Greetings,

The mix I used was supposedly consisted of the following cacti:
1 - Icaro DNA
2 - Trichocereus Peruvianus
3 - Lophophora Williamsii
4 - Trichocereus Huarazensis SS0201
5 - Trichocereus Bridgesii

20 grams of that mixture was blended to a fine powder and soaked in IPA for approximately 10 days with almost daily frequent shaking of the jar.

The saturated IPA was then strained and evaporated in a low-heat oven ceramic plate. The residue was a dark-green super sticky goo that smelled of dry cacti chips. This was scraped off and put into a paper towel, as seen on the attached pic. Consumed with a generous amount of the ginger-whole lemon-mint smoothie I made a bit earlier.

Some wild fomes fomentarius mushroom hunting in the park, a fresh blueberry and green grape snack and a whole liter of that smoothie I made later, amounting for around 5 hours in total, no considerable effects have been noticed.

Barely noticeable melting and shifting of the scenery if I focus intensely in the distance. Almost no cognitive effects. Slightly increased pulse rate in the first 1.5 hours, accompanied by a very slight heaviness in the chest, but that's about it.

Overall I feel good, and I can definitely feel trace amounts of a psychedelic substance in my system, but all in all the effects are barely noticeable. I did gather around 2-3 kilos of fresh wild fomes fomentarius though (attached), so the walk wasn't completely fruitless.

It is not clear to me whether the IPA "extraction" method is inferior, or if my cacti mix is just not as potent. I will try once more, but with a different ROA like tea, and will report back in this thread.

Be well, friends.

Such an eclectic mix of cacti. So no real way to know how much of each type was really in the mix?

I'm looking forward to hear your report of how the tea compares. Tea is such a good method that I'm always somewhat surprised when people try alteratives. If you're just trying to avoid having a lot to consume then you can always reduce the tea down to a shotglass or go even further and reduce it down to tar. The longer you can simmer the material for the better the results IME.

Best luck.

The alkaloid salts in cactus are largely insoluble in IPA. You left all your goodies in the chips.

Yeah, not really sure how much of each is in there, but I know for a fact that the Huarazensis and peyotes comprise no more than 18% of the mixture, since I personally grew and cut them. I didn't want to consume the peyotes for such selfish needs, given how endangered and precious they are, but paranoia made me do it honestly.

I'll definitely try tea next time. The reason why I avoided that method was because several people told me that the longer you boil the tea, the more alkaloids you lose in the process. Also several of them noted intense nausea from tea. Is that the case with you?


Wish I knew that before I went with that method. I asked in a thread, and a couple of times in chat, but guess the right people (you) didn't see my questions then haha. Thanks dreamoar!
Much love (and ripe mangoes)!

I didnt realize that you grew them yourself. Makes more sense now.

You'll hear different opinions on this, but here's my 2 cents. Yes I do think that it is possible to lose alkaoids when brewing tea. Mescaline is stable at boiling temperature but other alkaloids in the cactus are less well understood and may not hold up well to a boil.

The best way to deal with this is to brew the tea at a gentle simmer and to brew for a long time (12+ hours). Try to never let it come to a boil. Just keep simmering it all day long.

A point in the process where a lot of people burn the tea and the color changes from green to brown/black is at the end when they try to reduce the volume down. The best solution I've found is to leave the plant material in the pot while reducing and stay patient and keep simmering with the lid off the pot. It just seems like once you pull the material out that the tea burns much easier. So keep it in there the whole time and pay attention to the color of the liquid. When you're all finished the tea should still be green. If its brown or black then you burned it.

I've accepted that nausea is part of the process. If the tea is burnt or poorly filtered then it makes the nausea worse.

Best luck Nydex.

Thanks for the tips, Grey Fox. Will definitely go with that method next time. One question though - if I leave the plant matter in when I reduce the liquid, when I'm done reducing it I'll effectively be left with a gooey thick mess. How do I filter that the best way so I don't throw away precious alkaloids along with the plant matter? Would a simple paper coffee filter do the job? I've heard of tea turning gelatinous when being reduced, and that'll make it very hard to filter I imagine.

Don't leave all the plant matter in when reducing! Strain it out and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Then return the plant solids to a pan with fresh water in and boil it up again. Repeat this for as long as it stays bitter. This can be up to or sometimes more than five brews on the same cactus material, fewer for the people without OCD, perhaps

Now I may just have been lucky with my cacti but properly boiled tea shouldn't turn gelatinous. The gooey slime breaks down during boiling and small amounts of scum (can) form once you've boiled it long enough. (I put my scum skimmings into a separate container to catch any stray brew liquid.) When this is the case and you've still got enough liquid volume that it's still quite thin and not too viscous you can strain the brew through as fine a sieve as possible. This helps a lot to remove a great deal of the particulate matter.

You can proceed further in the reduction at this stage. I'd say finer filtering through cloth or paper is not necessary here but if you do decide to filter bear in mind the more dilute the solution the less the loss of goodies to the filter medium.

After boiling down to a slightly gloopy but not too syrupy liquid you can allow the brew to stand for a few days and any particulates will settle out. You can then cautiously decant or syphon the liquid away from the solids. Having an apothecaries' settling jar for this stage is quite helpful but not indispensable.

