I think a small percentage of that is orange oil - I filtered it a few times through cotton wool but a few drops still got through.
Also - I managed to spill almost a third of the vinegar pulls on the kitchen floor!! very luckily I had just finished cleaning the floor (with used limonene from previous extractions!) so i just mopped it up with a sponge and re-filtered! phew...

very happy with my yield ... I was expecting more like 1% tbh.

Ah dude so being a UK citizen like myself and a few others...are you successfully managing to recycle and reuse your limonene?? Unfortunately it seems like the UK is the one place in the world, apart from Antarctica, where limonene is not cheap and plentiful.

So if you are managing to recycle your limonene and so keep extraction costs down, pray do tell good sir!!

nope not atm... I have been saving my used limonene, at least the stuff used for mimosa axtraction, which I've used some of for cleaning duties.. it seems to settle after a while, and seems like it could be reused, but until I start running out or hear of a good way to distill or filter it for reuse... i'm in a similar boat to you!

having said that - the stuff from Mistral is fairly cheap; however, I dont think I would use it for ingestible extracts as its meant for cleaning.. so i've been using stuff for aromatherapy, thats the closest I found to 'food-grade' in the uk. the aromatherapy stuff seems to be a raw orange oil so it has a fair bit of oil in it as well as limonene, which makes it a bit harder to work with but i'd rather be on the safe side. But alas, it aint cheap!

Just curious to know what colour peoples vinegar is after a good thorough mix in the limonene?

My last attempt I was getting cloudy/clearish vinegar pulls, but that extract turned out to be inactive. There was also a slight emulsion. I was using 90% limonene and I think I may have been pulling some impurities. I think I also used way too much heat.

This time I'm using 95% and the vinegar pulls were coming out yellow/clear. I re-used that same limonene a few times, after each vinegar pull was still yellow and became more pale as I went on. This extract was VERY active at 350mg, definately would still be active at much less. This time I used no heat at all. Air drying vinegar like this takes ages but no risks were to be taken here.

As I only have 400ml of 95% limonene left and 100g's dry cactus still to be processed, I decided to do a pull with some fresh 90% limonene (orange oil) which is yellow/clear in colour and after soaking in the cactus mix turns a cloudy bright green. The vinegar pulls from this are a solid cloudy white that is not transparent at all.

I'm interested to know what colours others are getting, what limonene they are using and whether their extract was active. It seems a few people still aren't getting good results and I want to know why.

if it helps soulfood, my first vinegar pulls were solid cloudy white, but were not active. That seems to concur with your experiences with 90% limonene. How to tell what percentage of my orange oil is limonene? Maybe it was 90% and no good...? Who knows. Is cloudy white bad 69ron? What are we supposed to see, yellow/green clear?

So I thought it would be good asking. I should get into mescaline, because the cactus used to extract mescaline out is legal here in Australia . But I must know, dose mescaline have a yucky comedown like LSD? I hated the comedown very much, and its what stops me from wanting LSD again.

I might add, mescaline might go for a little to long for me, I would not be able to eat... But every now and then I would like a trip. Also, dose mescaline kinda leave you a little brain dead during the trip? If you read my LSD trip, I would remind you that it was so very hard to think when it peaked! I think if the trip was more intense I would of been a husk of my former self.

I think there are some sites that sell dried cactus cuttings. Any sites you would suggest? When the time comes I will look into the good topic of how to safely extract mescaline. And I don't think asking for a site that sells the cuttings is against the rules as its legal and stuff. Perhaps link me to the "links" topic.

Yeah I sent you a PM 69ron, but I just seen the warning in ya sig just now.

As with anything it varies from person to person. I think any chemical that lasts a while will be a little exhausting. I tried it the other day, 350mg + 3 datura s. seeds + 300mg theobromine. I had a slight headache about 10-12 hours after consumption, went to sleep quite easily, then woke up feeling quite fresh the next day. I had a little pain in my kidneys but I think that was because I was a little distracted and didn't drink enough fluids. Also I didn't eat beforehand.

I did a cheeky test of 50mg this morning before work, with a strong cup of yerba mate tea.
Had a very gentle euphoric energetic buzz all day so far, quite nice, but not something I would repeat at work unless I was doing something more social and energetic (I sit at my computer programming all day..)
It was just a test to see if my extract was active, and the answer is a definite Yes

Is that first picture in the original post what the limonene/vinegar separation is supposed to look like? SWIM had a very yellow top limonene layer and a fairly clear bottom vinegar layer. Are those pics of the crystals magnified?

