So judging from that, I believe it is a PC. Here’s a pic.

Yeah, the upward-facing "saw" shape of the areoles on the ribs.. PC

Those cuttings look nice and healthy.

Round 2!

So my advice, based on the slices looking kinda thick, would be to finish a good first boil then drain all the liquid out of the flesh that you can, and before a second boil, re-chop the stars into smaller pieces to expose more of the green flesh within-- you could blend it too, but that will make it harder to filter later on.

This way you'll maximize the exposed surface to boiling water and make sure you're getting all the goodies out.

Are you putting a small amount of vinegar in there too? The acidification of the water will help a lot with extraction of alks, and vinegar boils off so it won't stay in the solution like citrus acids will--

Good luck brother!!!

Have a great second trip!

Those appear to be PC to me, just like what I have. And they are likely weak, as is characteristic, but that just means you need to use a hefty amount of it and boil like crazy. And still the experience will be on the light side, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful, even at low levels mescaline is useful for inner work.

The more water you can expose the cacti to, either through multiple batches or by having a large enough kettle, the more mescaline you can pull out. I think the best way to get the most alkaloids out is to use three 1 hour boils with a little added acid, like a lime, and freeze the cacti material in between boilings. At the end you combine the three batches and simmer until the tea is reduced to volume you can consume.

Given your heating source, however, I can understand why a single long boil is preferred, so as long as you start with very thinly sliced, frozen material, you could still do this in one session. Boil the cactus three separate times, saving the water each from each batch, then combine all three batches and reduce. This is how I do it, although sometimes I use a pressure cooker to shorten the boiling times, and sometimes I do four extractions, just to be sure.

I use the same technique (without freezing) with dried material from stronger plants and find I can get much more consistent doses at a plenty intense level. The tea tastes much worse though...

Good tripping to y'all.

I boiled for 10 hours yesterday, strained out material and reboiled with fresh water today. Wrapping it up after another 7 or so today. Gonna filter one more time, combine and reduce tomorrow. Feeling good about this one. Started with 2070 grams fresh PC Pach, plus the pulp from my last brew that was only boiled for 3 1/2 hours. Setting up a nice plan for Saturday with a buddy who will be dropping a tab or two while I drink my brew. Very excited! 🌵🌵🌵

Sounds like you're going to squeeze everything possible out of that PC. All the best with your trip Metta.

You know that saying, “you get what you put in”. I put a lotta love into this batch!
Thanks grey fox

Oh, the joys of outdoor brewing!

Good incense, a small stone circle and some nice acoustic music all add to the vibe

Perhaps some choice local herbs, too?

When I reduced it down, I threw in 8 tea bags. 3 lemon ginger, and 5 lavender, chamomile, and something else. Plus I sliced up a whole root of ginger when I sliced up the cactus and threw it in in the beginning. It smelt really good actually when I reduced it down. Like REALLY good. So I took a tiny sip to see how it was. Still bitter as fug. Tastes so horrible. 🤢. I thought by the smell the taste would reflect it, but alas, spoiled toilet water it is. I’m still gonna cut it with some coffee, I have it reduced down to about 12 oz right now. So even adding equal amount of coffee I should be able to get it all down kinda quickly.

I like to pretend it's delicious chicken soup and drink it warm. Then it's possible to get down a good few mouthfuls before my brain notices it's been tricked.

I'm not sure about your coffee idea, it seems likely to make the taste even worse .

Metta-Morpheus my method is to put the liquid a standard small-mouthed water bottle, tip it up and chug it all at once. You just gotta THINK SMOOOOOOOVE

Have water to chase it. Better yet Carbonated water. Cleanses the palate real well.
The small mouth on a water bottle keeps you from smelling it while it's going down. Then you chase it quickly to clean your mouth out.

Well that was fun. What a night. Drank my tea at noon, took about 40 minutes to shwill that aweful shit down. My buddy showed up at about 2, as I was very much ramping up. After about an hour, I felt nauseous as hell, but kept fighting it for maybe an hour or so before I sat down by a stump, looked to my side, and it just fell outta my mouth. And it was as bad if not worse on the way back out. Thick and gross. But then the fun started. My buddy took one look at me and knew I’d puked just from the way I carried myself back down to the fire pit. I looked much fresher apparently. The body buzz was fantastic, I felt like dancing. Very mild visuals, like a clear lens had been wiped of fog. About half way through the night, I pulled out some spice, and let my buddy take some tips. He had done 1 tab when we met up, and said that was tapering off by this point. So he smoalked, and blasted through the sky. I was there for his first break through, and a very tough one at that. He went inwards for about 3 minutes, and then for the next 10 looked very spastically around with a look of fear. He kept saying “ What!? Concepts!?” And he kept pinching himself and pulling his hair. Freaked out for a second even though I knew deep down he was fine. But my empathy kicked in and I just wanted to help him. So I rubbed his back for a few minutes which helped a little. When he came back around he said he was a body with no context of the physical 5 senses. As if he heard sound but had no concept of what sound even was. Just data input without a processor to figure out the data. He said there were these 6 plant like entities doing the whole operating table thing on him. He said they looked like some plant monster from stranger things, but made up of geometry. It was very interesting to be there for all of it. Him and I talked about it for a good hour and a half afterwards. We didn’t leave the woods until almost midnight, and I didn’t get to bed until 130. And I had to work today 😣. Luckily it seems easy enough to fall asleep on the cactus , as I would say I probably could have cruised out another 2 hours of that good feel. All and all, I’m quite enjoying my time with cactus. I’m really gonna try to motivate myself to run an extraction on it next time as well, so i can start feeling out my sweet spot and aim for that. And barfing up cactus molasses is just gross.
🤙

So happy for your experience brother-- it sounds like an overall positive time-- one thing I do to mitigate the nasty stomach load and avoid purging is to have some Lemon Balm extract powder in tea with Ginger. It seems to make a bug difference in the nausea. I haven't puked with cactus once since I started my coffee/Mexican Terragon combo-- but I also take food enzymes and some Lecithin to capture and process the tea better-- it also seems to keep the bile taste from creeping to the throat, which for me always made purging far more of a risk

THank you for sharing your day with us!

Thanks for letting us know how it went Metta. Glad to hear that it was a good time.