Friends, I'm working on a psilocybin tincture.
The easiest tek I found is:
1. Grind 10 grams of mushroom
2. Place in a mason jar, and cover with Everclear (150 or 190 proof)
3. Shake every 3 hours for 24 hours.
4. Filter with coffee filter
5. Do a second pull and combine both pulls.

My questions is: to apply heat or not to apply heat while the mushroom is in the Everclear?

I've read Nexus posts with people saying psylocibin breaks down with heat?

Others say the heat is necessary for the full extraction in the tincture.

I'm confused about applying heat to psilocybin mushrooms ...

I haven't had great luck with P. cubensis tinctures in general. They have some power for a bit but seem to quickly lose it in solution... just my informal observations.



http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/adsarchive/extraction.htm

Thanks! What tek have you been using?
Do you think the loss of power has something to do with storage? something else?

Don't use heat, it's really not necessary and does have the potential of damaging your alkaloids. Just be sure to grind the fruits really well for maximum surface area.

I usually throw in a pinch of ascorbic or citric acid to help prevent oxidation and store in amber or cobalt glass and I've never noticed a problem with lost potency, even when the tincture has been sitting in a hot tent in the desert for several days.

I usually use a fan and evaporate the tincture down to the level of 1g/ml for easy dosing.

Dreamer, thank you for the advice.

How long do you usually leave your grinded fruit in the everclear?
24 hours, 48, 72?

Excellent will find amber glass or UV glass to store.

One of the problems with P. cubensis is said to be that it contains enzymes which deactivate the psiloc(yb)in. These are active when moisture is present and at room temperature to physiological temperature. It seems these enzymes may retain some activity in alcoholic solution, too. Many have found P. cubensis to lose potency significantly more quickly than a number of other active species, most likely for this reason.

That is to say, if you do heat, heat enough to deactivate the enzymes - and quickly enough that their time at optimum working temperature is kept as short as possible - but not so hot that the actives are damaged. One option would be to steam the already dried mushrooms before drying them again and proceeding with the tincture.

Then again, dreamer042 finds this unnecessary - were you using P. cubensis for your tincture, d042?

Sorry this thread fell off the active topics and I forgot about it.

I've left it for differing amounts of time from a few hours to many months, it seems the extraction of the goods happens pretty quickly and in general I think opting for shorter soaks (say 24 hours or less) gives a cleaner/better tincture.

Yes my tinctures have mainly been made with cubensis, I expect this breakdown you refer to is likely the result of oxidation and that's why I throw in the pinch of anti-oxidant acid to help prevent that. The alcohol itself also acts as a preservative and should prevent or at least limit enzyme action. I also try to do the extraction and evaporation out of direct sunlight as much as possible (a closed closet for the extraction and a room with the blinds closed and window opened to allow the fumes to escape seems to work fine for the evap).

Thank you DREAMER42
Appreciate the wisdom

I have never made tinctures, but have made tea many, many, many times. I prefer the tea over eating the shrooms as it feels much cleaner and seems to be more bioactive.

What I've found is that most definitely yes, heat will destroy psilocin/psilocybin. I will bring the water to a boil. If using gas, I'll turn the flame down as low as it goes and stir in the pulverized shrooms, then turn the flame off after one minute. If using electric, I will turn the burner off and immediately stir in the pulverized shrooms. I will keep this stirring for 15-20 minutes before filtering off the solids. I have found that any more heat than this does nothing to aid in pulling the actives into solution and has the real potential of lowering potency. Straight hot water is fairly efficient at extracting the actives.

I can't speak to it directly, but I can't imagine that heat would be necessary with an ethanol extraction. If heat is used, maybe keep at or below 50C. Boiling point of ethanol is 78C, so with everclear, it's not going to go much higher than this.

And of course, never use flame to heat flammable solvents like everclear. This could turn into a disaster very quickly.

Given the efficiency of hot water in extracting the actives, it's also worth considering making the tea and preserving it with enough everclear to bring the alcohol concentration up to at least 20%, plus the obligatory pinch of ascorbic acid as an antioxidant. Choice of flavourings then becomes an option (I would naturally recommend nutmeg )

Friends,

If I add to the grinded fruits, some grinded syrian rue ... all sitting in the everclear.

Do you think this would "work"?

Or would it be best to do a separate syrian rue tincture?

It would work but would be a bit harder to dial in the perfect dosage, I'd advise making them separate

Friends, I have been working on trying to get a Rue liquid tincture to compliment the Mushroom tincture.

If I place 1g of Peganum Harmala Syrian Rue Extract Full Spectrum in 10ml of EverClear, this can give me a good Rue tincture?

Would this work well?

1 gram is a pretty low dose of rue. If using a 10 ml vial, wut I would do is go ahead and soak like 10 grams of rue in as much ethanol as it takes to fully submerge the rue, then evaporate it down to 10 ml, such that you have a concentration of ~ 1g/ml. In this case a standard dosage would be 2-3 ml.

Unless of course you are planning to microdose it, in which case the 1g/10ml ratio would be moar appropriate.

Not if it is 1 gram of extract.

Explorer7, do you know the strength of the extract (the effective amount of harmalas per gram)?

I would boil the rue in water and do a manske salting on the tea. The resulting extracted yellow crystals could be weighed and dissolved in ethanol.

If you don't have rue seeds but only an extract of unknown quality, you can perform the same procedure on the extract: dissolve in boiling water and add 10 precent (by weight of the water) of table salt. After cooling down for a day, there should be a precipitate of yellow crystals of harmala HCl. If the extract does not dissolve in boiling water, chances are that it is a freebase extract: in order to dissolve that, you'll need to boil it in vinegar instead of plain water. For the rest, the procedure is the same.

Touche! I did miss the extract word in there, good catch!

Friends, thank for these insights.

Do you think that a tincture made from 1 gram of full spectrum Peganum harmala alkaloid extract in 10 ml of Everclear would be better than say, soaking 10grams of powdered Syrian Rue in Everclear and reducing to 10ml?
Or vice versa?

I don't know the strength of the extract, but it has good reviews

Can the 1g Harmala extract be put into 10ml Everclear solution or would it damage it?

Dreamer042, in the middle of doing the cubensis tincture.
2 questions of you,

- do I add the pinch of ascorbic acid at the every end (after evaporating to 1ml/g) or when the grinded fruits are simmering in the Everclear?

- is one pull enough? or do you do 2 pulls from the same grinded fruits?

Thank you!

Should I be doing 1 pull or 2 pulls with 10grams of grinded fruits?

Since you are using an extract I'd suggest using just enough alcohol to dissolve/suspend it and not attempting to reduce. Harmalas are not very soluble in ethanol so don't be surprised if if it doesn't dissolve well and rather leans moar toward suspension.

1 gram of syrian rue extract seems like a quite a bit to dissolve in 10 ml of alcohol, I expect you'll need to use significantly moar than that.


Add it in the beginning when you start soaking the fruits. I usually do 3 pulls to make sure I get everything.