^ thats why i stay out of the ID game.

im actually pretty good at ID of all kinds of botanica.
but the margin for error is ONE, and im not accepting that margin.

i encourage people to grow themselves,
with tried and tested species, from known sources.

the only thing i hunt wild is cubes,
as im an expert in those.
and ,i only hunt for myself and maid........
we can accept our own risk, but not others liabilities.

interesting how ID risks and extract risks came out in this thread.
its almost like .......
" hmmmmm, i thought i saw a massive patch of cyans, and theres some solvent barrels idle in the barn"...............

^yowza, ya wonder why i dont sleep well.

Yep, I've found overlapping patches of cyans and galerinas too. Not as often as I've found just cyans, fortunately. IME telling them apart is not so hard when they're side-by-side. It's a matter of not getting over-excited about the situation.

Once you've found a few cyan specimens, it's just a matter of a bit of damp cardboard, quite a lot of patience, and some woodchips, and a whole lot more patience, then you'll have more psilo than you'll care to shake a stick at without having to sterilise anything. (Made that sound so slick, heh!)

Here's a little reminder to be careful when out picking mushrooms...

hey peeps.........
see this thread.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&m=712205&#post712205

I was once quite involved in IDing over at the Shroomery. There is a Trusted Identifier badge there and anyone with it is genuinely very trust worthy, many are professional mycologists. They don't go playing around with people's lves giving tenuous IDs for blurry photos, if it's not clear enough they will say and in any case the photo quality is down to you.

Telling the difference between a Galleria and a cyan is not hard and if you're willing to put in a little bit of research and get some second opinions before you're confident it's perfectly safe. Much safer than any drug you haven't identified / produced yourself. I'd suggest it'd take less time to make you a safe cyan IDer than kitchen chemist. By the sounds of it you guys already know all you need to, it's just the enduring wild mushroom taboo stopping you. Personally I thoroughly enjoy harvesting many wild edible and psychedelic mushrooms for consumption.

I agree it's best left to more specialist sites though.

I've sat next to a patch of mushrooms that had both characteristics of cyans, and galerinas. They could all very well just be galerinas, or cyans.

I'm not confidant enough to gamble organ failure with internet specialists. The most inept, incapable, inexcusably ignorant fools pull off more complex reactions than a humble DMT extraction.

I've got a microscope, I could just look at the spores of each if I wanted to persue it. I'd rather just grow pan cyans any day than go foraging for ps cyans. But to each their own I suppose.

Purple-brown and rusty-brown spores falling from the same cap? Bruising blue and simultaneously not? Each to their own is completely fair enough, I just think there's a stigma over wild mushrooms, enduring from days when information wasn't so good or widely available and from the actions of a careless minority. It's one of the things that got me fascinated by them. I guess I was surprised to find this fear in so many users here where handling highly corrosive, toxic & flammable chemicals and consuming illicit grade drugs is run of the mill, all in the view to blitz one's senses for often many hours.

I'd be more comfortable with my daughter getting into mushroom hunting than psychedelics, and if she wanted to hunt psychedelic mushrooms, I'd find the tripping more worrying than the identification.

And IDing a mushroom with spore print, bruising colours & other characteristics with online help, seems safer than poking street drugs through regents and scouring through incomplete colour charts.

Of course everyone should only do what they're comfortable with. You must be completely confident in your ID and anyway the last thing you need is paranoia over mushroom poisoning when embarking on a trip. But it's not quite the blind minefield many people seem to consider it.

Thanks a lot for all your replies guys, you've all been great. Now Going to order some DCM & fresh acetone as I'm not sure if mine might have absorbed water. Just grinder my mush in a cheapo blender as can't be bothered to wait for my powerful one or get a coffee grinder. Didn't blend in solvent in case it dissolved the plastic, though I do want a glass one to do this in the future. The powder is nice and fine. So going for 'the Hoffman' minus chroma.