Also, it seems like 25ml is a pretty small amount of vinegar compared to the amount of limonene and it seems to make it harder to separate. Is it OK to use more vinegar? It probably will just take that much longer to evaporate huh?

Balaganist - thanks for the info!

69Ron a few questions if I may...am very keen to give this truly fantastic tek ago, and am reading through this thread still (around a 1/3 of the way through) and have begun amassing the necessary materials.

However, being a UK citizen, limonene is far from cheap, unlike the US, Oz or mainland Europe...it can be bought cheaply in Europe, but the shipping costs make it very expensive.

To be worthwhile, I would like to limit an extraction of 100g of cactus to 500ml of limonene, which costs £18 (around $29). Using 900ml of limonene, for each extraction, costing £30 (around $4, is just not financially feasible for me.

If I was to attempt to use 500ml of limonene per extraction, do you have any advice on which of the following methods might be the best way forward...

- use 250ml per limonene wash, doing 2 thorough extractions of the cactus, using any methods that may help increase efficiency of each extraction;

- or use 300ml limonene for the first extraction, then for the second wash add 100ml fresh, and for the third and final wash add 100ml fresh limonene.

I was thinking there may a be a few ways of supplementing these methods also to help increase extraction efficiency?

The key point here is that cactus is not my limiting financial factor here...I plan on splitting the cost of a bulk amount, which will be good value and give plenty to play around with.

Financially, my limiting factor here is actually the limonene. Thus, alkaloid extraction of the cactus does not need be completely efficient, just pretty darn efficient(ish)!

Any pointers or nuggets of advice would be very much appreciated.

If you are not bothered about it being 'food safe', Mistral are the cheapest I found in the UK £10.86 for 500ml, £28.99 for 5L!

Hey balaganist...thanks for the tip...100% pure is food safe enough for me...have got in touch with them though asking for more details...

but thanks for that lead...the whole mescaline extraction idea has suddenly become a lot more feasible!

Stretching little limonene resources over large amounts of cactus was like the last resort of a desperate madman, yet this changes the game...thanks

SWIM is back with a report on his extract. After the first dose of 70mg, SWIM felt mild effects that were noticeable. Two days ago SWIM scraped some more amber semi-dry crystal-goo from his pyrex pan. 110mg were consumed and WOW what a difference. SWIM got the initial hot feeling felt during the first dose. However 2 hours later while on the computer, SWIM noticed a new sensation was becoming noticeable. This stuff is STIMULATING!. It causes a tinglly sensual feeling throughout the muscles. Stimulates the mind. This dose level seemed to be "wanting" to produce visual effects. SWIM can't imagine what 500mg would be like. It almost gives one that jaw-chattering feeling of amphetamine. Lasted about 8 or 9 hours. Oh yeah, SWIM says his vinegar after mixing was a cloudy/slightly yellow.

SWIM wonders if the water that is in with the limonene layer could be affecting the yield of this tek at all. If the water that is added to the cactus powder and calcium hydroxide mixture ends up in with the limonene layer when salting with vinegar and mescaline acetate is soluble in water could the water contained in the limonene layer be soaking up any of the mescaline acetate once it forms? Or would that not happen?

As vinegar is pretty much 95% water, I think there's nothing to worry about here.

Finding your spirit animal in your grandmother's basement....PRICELESS>

EDIT took the bait.

Hey soulfood. SWIM doesn't claim to be a chemist in any way shape or form so he wasn't sure. SWIM knows that vinegar is 95% water but that's the layer that you DO want the mescaline acetate to be in so that wouldn't be a problem correct?

SWIM thought that it could be possible that when the mescaline acetate is formed when everything is combined together before it separates into two layers that any water contained in the limonene layer could also be soaking up some of the acetate as well.

Could it be beneficial to not use water to combine with the cactus powder and calcium hydroxide at all and just go right to mixing the limonene in thus avoiding the use of water completely?

Ehm... also I'm not a chemist, but I'm not sure if limonene will let the 2 react. I also do not reccomend drying the mix before adding the limonene as freebase mescaline is quite fragile when it comes to heat and oxygen.

If it's bothering you, leave the limonene a couple of days and most of the tiny droplets will settle, though I doubt there's much mescaline in there compared to what is in the aqueous layer.

I re-use the limonene so I'm not too bothered about a little water staying in because it's going to come right back out on the next pull.

Should Mescaline acetate look like this

Sorry the pic is so big, i thought it would shrink it