I recently started trying out an alcohol extraction method, not being ballsy enough for the A/B extraction, and thought I'd share the 'technique' (if you can call it that) that I finally came up with after several wasteful attempts. About halfway through making the stuff (I did several batches), I ran out of funds (i'm a college student) and had to improvise a bit, so there are better/more obvious and easier ways and materials to accomplish some of the steps here. What you need: -pedro/peruvian torch of some quantity, dried and powdered. -91% isopropyl alchohol (you can use grain alcohol, everclear etc., but it gets to be VERY VERY expensive - you use quite a bit of alcohol. using isopropyl only means you need to be very thorough with the evaporation) -Glass jars (I used 1 quart mason jars - I will use twice this size next time, but they got the job done) -Fairly large glass baking pan (pyrex) -Turkey baster -razor blade -wax paper What you do: 1. Weigh out some quantity of powder and put it into one of the glass jars. If you are using quart jars like I did, 300 grams of powder is about the limit. You need room to add enough alcohol to make it liquidy and keep unmaneagable clumps from forming on the bottom that refuse to mix when you shake the jar. 2. Pour enough alcohol into the jar to make a soup. Seal the jar. Let it sit for a bit and then give it a shake and turn it upside down. If a bunch of powder is clumping on the bottom and won't mix even with vigorous shaking then you need more alcohol. 3. Let the jar sit for a day or two, shaking it at least 5 times per 24 hours. The more shaking the better. 4. Open it up and add fresh alcohol, as much as you put in the first time (however much it took to make it adequately soupy) 5. Let the jar sit for a day, shaking all the while 6. Add more fresh alcohol 7. Repeat this process, halfing the amount of time in between adding alcohol, until the jar is nearly full. 8. Let the jar sit an hour or so until the dark liquid has significantly separated from the powder on the bottom. 9. Using the turkey baster, suck out the dark liquid and put it in another clean jar. You want to get as much liquid out without sucking up solid matter. This can be difficult and just takes some practice. 10. Repeat steps 2->9. You'll notice the liquid that separates start to get clearer. Once the separated liquid is fairly transparent (looking like yellowish-green tinted water) you're pretty much done. You can continue adding more alcohol, shaking and sucking, but I'm guessing gains are minimal at this point. Optionally you can strain the powder at the end with a coffee filter, but this can be messy, and we've already gotten the good stuff with only losing yield in the baster and whatever was too difficult to suck out of the jars. Every little bit helps though. 11. Pour the dark liquid in to the baking pan and PUT IT OUTSIDE to evaporate. I did this in my room with a fan and two open windows and the smell of alcohol was still overpowering, not to mention that I likely killed off a billion brain cells. 12. When the amount of liquid left is fairly low, smell the pan. You shouldn't be able to smell any alcohol, which means (I guess) that the liquid left is predominantly water. You can bring the pan in now and set a fan on it which will help it evaporate faster, especially if its cold and humid where you live Ultimately you're left with some black tar-like gunk that's sticky as hell. You should keep the fan on this stuff for at LEAST a day or two. 13. Using the razor blade, scrape the gunk off the bottom and put it on the wax paper. I found wax paper to be the only surface the tarish gunk doesn't stick on too badly. This stuff can be seriously sticky and it starts to come off all oily on your hands after you've held it for just a few seconds. I read somewhere that adding some baking powder to it can help, but I haven't tried this. My first batch was much less sticky than my most recent, and I think it had to do with my messing up at first and having good amount of the original powder in the pan, so maybe putting some powder in to the final mix is a good idea. That's it. Now weigh the black shit and divide like so: starting weight of powder/black shit weight. That gives you extremely roughly how many grams of powder are in each gram of the tar. It's going to be less than that number, of course, but that's about the best and easiest estimate. In one of my batches, I put in 100 grams of powder and came out with 24 grams of tar, so each gram of tar represented about 4 grams of powder. You have some options now on how to consume it. I was broke by this point so I used a school account and bought some herbal supplements in capsules, emptied them out, and put the tar in them. About a gram per capsule, which worked out nicely. I was taking 5-10 capsules and tripping my face off, so so so much more than when I tried making the boiled-down soup and with little nausea to boot. Anyways, I hope this is helpful for someone. Remember to evaporate thoroughly, the only uncertain/potentially dangerous aspect of this project is the isopropyl alcohol.
the A/B extraction is relatively painless, but getting the alkaloids in an alcoholic solution helps a great deal too. with the alcoholic solution (soaking the dried cactus material in an alcohol), you can use that as your aqueous solution and acidify it, then do your basification, extraction, and washes. if you're just going to stick with the alcoholic solution, I'd go with ethanol; yeah, it's a bit more expensive, but less toxic than isopropyl, which isn't very toxic to begin with. at least you can drink the ethanolic solution, if nothing else.
