I know this may have been asked before, I did search, however my question is this:

I have some fresh cactus I would like to prepare for easy transportation and ingesting in an outdoor situation. I found a recipe here http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=11246 that talks of boiling the plant matter down and then drying it out. Would someone recommend a good way to do this? I also considered de-skinning and chopping into chips and drying them out, followed by 69ron's tek.

Any advice much appreciated!!
Cheers

do this. cut off whatever you wanna harvest. then peel off the outer waxy layer of the skin. before you do this cut out the thorns with an exact-o knife or something like that. after getting rid of the thorns and waxy outer skin you need to cut off stripes of just the greenish outer layer of the flesh. cut it to the point where it gets completely white. all the actives are in the greenish area of the outer skin. you may then dry these stripes in the oven at 100C. they dry quite fast. you are left with very bitter tasting chips. you can pulverize them in a coffee grinder. 3 tablespoons of this powder should be a nice dose to start with. its also very good for long nights of dancing as a stimulant. for this purpose 1 tablespoon should do it.

have fun!

Easiest way i have found for extraction (not for teas)

Slice the cactus into thin stars, maybe 1/4" thick. Put onto cookie sheet, foil, or whatever. Point fan at cactus slices for 2-4 hours, flip, let sit another 2-4 hours. They should be dry. Grind and extract.

This saves a lot of time. Peeling that waxy skin off takes forever and is really not necessary for extractions. If you are looking for a full alkaloid experience leaving the core will probably add a small amount of alks to the mix (not much). Even if you are seperating the mescaline from the other alkaloids I would leave the core, no reason to take it out unless you have a limited amount of space in your extraction vessel.

I wouldn't mess around with making a tea FIRST, then dehydrating it. Seems like a lot of extra work, with too many ways to mess up (burning the cactus) and a chance of not getting all of the alkaloids out during your boil.

Dry cactus, powder, then extract...that's the easiest way.

Thanks peeps. Acalon5, that does seem like the simplest solution. Cheers!

acolon, so you have experienced no issues with leaving the waxy skin on? I have a foot of fresh SP and would like to use it for the lemonine tek but really don't have the motivation to skin it before dehydration....

Never had an issue. I've done the d-limonene tek using Toluene as well as quite a few crude alcohol extractions and have NEVER noticed a difference.

That's great to hear, thanks! That'll save me at least an hour's worth of labor. I plan to give it a try this weekend.

Just started a thread with the same questions. Stupid and impatient, SWIM hadn't found this one until after the fact. Anyone else use the entire cactus? If you're reading this 69ron I am especially interested in your opinion.

I did use the entire cactus, and it turned out good

Removing the spines only takes a few minutes but skinning is a royal PITA! Do you de-spine first or are they left in the mix too? SWIM will have to try the full cactus soon, it's taken him multiple days to get 100 grams of the dried inner green layer.

Keep in mind that those other parts of the cactus weigh quite a bit when they are all included. So it changes the amount needed for an extraction i.e. Dont expect a high yield from 100grms of whole dried cactus.

If you take the time to skin it and carefully cut off the flesh, you will be using 100grams of the most potent part, so your yield will be much better. Limonene is expensive, so there is no point wasting it on parts of the cactus that aren't required.

If you make a tea, cook it down to a shot of liquid per dose.

Then you can just load it up into a sealable bottle (it looks just like an organic green tea smoothie or something...) and bring a shot glass along. If you have a bag or something, I couldn't see this being too hard to transport anywhere. Then you have your shot glass to measure out doses...

Seems easy enough...