Water> alcohol as solvent for most organic salts and HCl fumarate and sulfate salts being the common exceptions.There are likely more but if HCl is used as an acidifier water is by far the best solvent. I like HCl as it is strong enough to convert the salts but not poisonous in small amounts above pH 3-4 and have found it pulls a cleaner product than just water.

^^Hey thanks for this tip. I plan on extacting 500g of torch nearer Easter time with the resin tek, and I'll be sure to give this a try.

SWIM didn't use lemon or any other acids when making the tea from 76g of dried san pedro chips. He simmered, freezed, thawned, filtered and then simmered and filtered two more times with fresh water over the course of three days and with very low heat(no bubbles forming), until there was no taste whatsoever in the plant material. He combined and reduced the teas and lowered the heat even more towards the end. He stopped using heat at the stove when the liquid was dark brown honey like and put it on a small plate over a fridgerator where it's about +30 celsius.
SWIM's waiting now for the honey to evaporate to tar to be able to handle it more easily.
He's curious to test this medicine, but worries all of the mesc didn't came out because the lack of the acid in cooking. Any suggestions for him? I will post SWIM's report when he tries this out. Thanks for this topic!

Bite your cactus material. If it's bitter, continue cooking. If not, throw it in the compost.

Forgot to mention, there was no taste when he dumped the material. edited the post after your answer. But thanks anyway

I've found a lot of people talking about yielding, lets say, 30 grams of resin from the tek, yet only eating 5 grams at a time. Has anyone tried eating their entire lot of collected resin at once?

It seems like if you'd be eating the entire cactus or drinking all of the tea at once if you weren't doing this method, than why not eat all your resin at once too? Anyone tried this?

SWIM is very pleased to this medicine. He got 47 grams(without acid) of this dry brown tar. He took 5grams an hour ago and is feeling quite nice at the moment.

So it looks like you don't need any acid in cooking, just make sure there's no taste left in the plant material before dumping it. This must b the most simplest way to prepare san pedro medicine. SWIM just powdered some of the dried tar and enjoyed it mixed in youghurt.

No nausea, little discomfort for a few minutes. Compared to drinking tea, this is just amazing! And the dosage....wtf?

Another question…. How crucial is the heat step in the resin tek? My stove is gas only, so even on a low flame it will still produce much more than a simmer, and IIRC, mescaline and heat doth not make a good combination, so I am wondering whether it would be viable to say, perform this at room temperature but for longer periods, especially if the cacti was freeze-thawed with each extraction attempt?

There is always the option of going out and buying a crockpot, but even then, what setting? There doesn’t seem to be many quotes of actual temperatures used, mostly subjective statements such as “barely simmering” “lightly cooking” etc, whereas if someone was to say “62 degrees C is where it’s at” then I could work at finding a way to maintain that temperature. I’m even wondering if bringing the temperature up and then taking off the heat source and leaving it to settle and repeating this every hour or so would do the trick?

So, any thoughts nexians?

Methtical

well to know what is the exact ideal temperature, we would need a study that analyses the solubility of mescaline and other alks in water at different temperatures, as well as the stability of these compounds in these temperatures, and I dont think this exists.

But yeah, the point is, stay under the boiling point, this has been shown by people here to be good...

You can use a gas stove anyways.. You can either improvise some metal support that holds the pot farther away from the fire, which shouldnt be too hard, and/or you can, as you said, alternate between having the fire on and off.. the disadvantage of this last option is of course that you have to be around and paying attention, but I dont see why you couldnt do it, as long as you dont let it heat too much and start boiling.

Well, I was thinking more that someone could pop a thermometer into their mix whilst doing a resin extraction of their own to see what temperature they are doing it at, since it seems their only other judgement is by eye and possibly how hot it is to the touch..... I am assuming that the temperature must be more than say what you would get out of the hot water tap? Perhaps a water bath filled up with water from a boiled kettle would suffice?

The metal support could work, but I figure that 5+hrs of heating is still going to use a lot of gas, and thus might be an expensive way of doing things. I think I might attempt the heat on/heat off method as I have some days where I am around all day so could give this a shot.

Methtical

Yeah. Bliss.

My experience with resin...

50grams of Torch chips were frozen then thawed.

They were added to 1 litre of water, the juice of one lemon and simmered for 2 hours. The water from this was saved.

Another 2 hour simmer of a further 1 litre of water was done and the water saved.

I then reduced the water down to approx 1/4 litre by simmering for a number of hours. The reduced liquid was placed in a glass dish next to a desk fan to dry it out. It took days to dry to a tacky consistency.

I consumed 5g of this at the weekend with no effects.

Am I doing something wrong?? The reason I ask is I can't find too much info on resin dosage.

As the resin I consumed was not fully dry could the 5g have been too little?

Also I've read somewhere else, I think Erowid, that 100g of Torch contains approx 300mg of mescaline. If this is true, surely I should have just eaten all the resin I produced and this would have given me a 150mg mescaline trip.

Am I missing something here?? Any guidance on resin dosage would be appreciated.

Thanks

W

Personally I would consume 100g in a heart beat. I've never found anything to fear when working with cactus, even in what should be extremely high doses.
Some people are hard heads. 150mg would be an uplifting mood for me. Maybe you have some weak cactus. Alkaloid profiles are quite variable with Pedro + Torch.

Is there any reason why you can't simmer the extract down and evap the rest in the oven or at room temp to avoid burning it all? Using a small amount of water should lead to evap times of like 1-2 hours, no?

well you can try, sure, if you got a reasonable room temp, dry atmosphere and plenty of ventilation.. in my own experience it takes forever without at least a bit of heat and a fan, though...

Instead of doing 3 different pulls can I use the same water and simmer for a couple days? It's not saturated with alkaloids so I don't see a problem with is but maybe one exists.

wikiwahwah you say you ate 5 grams

but how many grams of "resin" did you get from 50 grams of chips?


You should have eaten everything you got from 50 grams

oine long simmer with the same water will definitely not get all your alkaloids out.. its like washing clothes, even if you leave them for ages in the same water, it still wont clean it all, you'll need to take that water out and add fresh water at least once to be more effective (and in my experience with cactus it takes 3-4 simmers to get all the active resin out)

You could do it like I do with aya brews: Simmer in one pot, reduce in x other pots.

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I got 19g from the 50g of chips. I think I was being a bit too cautious. When I next get the chance in a couple of weeks I will eat the lot and see where it takes me.

W