Might help someone else. The only part of the tek that I can think of that I originally screwed up. Totally on me, and right at the end of the process!

It's done. I added the info to the "collect" section. Feedback welcome if you take a look


I think someone in mycotopia rinsed their filter with water while doing the Tek and got some stickiness (but still some crystals). They used cotton balls and such I believe.

I first opened the page at the Development Notes, where “Collect” is brief. The section in the Detailed Process is great!

Loveall, have you tried sodium carbonate without water?

Yeah, directly into EA sodium carb dries and clarifies it. Easy to filter or decant too.

By the way I'm really liking the low dust activated carbon pellets from the pet store. Works well without the annoying difficult to filter black particles if they are rinsed with water before use. I say it is something that finally passes our stringent laziness requirements 😉. Economics are OK: in bulk it's ~$7 a pound, enough to clear up a lot of EA I think.

Playing with the straight sodium carbonate, among others.

When you have a protocol, let me know and i’ll test it along with the yellow solvents.

Just tried this CIELO tek for the first time. All went smoothly till the salting stage. I went with the 'dropping 2.5g citric acid into the EA, no stirring' option to start with. A few clouds formed as the citric acid crystals descended through the solution, but, on reaching the bottom of the jar, they refused to dissolve. After a few hours, I added another 2.5g and stirred till all acid crystals had dissolved (only a few minutes of stirring with a spoon). The solution was now cloudy.

Checked the next day, and still cloudy solution, but no sign of crystal formation on the bottom or sides of the jar.

After 72 hours, the solution was clear. I poured it off through a coffee filter into another jar, swirling the last bit around. I now had a new jar of clear solution, a coffee filter with nothing visible in it, and my original jar with a tiny bit of off-white sediment stuck to the bottom.

Decided to add another 10g citric acid to the filtered solution, mix till dissolved and set aside. This seemed to work, lots of needle-shaped crystals were forming and floating to the bottom of the jar. The next day there appeared to be a nice amount of these settled on the bottom. Meanwhile, the first jar had now dried fully and quite a few crystals had formed on the inside walls and base. Ill collect these with hot water, and try to catch the ones from the other jar with a filter paper again. Will compare weights of each batch.

Just thought Id mention this, in case anyone tries the first method without much success. Maybe it would be better to just go straight to the '15g plus stirring till dissolved' method of salting?

On a side note, does anyone know if mescaline citrate can be cleaned with anhydrous ice cold acetone, the same method as for mescaline hcl? I'm asking because I did an evaporation test on my supposedly 99.7% pure ethyl acetate and it left a small amount of oily residue...

How much starting cactus material did you have?

I've tried both and personally prefer the dropping acid option and waiting 72 hours. The crystals are much bigger and fewer seem to get stuck in the jar.

Using a new source, I did a 100g batch and got 1.85g in my filter, which I find hard to believe. I even managed to lose 20% of my EA yet still yielded 1.85%. I don't think I'm even going to evaporate the jar (it doesn't look like much) and instead follow Loveall's advice.

But, I notice that I have two kinds of crystals:
1) one is soft white needles that you can easily push around and separate with a razor blade
2) one is rocky white crystals. It is not possible to separate with a razor blade, I need to add pressure and split the rock which can cause a piece to fly off the paper.

I've heard a lot of you guys talk about #1, but have you ever seen #2?

I'm slightly concerned that this #2 is perhaps less potent than the #1 crystals.

This is my first 100g batch. In my previous <= 40g batches, I only ever saw #1 and a yellow version of #2, but not a white version of #2.

Cheelin, you mentioned that the flour-like consistency of the cactus powder was important. After this last batch I can't agree more. My previous batches were mostly but not completely powderized, there would be the occasional tiny chunk I couldn't turn into pure powder.

This batch however was pure flour, no chunks at all. The 69ron paste was easier to make, for example stirring it in took less effort.

The only side effect is that my 69ron paste was a lot less dense and filled up a greater volume of my french press. I actually had to find a longer spoon because my normal spoon I use wasn't tall enough to conveniently stir it.

I also lost 20% of the EA. I wonder if perhaps that was due to this "less dense" 69ron paste.

I'm going to do one more 100g batch with fresh EA, such that I have about 2 quarts of used EA. Then I will do several 100g batches with the used/washed EA. Each time I'm going to lose 10-20% EA but it will be OK because I have this backup quart from the same cactus material.

ijahdan, I tried to dissolve mescaline citrate in acetone straight from the can (pretty dry) and none seemed to dissolve.

I don't understand why you needed the extra citric to force the citric acid out of solution. It can happen (hence the option and the suggestion in the FAQ), but normally should be that 2.5g is enough. I assume you checked that no water drops where present in the extract after letting it rest for at least one hour and before salting.

Edit: Not sure if you saw, but there is some info on this on the 6th FAQ in the TEK.

1.85% yield is normal and within the expected range (TEK on WIKI quotes 0.2-2% as typical window with even higher yields possible and has a reference to endlessness' thread).

IDK what to say about the rocky xtals. You can try dissolving everything in hot water and evaporate slowly, see if everything just becomes needles.

20% solvent loss is not terrible but you may have some room for improvement, sounds like the first pull was fully absorbed. You can can try a little less water next time and see how it goes. I assume you are mixing/pulling as the TEK describes.

