water crash in the fridge.

Finally, based on the feedback over the last year, and the findings on the different causes of goo, I'm calling the TEK robust and ready for general use.

That's a very useful paper, Loveall - thanks as ever for the upload.

Attached is a screenshot of the values for butyl acetate, as much for my personal convenience as anything

When experimenting with dissolving citric acid in butyl acetate I found it was necessary to moisten the solvent by shaking it with a couple of mL of distilled water (in a stoppered, 100mL measuring cylinder) and then decanting the moistened solvent of any remaining aqueous phase before the acid would dissolve to any appreciable extent.

A review also shows that the data from Stephenson and Stuart is reliable.

Hi all, Have some goo, well better said, like a mix of goo and crystals from my first extractions. I want to convert it to crystal. I wonder if I can add the goo to the paste previously disolving it in the water and after that adding the lime and then continue to mix with the cactus powder.
Thanks in advance

Using the previous goo as a spike for the upcoming paste mix seems like a viable idea to me. However, it will mean that you can't accurately deduce the potency of the cactus powder - unless you do the extraction in two halves, one with the spike and one without. That would then become quite informative. If you weigh the amount of goo that you put in - ideally after having desiccated it - you'll get an impression of the efficacy of the extraction by comparing the yields of the spiked vs unspiked halves.