Still looking for some insight into how soluble the alkaloids in Glycerine or Propylene Glycol after methanol evaporation. I want a liquid I can keep at a known concentration that will store well and be consumable in drops. I understand they are both fairly polar, does that suggest that psilocybin will dissolve?

Thanks again for any thoughts.

I reckon glycerine would do a reasonable job of dissolving the goods, it generally contains a significant amount of water anyhow as it's pretty hygroscopic. Never tried it though.

PG maybe also.

The idea makes me think of shrooms in honey, of course.

Use magnesium sulfate to dehydrate your solvents, no need to waste :3

I just pack my crude extract into gelcaps and keepem in the freezer. I takem with a redbull.

you are far braver than this girl ice.
i use grape juice..........

Hi guys. After 0 replies in 4 days, my original thread of the same nature on the Shroomery has taken off whilst my back was turned. One concerning post on there states that psilo(cy)bin is freely soluble in acetone, so an acetone wash will take with it all my potency. Obviously this is in contrast to the 'Hoffman method' I am intending to follow, which stipulates an acetone soak and discard as well as chloroform. I thought I'd put this to you guys to hear your reaction. Is he just talking rubbish or has something been overlooked here? For those who have access, the post can be found in my thread on the Shroomery here.

The same user also states that the alkaloids must be protonated to render them insoluble in DCM. Is there any sense to this?

Solvents are on the way.

Cheers.

you guys are making this more complex than it is really.

ATM i cant be in the lab hovering over solvents, due to extreme dental work this month.
but that will change very soon............

i have my serious doubts about the " other forum" on this topic.
only a small percent there seem to be able to consistently grow,
and those that do, seem to be unable to extract psil effectively.

my observation is the growers and chemists, arent the same mind.
and some of the best growers, seem to be the most fantasical chemists.
( just my take )

the community has alot of bio genius, and we have alot of chem genius.
chem/ bio genius combined is rare it seems.

Some old stuff from the Nook archives that may be of interesthttp://www.thenook.org/archives/tek/searchextr.html

Hah, you don't need to be a bio genius to grow mushrooms. I think you have a point though Anne, those with experience working in a lab know how to cultivate good reproducible technique, especially when it comes to sterility this is necessary.

I agree, this thread has become way over complicated. The procedure is incredibly simple.

Defat with DCM or chloroform, extract with alcohol. No need for protonation, acid base chemistry, whoever wrote that was just assuming psilocybin is the same as DMT...

When I start growing again this spring, I plan to perform a soxhlet extraction, the idea really piqued my curiosity. The only problem I can see with the soxhlet is the necessary reflux, the psilocybin should be able to withstand the 65C temperature of the alcohol in theory, but I am wary. It is not the heat itself that degrades psilocybin but the oxygen in the air, heat just speeds this process up. The hot methanol vapours helps displace oxygen, but not entirely, if it was done under nitrogen you'd be set, but I don't have that kind of set up.

However, it is also possible to defat using DCM in the soxhlet, and with a low BP of only 40C, and the fact that it won't be refluxing the alkaloids, only the crud. It is very appealing. Perhaps I will do this and then perform a simple alcohol extraction without the soxhlet.

Cheers

..i think what's important here is data from people who've actually tried or done an extraction..

as i said, the 'Hofmann' method works...Albert was a pretty smart guy...
it results in a semi-solid goo, or semi-solid blue/grey crystal-goo, which can be vaporised to give a 45 minute experience...

the acetone definitely takes something out which is not psiloc(yb)in...

and one is best to use methanol if possible (even though quite toxic) , not ethanol, as this is a much higher solubility

as was mentioned in this thread https://www.dmt-nexus.me....aspx?g=posts&t=6329
the acetone removes the sugars...
and yes a number of NP solvents can replace the chloroform..

with the highest respect for all the good posts, i see more theory here often than actual result report..

what would be most interesting about the not really needed chromatography step, with bulk, would be the other minor alkaloids in there..which very little is known about

what still surprises me is how few people have tried vaporising it..

