Psychedelic cacti for the most part contain active alkaloids within their cells which are active upon ingestion. The “difficulty” of the situation lies in destroying those cells effectively enough so that these active alkaloids maybe harvested for our use.
Plant cell walls are made of cellulose, which is a type of plant sugar that is not digestible by humans, but can be destroyed by our stomach acid to enough effect that the cells rupture and we will absorb the desired alkaloids.
So eating the cactus is one option…a very bitter but traditional option
Making tea from cactus is another option, but this involves cutting, skinning/chopping hours of boiling, reducing, reconstituting, boiling, boiling, boiling. And you have to watch over it to make sure it doesn’t burn, and making sure you house doesn’t catch on fire; Also very traditional.

A/B extraction involves the use of dangerous solvents, lye, and some degree of knowledge of chemistry. (Which I really don’t like myself)
Many people will say: why not drink cactus juice (throw it in a juicer): this is possible but you will only be mechanically separating globs of cells, you want to rupture each cell individually and a juicer does not work on such a microscopic scale. Most of your active will go in the garbage with all the fibrous material.

So what is your other option? Well you can use peyote’s secret sauce tek!
What you need:

1 - Aluminum baking tray…without the perforations on the bottom
1 - How much ever cactus you want to consume (I prefer the use of bridgesii)
1 – Vacuum (any ol vacuum will do it)
1 - A Tupperware container large enough to hold you cactus with a cover you can cut a hole in to and seal the vacuum nozzle to.
1 – Large canning car or pitcher
1 – freezer/refrigerator
1 – Needle-nose pliers

Procedure:
1)Cryogenic Cytolysis or Freezing the cactus so that cytoplasm expands and ruptures the cell wall

2)Cut your cactus so that they can be stacked neatly inside of the aluminum tray
Stack them into your aluminum baking tray and place them on a level surface in your freezer
Allowing them to freeze as slow as possible allows for the largest water crystals to form ensuring cell lysis.

3)Let them freeze through (you will not notice any real difference in their structure

4)After 3 days, remove them and place them into your refrigerator for a day or 2 until they are thawed but cold. You will notice that they are floppy gelatinous chunks of cactus now, and they are sitting in a pool of golden, thicker than water syrup.
(That golden syrup is actually the cytoplasm that expanded and ruptured the cell wall, and then drained out)

5)
5a)At this point you can simply pour off the golden liquid, and put it back in the freezer and repeat the process.

OR

5b)You can put it in a Tupperware container, attach a vacuum (at the top of the container to make a make-shift vacuum chamber to exert negative pressure on your cactus cell walls draining them further.

PIC:


6)Now place the frozen cactus back in the freezer, and repeat this process by allowing it to freeze completely, and then thawing it, more cells will rupture deeper inside the cactus that weren’t allowed to rupture in your first pull.
3-4 pulls you will have a pile of gooey cactus flesh and plenty of cactus syrup it should be a clear yellow/gold color and be terribly bitter. You can chug this, or do an A/B extraction on it.

You will notice that you first pull is the most bitter!



PS:
What i want from you:

peer review please... my chemistry skills are a little lacking, so you guys that are good with A/B extraction ... do one! (can always save the plant matter if you find your yield to be too low) essentially you lose nothing except finding out if my method is as great as i say it is.

- peyote

extraction of peyote seems taboo

during the freezing thawing stage on trichocereus this yellowish syrup is also found

this seems a long way to go about an a/b especially with the advent of acetone bombing to reduce viscosity

why not just make tea. reduce. decant. acetone bomb. reduce. a/b
or
drytek

one day..when all my trichs are nice are large...

if you want to stand over a stove for 6 hours be my guest i suppose.

but this way will ensure complete cell rupture you just pour it off....and chug it.

you throw your cactus in the freezer - 10 min

put it to thaw - 1 min

take it out pour of the syrup - 5 minutes

chug it - 1 min.

sounds like to me you are playing hopscotch with mescalito in under 20 min of actual work.

try it...i dare say its much more powerful than tea

peyote, have you ever reduced this golden liquid? Wondering if it would reduce down to a resin or perhaps some crystals.

Peyote, your tek takes days to do, so making a tea in 6 hours is MUCH quicker and probably just as easy.

What about simply drying and powdering your cactus, then chugging it back with water when required. Isn't this a highly reccomended way that preserves many alks?

I have also heard that simply eating the raw flesh is a fantastic method, perhaps blending it to a puree with a little water and lime juice. Are you certain that method dosen't unlock all the cell walls, after all it's WELL pureed?

freeze thaw, freeze thaw, freeze thaw. you can do this as many times as youd like and im sure you still wouldnt get all the alkaloids compared to eating it straight/ dehydrated / tea. it may produce potent liquid but so does a tea/resin. if i had shit tons of cacti and wanted an experiment id try this, but for now having such great yields it wouldnt make sense to jeopardize the success of any specimen, especially when they are so valued to me.

if you chugged a puree then the cell walls wouldnt need be lysed as youll digest it enough to extract the essentials in your gut. if you make a puree to extract it would need heat + time + water to properly extract the alkaloids.

purees are rarely the answer. i used to make purees when i was in a bind, i only used the outter 5 mm of green flesh without spines or skin and blended that with the tiniest amount of water. i could only get about a foot of this down as it took 3 massive gulps, each more nauseating than the last.... ultimately this method was discontinued in light of dehydrated flesh, which became augmented with using the cores as a resin to mix with the powdered flesh making cacti balls.

