Today I performed the Kash's A/B Mescaline Extraction Tek getting a terrible emulsion and don't know why.

First, after adding toluene to the basic solution, an emulsion formed immediately (no matter how slowly or carefully I poured the toluene).
This thick weird emulsion did not go away even after adding salt and heating (see the attached picture).

Anyway, I continued with 600 ml worth of toluene pulls (200 ml stayed trapped in the emulsion).

The only parts where I deviated from the tek:

1) Maybe I have added too much citric acid - I was not sure whether to add citric after each water change in the initial cooking, so I added it every time to be sure.
2) Maybe I have added too much NaOH - the tek called for 50g of NaOH, I measured pH while adding NaOH little by little - unfortunatelyt pH jumped from 9 to 12.5 so missed the optimal pH 10.
3) I have added a DCM defatting step on the acidified extract.
4) I have added about 20g of NaCl before basifying.

I think I will use sodium carbonate instead of lye next time.

The lye is way too aggressive (maybe the remaining plant fats saponified?) and this kind of emulsion already happened once in another extraction where the solution was too basic.

I don't know if people experience these emulsions or it is just me doing something wrong without knowing it...

Okay I am left with about 450 mg of crude mescaline.HCl extract.

I am more than happy as the two smaller San Pedro cacti supposed to yield up to 1-2 doses and the amount of mescaline roughly corresponds to it.

Im looking forward to hearing a trip report once you try it
.

I don't want to spam forums with my trip reports but I will do if I find anything valuable there to share