SWIM's not sure which of these to use for his next extraction. He is a little worried that the heating involved in vinegar a/b (in order to reduce volume of acidic cactus tea) could hurt his yield - can anyone attest to this? With mescaline's melting point being well above 100 Celsius, he doesn't see how heating cactus tea should lower yield...

My rule of thumb with mescaline: if it's too hot for your thumb, it's too hot for the mescaline.

thanks for the reply. I feel, though, that if nanook can torch his cactus syrup with a turkey fryer and still get a good yield, it must be possible that mescaline isn't affected by heat as long as it's not higher than the bp of water

I'm still not sure whether to go with vinegar a/b or lime STB; I have reliable people telling me to do it both ways... Nobody has every compared the two methods?

wtf??
bp is over 300*f


stb, yes i have compared them
stb is faster and yeilds same


also, why use lime??
lye or koh work best ime

Which STB technique did you use? Did you use limonene & a french press? Did you have to deal with "the snot"?

Lime is easier to get in food-grade quality. Freakin' wallmark, broseph

I highy recommend phlux's tek.

It's so much more convenient to be working with solution, rather than goo.

i do my own thing, but the start of the process for me is a modified "foaf" stb

if is is still "snotty" add more base and wait for it to "slack" or digest. no snot, no acid(until salting), no boiling.

but i wonder why the base or solovent should be food grade? with proper technique, no solovent or base ends up in the extract

big box stores also stock koh and naoh in pure enough form for extraction work

^^^ He's got it, lye will eat the snot for breakfast (no need for heat), and you don't need an excessive amount either, give it a couple days and it'll be completely broken down. Float limo on top, mix, separate, then salt and clean.

SWIM soaked 200g in vinegar in a glass jug to make a big snot ball, freeze/unfreezed for a couple days, then added lye water, shook for a couple days, snot was gone, proceeded like typical spice BLAB. Good results.

What kind of yield did your friend get from that 200g? Torch or Pedro? SWIM was thinking of doing something similar but worried that leaving mescaline in contact with base for several days would hurt yield.

I tried the BLAB thing on cactus and I reckon it wasn't any better than an STB. The vinegar didn't seem to break down the mucilage at all, but lye does just fine, so I doubt there's any real benefit in BLABing cactus.

For sure, SWIM would skip the vinegar step if he did this again. SWIM is still pulling from this, he gets about one 300-350mg dose after cleaning with acetone twice after each pull. He has gotten 3 doses so far, it is still producing doses at this rate, so he is not sure yet what the exact yields are until it starts dropping off. The material is pedro.

The 69Ron tek, when followed exactly, works flawlessly. The only downside is if you live in a really humid area then you have to dehydrate and then quickly measure and encapsulate the acetates before they absorb atmospheric h20 and turn into goo.

Sounds pretty good... what source did your friend acquire the cactus from? PM me if you like.

I more or less agree with this statement, except for one thing. I find with Rons tek the amount of water needed for basification changes by a considerable amnount each time, and there in lies a potential flaw for the inexperienced. Too much water and Mesc gets stuck in the cactus, not enough and it doesnt basify properly. Sometimes the amount of water Ive added has only been 110ml!

Also... Limonene is expensive and you need to use a lot for Rons tek. Especially if you come across a weak strain

That aside, every time Ive performed that tek Ive gotten great results. But it can be a bit messy and costly.

Im very interested in Phlux's tek however, especially seing how highly you speak of it soulfood. I very much like the idea of cooking many batches of cactus (say 500 dry grams worth) and reducing them down so you have a super potent saturated tea that you can use minimal amounts of limonen to pull with.

Also, with regard to heat.... I dont think temperature is too much of a problem unless it is prolonged. I always pick up washed hcl salts with boiling water and it always dries up perfectly every time, with no loss in potency.

I'd love you to go into more detail dg..... That mesc you posted in phlux's post was the best Ive seen on these forums. It was very fine indeed

sure, as time allows i'll go into more detail

took pics of salting/ crystalization tek recently