Hi,

I tried to follow heavenlypursuit's relatively quick and easy mescalito pictorial as close as possible with the materials at hand.

So the first difference is my raw material which was 80 g dried peruvian skin and 20 grams of my own dried san pedro, I grinded all to a little bit chunky powder and started to cook that without pressure cooker and added some vinegar. I then pressed trough a t-shirt each time after cooking and did a total of 3 successive cooks (1 hour to 30 minutes each, new vinegar, new water each time). The last one actually did seperate water from plant matter, the others reamined quite slimey but could be separated by pressing hard on the t-shirt. I used a magic hand to further grind down material while cooking. In the end after pressing hard on the contents of the third cook inside a ball of t-shirt cloth, I was quite satisfied to see that the remaining plant matter looked like mainly fibre, non slimey quite dry stuff, that remained in a big snowball size ball and separated cleanly from the wet t-shirt. I disposed of that and was left with approximately 500 ml of sluggish greenish slighly slimey extract. Not really a watery consistency but color wise quite similar to what is depicted in the instructions.

I then based that extract using KOH and observed the color change to dark brown (not quite black), and from the smell of it, it had to be at least ph 10-11 if not more.

After adding my limo, which probably was the culprit, the extraction began to go way south. To start of, I think my limo is not exactly limo, but more orange terpene, from all my information it should contain around 90 % limo (cant be sure) and it is yellow color, not slightly, I mean really yellow. It was the last time I used it now except for cleaning the bathtub, I ordered new limo from mistral in the UK. Can anyone recommend that ? I have no idea where else I could find some in europe.

Anyway to continue, I added the limo and the whole based extract, began to get milky, kind of Mocca, milk coffee color, I was shocked. So, no way out, I stirred that with a long spoon for some time and it looked like it would never separate, I got worried. So I added a little bit of NaOH, thinking maybe it wasn't quite as basic as it should have been, with no result. I then took a break and let everything sit for a few hours.

Now, comes the super weird part. I came back and saw the extract separate into 3 (Three) layers. One bottom, quite clear, kind of like strong black tea color layer, one light olive green, sluggish middle layer, and to my relief one top dark orange layer that looked like limo. However, the amount of the top layer was nowhere near as much as I put in, so I ended up with about 50-60 ml of limo after pouring about 120-150 ml of limo.

So I waited 24 hours more and the separation was quite sharp next morning, then took off the top layer and salted with HCL solution, 9 drops of 33% on 100 ml of distilled water. After adding that to the limo it immediately turned white and separated to the bottom of the limo glass. So I swirled and shook, took out, repeated salting a couple of more times and just now, evapped it on a glass plate sitting on a pot with boiling water (an evap station as described in the pictorial). Yield is close to zero (not enough to effectively transfer anywhere).

Any recommendations are very welcome, I still have the dark red-brown black tea and the olive green sluggish layers quite cleanly separated, dont know, if anything can be done to salvage something out of that. The black tea layer is getting bigger day by day, the olive green non transparent layer is getting browner and browner and less and less.
In the picture you can see the left glass with limo and a slight amount HCL water at the bottom, the middle jar is the original black tea layer and some limo and green remains on top, and the right jar used to be only the olive green layer, but is now becoming more and more black tea.


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Thx in advance.

ok,

dont really feel like giving up on this one. So first another picture to show more clearly my ingredients and the outcome. On the picture from left to right. The remainder of my San Pedro and its offspring, KOH, HCL and NaOH, in front of that the dried Peruvian skin and on the right side 4 jars. Top left is my limo before extraction, next to that the small jar is the same limo after extraction and 3 times salting, below left is the dark brown reddish black tea layer which was on the bottom
and last not least down right is the remainder of the used to be green cactus juice before basing, then dark brown nearly black after adding KOH, then getting mocca brown after adding limo, then separating from the black tea layer and getting olive green and now getting more brown and still separating some black tea over time.

Honestly I am quite puzzled. My assumption is that the KOH is still eating away on the plant structure and separating the black tea from the harder fiber and so on. Still I have no idea. I'm going add more limo to the black tea now, see how that separates and whether it will eat half of my limo again. On the other hand I might aswell wait for the mistral limo to arrive next week.

Any thoughts welcome.



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just to finish that whole 3 layer KOH extract, it did turn out ok after all, just had to pul the black tea... After all though I'll probably wont use harsh stuff like that again...


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Thanks for the update.. So what happened with the 3 layers, did they eventually separate into 2? It seems like emulsion, you can probably get it to settle with the tips mentioned in the FAQ (salt, more base, vibrations).

What was your yield in the end?

Hey,

thanks for adding me to members btw., whoever.

Honestly I'm quite happy to be able to post and ask questions at the right time, in the right place now, same time, I'm little paranoid about exposing well enough information about myself already. So deleting my cookies and starting Vidalia again

"I noticed that worrying is like praying for things you dont want to happen"

So, to get back to your question, endlessness, using 69Ron's tek followed to the point, I consistently got (0.98 +/− 0.01)g out of 100g of dried material (I tried twice so I made ≈2g), so to say 1% goodies from dried peruvian.

Unfortunately I made a fair bit less and especially a lot darker and more tongue tingly, when using heavenlypursuit's tek tek. Approximatly half the amount.

Not to say, anything is wrong with heavenlypursuit's tek, but,
1st I didnt use fresh but 80% dry material and
2nd I didnt use a pressure cooker but a few simple cooks
and xcept for the last one, they were quite slimey.

As to my theory for the 3rd layer:
I think that is what happens when you over-base with oily or slightly oily raw material. Forced soapification ? So instead of emulsion its more a semi-soap plant matter top layer. In this case you have to be patient to wait for the soap to separate from aqueous solution (or black tea, which you have to pull fast) and prepare for yield loss and harsh material, especially when the end product is supposed to be edible...

Honestly after trying both ways, and being quite satisfied with 69Ron's tek for dry powder, AND not having half the materials required for heavenlypursuit's tek,

that is the best explanation I can come up with...

I will try again, this time with a pressure cooker and fresh peruvian using HCL end of this summer.

Beautiful Sunday Eyeryone