i recon a good dose of reasonable cactus would be the length from ur elbow to wrist bone and as thick as the thickest part of your calf.

That much of my cactus in one cup of tea would leave me connecting the dots of existence for an eternity!

sounds about right

Superb post, will be trying my first cacti extraction in a week or two using this and your extraction tek. Thanks!

ahh its so satisfying when you can get the cactus skin peel.

many thanks for taking the time for this Phlux, u da man

I have a couple of decent sized pedro's sitting in a pot here, been starving them for quite a few months now.

Probably a stupid noob question but I want to make sure I get this completely right when I prepare my cactus this summer:

By tea pulls, you mean you first boil the cacti parts and then filter them? If so, how long should that boiling take?

2x3 hours wasn't it ?

I always boil 1,2,3 hours. The first tea saturates much quicker than the second and the second more than the third, so giving the first tea so long is a bit of a waste of time.

Thx for clarifying that SF.

Also with freezing and thawing after every boil?

if prepping fresh cacti for extraction why skin or despine the cacti?
seems like a lot of unneeded work for extractions

if for tea, great method

making a tea before extraction is also a ton of extra unneeded work

ime tea time is much quiker using a PC, just boil it until it stops foaming before clamping the lid down to pc
also, takes less "pulls"

tried it once with the spines and skin.
spines poked thru the shirt i was filtering thru.
skin made a crap waxy layer and mucked things up - yeild was lower.

i dont bother with making a tea before extraction anymore, nor do i filter--if there is a waxy layer from the skin i have never noticed it upon crystalization

i let the base fully digest the plant matter, so tea isn't really needed except to reduce amount of material to be mixed
in my tests i found a/b to yeild the same as stb, but took 1/3 or more longer to complete

Apparently Phlux has an extraction tek too somewhere?

Any idea where it is?

32cm of thick cactus cooked for 6 hours blended strained boiled down to 200ml made for a great experiance. i used a carrot pealer to de-skin, loosing a bit of green layer but much easier than knive or thumb..

all in all cactus rocks!

peace

go the extra mile and peel it with your nails, from bottom towards the top and focus on nothing else, the outer flesh is the most potent, so by sloppily slicing some of it off you lose a great deal of alkaloids for instant gratification

I will try this next time for sure. I was very happy with the out come from one foot. Much like 2 and a bit hits of alright acid yet more calm and clear minded. Using thumb nail was very time consuming. Yet taking 24 hours to prepare i am quite happy to do. Great stuff

Cheers peace

Phlux - (and nexus)

Love this pictorial...again. It certainly the best way to get the skins off to eat dried green flesh

as for extraction,

have ever tried leaving the skins on?

with dry tek. Leaving skins on there is fine. but when dry they do give the coffee grinder a beatdown. and they make drying take longer

seems like for extraction, maybe skinning can be skipped.

Have you had experience otherwise?

This made SWIM recall a little idea he had for cactus extraction: Why dry the cactus for limtek or drytek? Both will inevitably require re-hydration for the base to work its magic, so why not just leave it in there? One idea would be to dredge the cactus slices in lime, pulverize/blend the mixture (with a blender, of course), then proceed with extraction. In this case leaving the skins on would probably be fine, but since it's nice and moist beneath, it may be better to remove and maximize the moist surface contact with the lime.