I have notice, that i can boil pedro for days on end, yielding almost endless amounts of resin. The downside is, that this resin is MUCH MUCH weaker than the one gained by boiling the plant material for a shorter amount of time.

thats pretty subjective really..

boiling does not hurt mescaline.

do a cwe
or, boil for days
= same amount of mescaline

Just boil until there's no bitterness left in the material.

Mescaline is so bitter that even fairly small amounts can leave a very bitter flavour. So the chances are if there's little to no bitterness, jobs a good n'.

There is still bitterness after literally days of boiling. But the resulting resin is weaker than the one produced by shorter boils.

I find the more you cook squeeze and play with the plant the more resin is produced. Just simmer chunks as in houses tek and your golden The natural juices in the cactus come out of the plant very quickly once they are cooked, theres no need for boiling hours on end, mashing and squeezing the cactus.

Three or Four light simmers is usually plenty

mister biggles worth generally does a wash a day

lyse all cells: PC ftw.
all it takes is about 30-40 mins @ 15 psi.

then reduce however you want

I found that when I boiled a 2ft length of kinda skinny cactus, it was still bitter after 5+ boils of over 18 hours total. I lost track. In the future I'll likely not do that.

I wonder how long for dry/powdered vs fresh chunked

Very nice idea! that i might try!!

"lyse all cells: PC ftw.
all it takes is about 30-40 mins @ 15 psi.

then reduce however you want"

be sure to preboil until foaming stops! URGENT
otherwise pc can be very dangerous!

PC has been successful for extracting alks from cacti. As dg notes it is critical that the pulp/chunks are first boiled until foaming stops. Also, once full pressure is attained, the heating source must be kept at a minimum to maintain pressure to prevent frothing and clogging the release valve. One can freeze the material between boils, but imho this is unnecessary.

Anecdotal reports of decreased potency from prolonged boiling are too numerous to ignore.
In some boiling of the plant the surface temperature of the metal of the container the material is boiled in is much hotter than the water itself and may be capable of degrading mescaline or cycling it into an isoquinoline.

Extraction methods that entirely lack boiling steps are often reported to have better yields.

A side by side comparison should be made where a Kg is split into two 500 gram portions, one should be boiled for several hours and the other should be done STB style and the two yields compared. I would expect that longer boiling times result in a decreased yield and that in some cases boiling a long time at high heat could end up resulting in no yield at all.

There are too many other mitigating factors involved to draw a sound conclusion based on anecdotal reports. the numbers say that the compound can handle it, seems straight forward to me.

I agree that a sound conclusion cannot be made, however I wrote nothing of sound conclusions, I suggested a test to verify, but mentioned that the reports are too numerous to ignore.

Mescaline is well known to be able to cycle to an isoquinoline under some conditions and prolonged boiling is known to decrease the potency of a cactus brew. The color change of a boiling brew could easily be from the conversion of PEA like alkaloids into isoquinolines.

the surface of a metal container in contact with fire can easily reach temperatures that exceed the stability of mescaline, despite the water in the brew.

I don't know what numbers you are listening to, please share them if you will.

Mescaline becoming an isoquinoline seems pretty straightforward. It could easily be done on purpose or on accident.

Well, I dont understand this process of Mescaline turning into an isoquinolines, in fact, I dont really even know what those are, so excuse my ignorance. I only speak from personal experience on extracting cacti.

I understand most mescaline salts have a very high MP of 180C and up (the inside sides and bottom of my pots are well below this throughout the duration of boiling). Furthermore, I have recently started using a preasure cooker for the initial cook and I have noticed no loss in potency, despite the higher temperature of boiling water under pressure.

I do notice however that none salts have very low melting points well below 50C. Perhaps a more likely factor is heat being used on basic solutions. Or inadequate acidification at the start of the process.

the metal surface of a pot with boiling water is well above the temperature of the water, it can be very hot although the temp depends on several factors.

Mescaline is a PEA, the amine group A can be closed into a double ring structure, this creates an isoquinoline. This can happen under high heat, high pH and high heat as well as with acidic solution's and with specific enzymes and catalysts.

A pressure cooker is less likely to result in loss.

Interestingly when a PEA type structure becomes an isoquinoline it often becomes brown, the browning reaction of Banana peels for example is the cycling of Dopamine into Salsolidine, which turns brown. The brown color of boiled cactus solutions may be linked to this type of reaction.

Isoquinolines are also known from cacti, one analysis of a form called RS0004, a macrogonus/peruvianus type cactus, illustrated the presence of an isoquinoline, likewise peyote contains a few isoquinolines, like pellotine.

A good reference for these molecules is The Simple Plant Isoquinolines, written by Alexander Shulgin and Wendy Perry.

In a nutshell, isoquinolines are to phenethylamines what betacarbolines are to tryptamines.

to answer the original question of this thread.

first cook 1 hour
second cook 2 hours
third cook 3 hours
fourth cook ph adjusted overnight soak

filter combine, reduce on heat not exceeding simmering






personally making tea isnt as effective as dehydrating and powdering, then bassifying before hydralizing, a paste bass if you will
then watch all the goodies jump into your nps.... way better IMHO

If we were to design a scientific experiment to test the hypothesis "boiling cactus tea reduces its alkaloid content", how would it look?

A very loosey goosey approach might be to prepare about 2 doses of fresh san pedro using a method with no heat (eg. using a juicer); divide into two, consume one half and document effects. Boil / simmer remainder for 12 hours with a thermometer, adding water as required to ensure it doesn't thicken up and burn. Wait long enough to ensure tolerance has no affect ( 5-7 days?), consume and document effects.

For this to be truly effective a double blind test would be required, but this would be difficult to accomplish without extraction because fresh juice tastes quite different to tea that has been brewed for any length of time.

or just do the side by side and extract alkaloids instead and make conclusions based on final yield instead of on subjective perception.

I gotta say, Im sold on the preasure cooker.... Ive found its just a half hour cook at 15psi on well blended cacti. Thats it. A second pull was done on the same material and the results consumed with very little effect. It would seem a good portion/most of the goodies are out after the first half hour. I can live with the small amount of loss from not doing a second pull. Time saved is well worth it.