so swim is doing his first mesc extraction here what hes done so far.

hes been working with a 16 inch long piece of fresh san pedro that he sliced into strips, skinned, and diced.

-boiled it 3 times for 2 hours each and then basified the tea with lye.

-added xylene shook the jug and let it sit for 2 days.

-pulled the xylene and did some salting experiments.

first swim tried using sulfuric acid to salt out the mesc. this worked the first run but swim had trouble maintaining proper ph and got a liquid acid after precip.

he then tried using hcl. first few runs swim was trying to find a good water to acid raitio and finally settled on 5 or 6 drops of 29% hcl per 100cc's water. this seemed to produce a less dirty looking powder.

the 3 piles in the pics are:

the darkest pile is from experimenting with hcl/water ratio
small whitest pile was from sulfuric acid
the larger beige pile was from using my final hcl ratio

swim ordered some acs grade acetone to wash with. how important is washing? is it dangerous to take this crude mesc without it? i know my camera isnt the best but do these look like im on the right track?

swims is letting his jug saturate for a few more days and will try salting some more out then.

good work!
the advantage to hcl is easy titration. the excess will evap away. not an option with other acids
with such a small amount, recomend skipping wash/cleaning. just go for it

To do your salting experiments, did you add the acids to the same batch of xylene, or did you pour the xylene into 3 separate containers and salt each one once?

FWIW, that first picture looks a bit odd, and I wonder if the third one is a little too good to be true. I'd wash with ACS acetone, especially if you went ahead and ordered it already. 10 mL of acetone per 1 g of crude product is the rule of thumb, I believe

Each one was different xylene. The dirtier looking pile was from higher acid concentrations so I figured it pulled some other junk.

So I pulled a little bit more identical to the cleaner looking hcl. I've still not received my acs acetone. I was thinking of giving it a try with a buddy this weekend.

Are there any issues with unwashed mesc?
Could not washing it leave bad contaminates in it?

MIGHT be an issue if you ate pounds daily...
i've eaten plenty worse looking salts, i'm still kickin'
i'd go for it

dunno about washing mesc-sulfate with acetone..
but you can use 99% acetone to carefully wash mesc-HCl, which is what i would do when using xylene.

Maybe silly but i would not have a good enough mindset if the product was not washed.

I tried it and it was pretty nice. I was a bit iffy since it was my first mesc extraction so I only took 150mg. It was a mild experience but it was quite enjoyable.

acetone wash is fine with sulphuric
, ice cold acetone is a good rinse solovent
if ice cold, no real need to "dry"

sweet! i find 200mg of sulphate salts to be very enjoyable, mild, energetic fun. great for a day at the river