[I found that having used hard water to brew in the first place there were a lot of insoluble calcium and, possibly, magnesium salts that settled out. This may have contributed to the resulting brew being exceptionally easy on the stomach. I cannot vouch for the validity of this observation, however, as I have brewed with plant admixtures carefully chosen to optimise the experience, including gastrointestinal effects - or, rather, lack thereof.]

At this point, if your cactus is good you can use the brew as-is. To keep it from spoiling it can be stored in the freezer or pure alcohol can be added to bring it to at least (but not too much more than) 15% ABV.

One further tip is, if you're doing the reduction boils in a deep pan - and you have time to attend the whole process - it's actually more efficient to boil with the lid on! Every couple of minutes swipe the condensation off the lid with a silicone spatula.

Having three lids which fit the pan really helps here, so you always have a cold lid to put onto the pan, the lid you've just dried has time to cool down, and there's an already cooled lid ready to replace the one that's on the pan. So, just use three lids in circulation.

Besides being more energy-efficient it also stops the brew from sticking to the sides of the pan. I also saved the condensed water as I was brewing and reducing at the same time. This meant I used slightly less tap water as the mineral levels were getting a bit ridiculous.

N.B.! It's important to have boiled the gloopiness out of the brew before doing a lid-on reduction otherwise the pan is at risk of foaming over. In fact, lack of foaming over with a lid on is a fair indication that the brew has been boiled long enough. It's possible that other cacti may turn out to be intractably gloopy so you'll have to use judgement, observation and experience to see if this will work for you.

All of my experience is with fresh cactus so I'm not sure how well the dried chips will hold together or turn to goop. But with fresh cactus if you slice the cactus into thin stars they hold together just fine throughout the brewing process. A lot of the goopiness and impossible to filter out particles come from blending the cactus, which IMO is a bad idea. I think the best way to go is fresh cactus cut into thin stars (1/8th inch thick). Simmer for 12+ hours until almost all of the water is gone from the pot. Remove from heat. Squeeze out the liquid from the stars by pressing them against a fine mesh strainer. Combine the liquid that comes out of the stars with the little that was left in your pot. Pass it all through the strainer one more time and there's your tea. It gives you a potent, green, clean tea.

But there are many, many ways to do this and over time you will find the one that works best for you. My biggest concern is with the quality of the finished product so thats why I like the method described above. Many people dont care if their tea is black or the consistency of a smoothie or slick with oil. But I think that a good tea should be potent and green and free of particles and an actual tea. Do whatever makes sense to you to get to that point. Best luck Nydex.

Yes, forgot to mention that - thin stars, fresh cactus

I agree. I tested methanol, ethanol and isopropanol (IPA) in Soxhlet on cacti and IPA performed worst and methanol best.

Easy way for separation of water soluble mucilage is an addition of 3 parts of ethanol to 1 part of very concentrated cactus tea, let separate the solid, then decanting and use the liquid.

I think it is much more convenient not to have a absorption-slowing component present when ingesting a substance with such a long onset as mescaline.

That's unexpected, why would it be so?
Sure the lid keeps the heat in, but you want to maximize the evaporation surface. Evaporation implies heat loss and there is no way around it, so heat loss through evaporation is not the kind of heat loss to worry about... the more of it, the better.

Another thing, reduction is the most time-consuming process, sometimes taking upwards of 50 hours, I wouldn't want to attend it changing the lids every couple of minutes!

If there is anything else that speeds up evaporation, it's ensuring as low air humidity as possible. Best to do it outdoors, but when that's not an option, open as many windows and doors as it is practical.

This is purely what I observed through experience. I was working indoors and the weather was too cold to have any doors and windows open. The fume extractor over the cooker really wasn't cutting it and I noticed how much condensation was building up on the lid of a pan that I was heating up for a further boil on the cactus pieces.

I was also getting concerned about the mineral content of the brew as I was using hard water, so recycling distilled water from the lids of the pans struck me as a good idea - not to mention that there was a serious amount of condensation building up all over my kitchen.

Obviously, if you're working outdoors with low humidity there would be far better ways to spend your time but if you're brewing indoors in a cold climate and can spare the time to nurture your brews (they need constant watching anyhow, IMO) then I'd say this is a valid method.

What I found particularly good about it was that the brew was no longer drying out up the sides of the pans, and the heat could be turned down, thereby reducing fuel usage. It was really counter-intuitive, but this method really did improve the rate of volume reduction of the brew under the conditions necessary at the time. Were I to be brewing outdoors, which I would greatly prefer, I would not bother with a lid - or would I? Preventing sticky gunk from climbing up the side of the pan is quite appealing.

The key thing was having a constant supply of fresh, cold lids. It was like having a high throughput condenser attached to the top of the pan which, in the case of a very humid kitchen, greatly improved the overall evaporation rate. Also, without the lids there was a skin forming on the surface of the brew that was also slowing down the evaporation rate so it could be said that I was trading stirring the pan occasionally for swapping lids occasionally.

I was genuinely pleasantly surprised at the advantages this method appeared to offer and could only share it in the hope that somebody else might benefit from it. This way I managed to reduce 30 litres down to 2½ in about ten hours (not counting the initial boils) using three pans and nine lids. Yes, I probably do have OCD. It was nice to be there to watch over the brew with love and smudges