I noticed the tek has been changed to the method you mentioned. When doing the passive crystallization option, I generally salt with the 5g rate, though i generally run smaller batches and adjust proportionately. And, I always stir until cloudy, then let settle. Additionally, I have tested settling time (results in an earlier post): 48 hrs for passive, and 3 hours for active, seem to be the points of significant diminishing returns.

I have over 60 runs under my belt since nailing the tek, using both passive and active salting methods, and every single one of them, has ended up with almost 100% in the filter, the first time, at the expected quality level.

I have done tests, in a recent post on this thread, comparing passive and active salting methods, including running the active method at both 5g and 15g citrate rates. My results showed no difference in quantity or quality between passive 5g, active 5g, snd active 15g rates. Although the forms are different, with passive producing needles and active producing powder.

One thing that is important in avoiding getting crappy product, is to wash the salting jar with fresh EA after pouring the product into the filter, and washing the product in the filter with fresh EA to remove the last bits of color. Additionally, before washing the jar with water, the EA must be completely evaporated from it, or the wash will be contaminated and will not subsequently evaporate cleanly.

I have also posted some preliminary work, a few pages back, on rehabbing product that was crappy from a few early runs before i fully nailed the tek. The product is cleanable with anhydrous acetone (it does not seem to dissolve the crystallized M, or at least not completely, but does remove colored molecules to some extent), but my run only had an 18% recovery, which was likely because there was not much mescaline in it to begin with, and it did not result in the white needles that i expected. An alternative that does work well quality-wise, i have no basis to judge quantity performance of 15-20% recovery, is to re-run the crappy product as part of another powder run. This method works with a run that uses as little as 5g fresh powder, with all other ingredients reduced proportionately.

This tek has a learning curve. Sounds like you actually did well for your first run. Took me 6 runs to nail it.

Looking forward to hearing about your future successes.

Do they taste different?

Which approach do you guys take:

1) Swirling the EA to kick up the crystals, and then dumping ALL the EA out in one shot into a coffee filter, followed with fresh EA swirled in the mason jar 2-3x and dumping through the filter

2) Decant as much EA as possible, leaving as much crystals behind as possible, and then adding fresh EA, swirling, and dumping it all through a filter (followed by some more fresh EA swirl an dump)

For #1, my concern is that the fresh EA being poured over the crystals in the filter will not do as good of a job removing stuff as compared to swirling the bulk of the crystals in fresh EA as per #2.



Is it safe to taste? I have a really sensitive tongue that breaks out with allergic reactions lol.



Loveall and Cheelin, so you guys get 100% white needles in your coffee filter? No powder, no rocks?

I have always had some mixture of white needles, white powder, yellow powder, yellow rocks. This time was the first time I had just white needles and white rocks.

HLP,

Taste it, You don’t need much (a grain or two), your tongue is a sensitive analytical machine, and there is nothing in this tek that will do any harm at this quantity. Even if you do what Loveall said, you will presumably eventually put it in your mouth. So taste to see if there is a difference.

The passive approach creates snowflakes, that float, stick to jar walls & bottom, or lie on top of others. They are very delicate and break into needles and smaller, depending on how much agitation, collision occurs, They may also stick together and then break into other shapes. And, like all crystals they grow from smaller particles, like “powder”.

My guess is that if the product contains anything other than M, it may be some undissolved citric.

My pour: swirl jar, pour out 2/3 to 3/4 into filter, swirl again, in one motion dump everything into filter, rinse out jar with fresh EA and pour into filter, rinse contents of filter with fresh EA until color no longer changes. Let EA drip out of filter, then remove filter from funnel & put filter on top of a papertowel, let all visible moisture evaporate from filter, gently fold so product can’t escape, let dry additionally for several hours, then pour out of filter into storage container.

I subjected the needles and the rocks to Marquis, Mecke, Froehde, and Ehrlich.

Both of them passed identically for mescaline.

Is that sufficient or would a taste test be helpful?

I also have a TLC kit that came with my drug testing package. I'm a bit confused because I was under the impression that the TLC eluent was supposed to be tailored for each individual compound. However this kit only comes with 1 TLC eluent that is supposed to be used on all drugs. I don't know how accurate that would be.

I'll try the TLC out tomorrow.

I don’t know anything about the tlc kit.

The reagent reactions sound promising. However, the reagents only tell whether the drug is present, they do not quantify purity level.

I told you what I would do. In fact, I do it on every run, to ensure that the product is consistent with previous runs. Can’t really help beyond this.

I get needles with acid drop and powder with shaking. Not sure I've seen rocks.

The early xtalization is pretty chaotic with a lot of plant stuff present and some water variation, so it could be possible that it is still all just mescaline. I've done it dozens of times with different cacti and I'm still surprised we get such a clean product so quickly from a full plant matrix 😅

I think TLC is a great check, interested in what you get. You can also send a sample of the white stuff to Solaris analytical (referenced in the TEK), would be great to get another read point on CIELO.

I've done this a lot too. Lately, I've been moving the filter + basket to a small shallow dish before the fresh EA washes. This way the xtals at the bottom of of the filter get to soak longer in the EA. Only a minute or so, but I think they come out whiter sooner and I get to have a close look at the wash color as the rinsing is going on.