OYSAIN- yes you can simply reduce it

christian - if you want to dry, powder, reconstitute thats up to you... but the taste of all that chlorophyll is way more than i can take, id prefer the tea, the skin and cellulose are 100% useless and just bulk material entering your digestive tract. also you may leave the freezer unattended, do you leave the stove unattended ?

mew - again if you chugged a puree you are taking in a TON of plant mater that will just make you uncomfortably full.
and will cramping. i think you said this.

my method produces pure water + cell contents. if you are looking for ALL the alkaloids according to your logic we shoul just take MHRB powder mix it with some water and chug it...then you get ALL the alks.

this sauce is 1000x easier on the stomach once your mouth becomes accustomed to the taste.

there is no plant mater to deal with when doing an A/B

i still dont understand how you are "WASTING" anyting... all this shows me is a little bit of lack of experience or exposure to cactus.

what i do:

extract the sauce via freeze/thaw cycles, take the solid portion of the cactus and put it in the fridge.
drink the sauce, have a good trip for 3 people.

come back take the remaining plant, puree it in a blender. do an AB extraction, reclaim ALL you alkaloids.

throw out the plant matter, enjoy your mescaline-HCL... at which point are you jeopardizing your stock ?

mew, I think you misunderstand the idea of this tek.

To me the idea of this tek is that you get the substance you want to ingest, without all the plant material that normally comes with it, and that in a relatively easy way. It just takes time, and time is something that is very important to have when working with entheogens.

And I think that if you want to get out all of the cactus, then afterwards you can still do a complete chemical extraction.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

yes, i didnt expect there to be a further process other than the secret sauce, if one intends to fully exhaust the plant of the alkaloids, who am i to say there is only one way to skin a cat. i see the logic in your process, it is your methodology, i am biased to mine as you are yours. however i will try yours in the future, variety leads to evolution, and evolution is why i participate in cactus.

no offense was meant. i was looking at it without full awareness.

Peyote, firstly thanks for gifting us with a great tek. Any new Tek that's positive like this one is always good to have.

I like your Tek because it produces the goodies easily, and can now understand your chugging mimosa analogy.

I just wish i had some Cactus!

Hey peyote
Belated welcome to the Nexus! Nice to meet another cacti lover.

I've toiled for many years with the ingestion difficulties cactus present, nice to see you contributing something worth a try, that might avoid a lot of the nausea/bloating associated with them.(I'm too scared to attempt another extraction after a few failed attempts and a finite supply of cacti).

Couple of questions about it:

> Could you please clarify the vacuum step? I'm not sure how this would work? Perhaps I'm being daft Do you mean
wet/dry vacuum, capable of sucking up liquids?
> How many freeze and thaw cycles do you usually do to get the max yield?

I'm thinking of doing it like this: (I'll be trying it with pedro and torch if you were curious)
Cut 3 feet into chunks
Refrigerate overnight
Freeze for 12 hrs(8am -8pm), thaw and drain (repeat 4 times)
Reduce liquid to resin/xstals via heating tray and fan
Is there really a need for the 1st 3 day freeze? I would assume the repeated freezing would produce similar results?

I'll definitely try reducing to a resin/xtals - the thought of drinking almost 500ml to a litre of that makes me queasy.

Thanks again,

Peace
PW

i suspect that hydrating the thawed pulp after the first freeze before the second will increase the alkaloids released by the following cycles. it only has so much moisture to give after all, so give it more.

like a sponge full of ink, after one squeeze it might most be out, but more water helps

you dont have to vacuum.

but if you want, get a Tupperware container cut a hole in it, and put the vaccum nozzle in.

place your cactus inside, even a slight pressure will squeeze the cells, you can just hand squeeze the cactus and wring out all the juice.

Has anyone done any further extraction on the resulting substance from this method? Acetone crashing, or anything? I'm very curious what can be done with it.

lol 3 years of lurking and this is what pops your posting cherry.

a pressure cooker will lyse cell walls and effectively extract all alkaloids in 3x40 min cooks.

the pc method leaves the insoluble material to settle on the bottom, rendering a potent pure solution to be decanted

.....


no idea about this freeze thaw recipe, seems to me inefficient

Too many forums, not enough time.

Not everyone has a pressure cooker, though everyone probably has a freezer, that's why this method stuck out to me.

considering the simplicity of just brewing in a regular old pot and pouring off 3 pulls
letting them settle over night
decanting
reducing

in less than a day you can have a tea (mostly without insolubles) ready for drinking/evaporation/bassificaiton

vs the many freeze thaws it would take to exhaust the substrate of its alkaloids (also after a so much liquid has been removed its unlikely there will be enough liquid to totally deplete the substrate of its alkaloids as eventually it will be quite dry, you may need to add water to it again )

We shall see what the experiments produce, but after one big freeze they have only a small amount of bitterness left. The remainder flesh might be prepared traditionally, to see what is left.

please report in with your findings, also include the specimen of which youre working with (length, girth, age, stress?, etc)

happy pharmings