it works..
.

nen888 gets it.
but i knew that early on in this thread.

mindillusion has it also,
it can all be "soxed"

soxhlets are a great thing.
but they arent really noob or expedient friendly.

personally, id use a sox for making coffee and leave it on the kitchen counter all the time,
but, explain that one to the neighbors.

also keep in mind, set up of a sox seems simple enough.
and the pictures make them look warm and fuzzy.
they arent.
running one with a volatile solvent for any length of time, is nail biting.
they can fireball , and blow out.
heating isnt as straightforward as ya think , and OMG ya better be hot on physics.

as said soxes are outstanding.
and they run great in labs, especially small soxes.
soxes are like cats, cute in housecat size, not so funny in panther size.
now think about full size ones, in bathrooms and kitchens.
be sobered.
actually running a sox that can chew down a tangible amount of dry shroom biomass,
is a serious production.

id suggest if you have a sox, make coffe in it fult tilt boogie for a few days first.
then you stand a chance of running one with a volatile solvent.
its kansas and a really really dangerous oz difference.


^ all that said
psil extracting amounts to 2 things,
blow off the fats and oils, and then chroma the dry residue.

check the merck, and think of psil as a zwitteron.
it really doesnt dissolve in the non polars.
almost any non polar will work.

ya you can soak out fats and oils, or you can blow them out with gas solvents.
the cannabis wax blasters do this all the time.

assuming the biomass is dry dry dry , and ground fine fine fine,
you blow it until no more anything comes out.

once you have the dry biomass recovered,
alc/water solutions suck out the psil with ease.

then its just a matter of chroma.
even without chroma.....your still talking a serious extract.

now consider this, so what on the numbers.
whatever bone dry you put into this, your gonna get 1% +/-
and thats assuming your doing it good...........

now those with good 14/20 micro scale kits and chem degrees are thinking,
wow, i could extract 3-4 g's into a few micro crystals.
yes you can.
^ but , no, you cannot throw a semi dry z in the blender, soak an hour , and vap off and filter............


* note.
gotta love the nook!

i've done the soxhlet thing, it does nothing to separate the psilocybin from structural proteins. as a zwitterion, IEX will.

even when I introduced a sample in dcm through nLC-MS, it was first protonated in the mobile phase of 0.1% formic acid in water, transitioning to 0.1% formic acid in acetonitrile, through a reverse phase C18 column. sharp peak for psilocin.
chrom is essential.

high resolution crystals from uncomplexed psilocin is dubious, because of its tendency to electrostatic/hydrogen-bond with impurities. also, the geometry of the molecule may complicate things, if rotamers exist (due to the alpha carbon).

I'd say chrom it, and complex the goo with maleic acid. add acetone, and freeze precip. vac filter, while rinsing with pet ether.
the sandoz form was psilocin maleate.

but I wouldn't mind seeing a pic of an experiment doing the solvent partitioning suggested by Hoffmann.


the green line in the graph (x = pH, y = percentage) represents the species with net neutral charge. good luck isolating that.

ill agree with benz,

pure isolates are very hard to do.

as for the sox, run it first with a non polar ( nail biting) then discard the liquid.
dry the biomass remaining and then sox full tilt boogie with etoh / water 50/50. ( nail nibbling)

of course youd still have to chroma.

thing is, if ya get it out and defatted,
it may not be pure, but the power is amazing............

I'm not after pure crystals so have ordered the solvents ready to try it. Substituting chloroform for DCM. Happy to post pictures, what exactly do you want illustrated in them?

There's been controversy on the Shroomery about solvent choice. I was wondering if you could come in with your expert opinion Benz? They're telling me if I wash my mushrooms in acetone, I'll lose my actives. But Hoffman obviously advocates this. They also say I need to protonate my actives before I wash with DCM or that'll pull them too. Is there logic behind this or what's the deal?

When you do your extraction, do a full step by step with pictures if you could user_7