SWIM is looking at minimizing costs on reagents, using food safe ingredients, and limiting exposure to chemicals. SWIM doesn't want to distill limonene or keep buying it. SWIM doesn't like xyelene, et al., and of course they aren't food safe, but he is perfectly content using them in small quantities to wash.

A brief overview of the procedure:

SWIM uses San Pedro chips. They seem more consistent than torch and are easier to make tea from than powder. SWIM enjoys the alkaloid cocktail from Pedro, but of course it may not be your cup of tea.

SWIM starts by placing the cactus bark in ball jars with a bit of water and freezing them overnight.

In the morning SWIM runs a little hot water over the jars to get the material free and starts filling a pot half full with water.

Next he places it on the large burner on high until it's boiling. When it's at a rolling boil, move it to the simmering (smallest) burner and use the lowest flame.

Add San Pedro chips until about 1cm of water is covering them. Let it simmer for an hour or two. It should not be boiling or bubbling at all.

Pour the pan out through a mesh strainer. Collect the liquid in a bowl and put the cactus back in the pan with the same amount of water as before. You will be doing 4-6 pulls like this. The material is on the stove for a while, but the actual time you spend working with the cactus is only a few minutes during this phase.

All of the collected liquid gets mixed together in a large jar and placed in the fridge. Decant, leaving the layer of silt in the jar. It should be 10mm thick or less IME. If you have much more than that it's fine, but you may consider adding it back in with your pulls.

After decant or filtration, SWIM places all the golden liquid in a sauce pan on the lowest flame. When it starts to become noticeably more viscous than water, it's time to stop with the heat. IME 100g of Pedro can go down to around 150-200ml.

OK, at this point SWIM would normally drink the tea. However, he wants to try some extractions.

For a next step SWIM would either follow the resin tek or let it evap by fan. Once all the water is out, the tar will be disolved in a mixture of limonene and hydrated lime. Next salt it out. SWIM may go for the HCl salt even though his HCl won't be food safe. Small quantities are fine with him. SWIM also wants to keep the dark alkaloids and is interested in trying them at different ratios with the mescaline.

Is this feasible? SWIM can't really afford lots of limonene and doesn't have anywhere to distill out the yuck.

SWIM has been trying to perfect it for a week or so now.

He basically makes a brew then concentrates it down to a goo (not water-less resin though)
Then add lime, mixes and dries it over low heat, the "2" on his electric stove.

Now that seems to reliably produce a mix of cactus gunk and freebase mescaline.
Purifying it from there has been tricky,
firstly he tried using xylene, which separated it well, but it is really not that soluble at all.
Using 300ml on a couple tablespoons worth of resin-lime powder seemed pretty lame (and stinky)

He yielded some nice white HCl by salting it out with 1 drop per 75ml of water (recommended concentration for the purest)
But the whole process left a lot to be desired and seemed to take more solvent and time than should be necessary

but he is working on a possible breakthrough,
instead of using xylene on the resin/lime powder he used acetone, acetone should be a much better solvent for freebase mescaline, IPA might work too.

When the acetone was seperated it was yellowish in color, the resin/lime mix is nearing depletion so it may be darker if done without any xylene pulls.
He added 2 drops of 36% HCl and it clouded immediately.

He's still waiting on crystals, but he's seen those clouds before in naptha and they usually mean crystals are not far behind.

He may need to evaporate it some or put it in the freezer, mescaline is a tiny bit soluble in acetone and there is probably not too much in the acetone anyway.

*fingers crossed*


if it doesn't work with HCl he'll try other acids, hopefully it will work.