thanks HP, and Tsehakla! good to know its not as toxic as i thought it was. its horrible smell and the fact that it dissolves many plastics caused me to believe otherwise

Beautifully written tek I've got a mountain of cacti that I've been figuring out what to do with so I think I'll give this a shot...as soon as my pressure cooker arrives.

Can't wait to hear how it goes for you, please report back. I'll also be glad to answer any questions you may have.

heavenlypursuit, I for one would love to see your dry powder tek when you have the time. This wet tek is great and easy. Just got a pressure cooker.

Thanks again.

Good luck running the tek, you should be very pleased! I'll get a dry powder tek up as soon as my Pedro comes in from Peru.

woot woot!! that would be very helpful
<3

What's the reason for salting the pulls separately? Better yield? Or is it so you know when your cactus is spent? Seems easier to just salt all four pulls at the same time.

When I extract, whether it is mesc or dmt, I do put a few pulls together (like lets say 2 or 3 or 4 pulls), salt them together, but then do another long pull and salt it separately. If the last pull salted separately still has goodies, this means keep pulling.

I think its easier to manage a larger amount of crystals at once, hence I agree with putting pulls togehter. The possible disadvantages would be if you spilled, you will lose more at once (so work carefully), and also it can happen that different pulls have different purity qualities (it can happen that later pulls are more oily, or sometimes the inverse for some weird reason first pull is more oily or whatever), so if you do them together you might have some or other pull that are purer, while if you mix up it will be an average purity. In any case that isnt much of a problem if you can anyways wash/clean the product later on.

Maybe heavenly has other reasons for it, lets see what he says

landfishd and endlessness,

There is not really any disadvantage to salting all the pulls together. SWIM wouldn't really do more than two saltings together though, just because he would want a bit more time for the solvent to soak in the extraction vessel. This tek is meant to cut down time, however, if time is not an issue SWIM likes to let things sit for a while. He feels there is a definitely a slight increase in yield when each pull of limo soaks for 12-24 hours. That allows one to shake the jar up many more times over the given period, which SWIM feels adds to each pull. So basically, this tek is suitable for a quick extraction, and also one that can be done over the course of about 4 days, the choice is up to the extractor themselves. SWIM does prefer letting it sit since he loves mescalito and wants to get EVERY last drop. Purity of the pulls is not an issue, because as endlessness stated, they will be cleaned up in the end anyways.

Also, endlessness...
SWIM does his dmt extractions just like you. He basically exhausts his bark in 3 pulls, then hits it again the next day for any remnants, then hits it the following day for the jungle. Nearly 85% is exhausted on the first 3 pulls. He feels dmt much more willingly gives itself up for the extraction though and is more suitable for "flash" extractions. Just SWIM's opinion after doing lots of both of these particular extractions.

nice write up HP

for what reason do you remove spines and skin?
the pressure cooker speeds up boiling but is still time consuming, why not just blend cacti with base and water, let set until slacked, then do np pulls?

It'd be nice to see Me! around, i wonder when he gets out?

Dg

Do you blend it up spines skin and all? I've often wondered if it was really needed. I keep meaning to leave some cactus skin in some d-limo to see if it dissolves.

Nice clean approach HP

My two cents....I never remove the spines and skin, there's just no point if you are doing an A/B or STB tek. And the excessive boiling and blending isn't necessary either, a few light simmers on chunks of cacti gets everything out. Ive performed an a/b on spent chunks prepared in this way and there was no mesc left.

just simmer till they aint bitter.

antichode, interesting! Im sure you have more experience than me with cact but my experience actually says otherwise.. I once made resin out of fresh cact chunks, and in the fifth 2-hour-long boil, there was still active resin coming out... How small do you cut your cact? Do you acidify your water? Is it possible your A/B wasnt thorough when making that test? When you say 'no mesc', is that literaly 0, or a little bit?

'chunks' is probably the wrong word.... I cut into about 1cm pieces, simmer with lemon juice. I got very very little mesc out. mostly just a goo that acetone wouldnt lift anything out of.

Sometimes I need 4 or more simmers, sometimes less, if you stick to the golden rule of cooking untill it isnt bitter I think you'll be fine.... I guess this is what the pressure cooker is supposed to bypass however, makes sense (ive seen what a PC does to my vege's, it liquifies them in minutes). So I dont want to deter from this tek.... It looks all good to me

just do the math endlessness. If you normally get x amount out of a particular plant with a stb or a/b tek, then you know when to stop pulling on the material. I only work with the cultivars that I grow myself, and Ive done every tek known to man on them. Most, if not all the mesc comes out within the first three simmers. From there its just oils fats and sugars

every plant is different tho, and I guess if your buying small amounts of an unknown variety then theres no harm in going overkill. Doesnt hurt to reduce the water down either, so your not dealing with 100's of grams of caustic slime. I personally prefer STB over everything else for cacti....I like the fact that you can handle lime and it doesnt matter if you spill a bit here or there, just pick it up and pop it back in the pot. But its not as clean and tidy as working with a few hundred ml of reduced tea and basing the crap out of it

dg,

Have you personally done a STB on fresh cactus this way? Makes total sense though, but I just wanted to get a nice a/b extraction tek up that was very reliable for SWIM. Also, don't you think it would take a while for the NaOH to break down the cactus? This tek speeds that up if one wanted to perform a sort of flash extraction. However, SWIM's in the process of blending up some fresh cacti right now for a STB. Gonna leave the spines and skin on as well. SWIM will post back with results.

antichode,

See what you are saying with leaving the spines on, like dg said. As stated above, that is being performed at this very moment for a STB on some fresh Achuma. Also, the pressure cooker is to cut down on the simmer time for an a/b. It reduces A LOT of time.

yes, stb for cacti is uber tried and true and was perfected long before stb mimosa was

also-see my earlier thread "dual solvent crystalization" for another option for the finish/salting steps

the lye works pretty quickly(blend snot, water and lye with a high speed mixer, wait 12-24hrs before adding np) this allows the mix to slack, and avoids nasty emulsions

yeah it technically takes longer i guess, but is way less labor intensive in many ways

:cheers:

no need for the extra labor if extracting, might be worthwhile if making tea to drink though

but it might help the equation if titration is overshot grossly like in most "teks"

Ever do drytek without skinning ?


Seriously...... If Skinning isn't needed..... I have spent allot of time skinning

I 'dry' tek with lime madcap... Its the only extraction I use these days. Just chop up (into small pieces so its easy to dry). Dehydrate overnight. powder and proceed with a standard stb.

Just use more powdered material if you keep the spines, skins and core. Your mesc to dry weight ratio will be lower because of those added parts of the cactus.

150grams is equal to 100 for my particular process.

Also dg...have you used KOH? In the past I found it quite superior in place of lye... seems to work very well at breaking down cactus snot.

hola

did u ever try a defat before basing to get all the junk out.

so add some d-limo to the stil acid state cacti soup pull the limo

and than let it base, i thinkt you wil not have to clean the mesc afterworts then.

greets pano