yeah, the major obstacle to doing the a/b extraction for me is that I'm living in campus housing, in a fairly small single, which I'd rather enjoy living in than making it into a laboratory. In Ohio, where I go to school, the cheapest, highest proof liquor (151 proof) is $23 a handle, which gets real expensive, especially when you can get a quart of isopropyl for $2. Have you really drunk the liquid? that sounds real nasty. but, that is something people do with shrooms, ie. make a tincture and drink it, obviously using ethanol and not isopropyl. I'm sticking with isopropyl pretty much just for the price, and I feel like its pretty safe, for three anecdotal reasons which may be bullshit: 1. The stuff evaporates like crazy. As soon as I had a fan going on it the first time, when I tried to evaporate it in my room with the windows open, it was seconds before the fumes were nearly unbearable. 2. Once there is a small amount of liquid left in the pan, it doesn't smell like alcohol at all anymore. Which leads me to believe that that liquid near the end is primarily the 8% water that evaporates slower than the alcohol, which would mean that the final amount of liquid that is evaporated is very diluted and the final product is pretty much dry. 3. I've taken a bunch of my own preparations and not noticed any of the side effects of isopropyl consumption ("gastric disturbances"). in fact, my trips were surprisingly nausea free, which was the motivation for preparing it this way in the first place. Once I have time, money and a good location, I'll probably try the a/b extraction, but for now the alcohol extraction is convenient, cheap, gives decent results, and doesn't involve lots of preparation, boiling and guzzling cups of green crap.
So to take it a step further, an alkaloid extraction would go like this...(?) Alcohol soak and separation (with a sprinkle of citric acid) - 3 times, Add a solution of base+water in order to raise pH, Add half as much xylol and mix, Collect alkaloid containing xylol (discarding alcohol), Add fresh acidic water solution to xylol and mix, Collect alkaloid containing water, Evaporate water, Collect alkaloid crystals. Sounds a lot more expensive than starting with water. Is this method better? If so, why?
because the alternative is using a lot of water for the initial "tea", and boiling it all day. using alcohol makes evaporation a lot easier, as water doesn't evaporate quite as easily. if I'm not mistaken, mescaline is more soluble in alcohol; it just cuts back on time, and perhaps, increases your yield. you don't necessarily need to heat the alcohol, but gentle heat would speed up the process even more (solubility of said alkaloids increases exponentially in heated solvent).
I really know nothing about chemistry, but that method seems pretty easy to follow. Have you gotten the genuine crystals from it? I have a couple questions: 1. Why sprinkle with citric acid? 2. Could you add the base directly to the alcohol tincture instead of adding water? 3. I'm sure I could google this, but in regards to crystal making, whats the best way to make basic/acidic water solution? 4. If you have some of the black mescaline tar that you get from evaporating all the alcohol away, is there a way to do an a/b extraction on it? Just mix it in water? Or is there something better you could do? Regarding expense, isopropyl alcohol is dirt cheap. I do wonder, though, how badly you can mess up and still have alcohol in the final product if an alcohol solution is started with. But, I guess you evaporate the stuff at the end anyways...
1. to get mescaline citrate salts 2. yes, but you'll still want to add xylene. but yeah, you can just add your acid/base to the alcohol extraction. 3. lemon juice (for citrate), household ammonia for your base. 4. add more alcohol. it'll go back into solution. or add hot water
Adding citric acid to the cactus powder for the initial alcohol extraction was meant to aid in the initial alkaloid extraction. If you're using amonia, then sure. I was thinking of sodium hydroxide. You still could, but it would be harder to control. The isopropyl alcohol shouldn't be a problem.
I think I'll try your method actually, just to see if it'll work and if it does I'll save a lot of money thanks man.
maybe start off a couple/three rinses using 99% isopropanol (2nd one slightly _alkalinized_ , maybe with ammonina or conc. NaOH soln.? --- makes the alks. more soluble in organic solvents.) then cook it down (or just evap) & eventually start adding an aq. soln. citric acid... then cook that mixture down a bit & slowly, slowly cool down, then chill, maybe into a salted ice-water bath, eventually... if it's near saturation levels, the soln. should ppt. mesc. citrate crystals... (sorta roundish little crystalline nodules at the bottom of the mason jar, in a green sauce, heh... ya can rinse 'em off with a little bit of ICY COLD water (or even acetone?) to clean 'em up a bit, if ya want... ymmv... ~~~~~~~ OOOHHHH! one thousand, one hundred, and eleven posts... 1111 zooommmy, whazzup? mol.wt. mescaline = mol.wt. citric acid = recommended dosage level of mescaline citrate =
Doing the ROH extraction first seems to make it easier even thought it takes a little more time. You can extract as much powder in a 1-qt bottle as in a 1 gallon jug with the plain base/ water method. There are less emulsion problems and less toxic end products to dispose of. You could also reduce a lot of powder down to tar for hiding/long term strorage (frozen) and do an A/B when you needed more.
use ethanol instead, because ethanol boils off more readily (keep in mind...chlorophyll will also be extracted, coloring your product, just like boiling the powder in water (note: water is more polar than ethanol)), then treating with dilute hcl, and maybe even dilute koh (potash lye) rather than NaOH. KOH is easy to get, if you look for it on the info s-hwy. pool acid and everclear for the initial reagents. just make sure to monitor pH to some degree, to get good yields.
