Any advice for first time Alcohol Extraction?

Hello everyone, I'm N1ghtWolf and I've been lurking around for quite a while but only registered recently. I first wanted to try cacti a long long time ago but I never really managed to do so. I will introduce myself a little later as I need to do some work and get this sorted out first.

I've followed Omacatl's alcohol extraction thread and I believe that so far I've got some decent results. I've used roughly 298grams of dried Peruvian Torch powder with 99% Isopropyl rubbing alcohol split between 3 large jars. I did 3 pulls x 3 days (shaking the jars every now and then) and 2 pulls x 2 days when the liquid got much lighter.

I've taken a few pictures and this is what the process looked like:


This was the first pull. The powder was split between the 3 jars so roughly 99grams per jar.




These are the first three pulls, the liquid got much lighter towards the third pull but you can't really see this on the picture.




And finally I did 2 more pulls roughly 2+ days each. I put the liquid from the three jars together and I got one jar of very light, see-through liquid. I tossed the rest of the powder away. (The actual liquid was much lighter than on the picture).




I didn't take the last picture but altogether I have three full large jars of black liquid. These are the jars, they just weren't full when I took the picture. I've filtered the whole thing once more to get rid of any powder sediment that got through the cotton cloth.




So far so good? I've also noticed when taking the jars under a warm light source that the inside seems to have a reddish color. The reddish color was much more visible after the first pull. This was quite interesting.

I'm currently going away for the next few days and won't be back for a while. I wanted to find out how to evaporate these without having to look over them while at the same time making sure everything is done safely.

I was thinking of putting the alcohol in a pyrex dish in the attic but my only worry with that is that the alcohol may get dirty from dust or bugs. Things may fall into the dishes making the whole thing not too ideal to use. Has anyone got any advice with this? Would it be alright if I placed a cardboard box over the dishes or would that fail? Any safety hazards I should look out for?

And most important of all, a big thank you goes to Omacatl for his awesome guide that was nice and easy to follow. Lets hope everything went well and that I won't be disappointed.

PS. Here are a few more pictures:

Code:

http://imgur.com/a/1R0S7

 

Wow...that looks really good, N1ghtwolf. Great Job!

You should put the liquid in a bakingdish. I would use a bakingdish (or something similar in size) so that you can put it in the freezer once all the alcohol evaporated. In your case I guess you need a lot of those or maybe just do one jar at a time.

Remember to place the baking dish in a well ventilated area!

Once you're left with the mescalin tar, put it in the freezer for a while. mix some flour in with the tar and make a nice mescalin ball. My advice is to mix the things on a sheet of plastic wrap as it's much more manageable that way.

Good luck with whole thing!

 

Thank you, that's a very pleasant reply. I will try and get a picture of the final 3 jars by tomorrow.

I've actually got three glass baking dishes ready to be filled up. As I'm going to be away, I'd like to put these out for evaporation, though my only options are the attic or outside in a shed. The main problem with that is the fact that the attic/shed = dust, bugs and whatnot. I was hoping someone could give some advice on what I could use to cover the dishes in a way where outside dust/bugs won't get into them but at the same time the evaporation process won't be halted.

Thanks for the tip with the freezer, though I have used 99% isopropyl, will it still be tar?

Plastic wrap sounds good though I can see how that can get sticky and hard to take apart, I'd personally prefer to use non stick aluminum foil but I'd imagine that won't be a good idea? Though then again the extract would be dry anyway so I don't think it would react with the aluminum?

 

Oh I forgot to comment on that. How about using a cheesecloth or something similar to put over the bakingdish? that way dust, bugs and stuff like that shouldn't be a problem and the alcohol can still evaporate.

I used isopropyl 99% and still ended up with tar that would not dry. I used plastic wrap for the reason that you handle the mescalin ball much better when you're rolling it and you can actually pack in plastic wrap for storage. Just like you would with opium or hashish. Just be sure that all alcohol is evaporated before you start mixing the ball.

 

Hmmm... after further thought I think I will leave the alcohol alone for now and evaporate it when I come back. I don't want anything to explode or burn down and I'm a bit worried about leaving it in a shed due to the smell which may become suspicious.

I will have to wait and fan dry it when I'm back.

Edit: I was thinking, would putting the dishes in boiling water in a bath be a viable and fast way of evaporating?

 

That's properly a good idea. Safety first!

If the room is well ventilated it's gonna evaporate rather fast, so I wouldn't really care to do anything else that pouring the liquid in the baking dish.

Patience is a virtue!

 

Sorry for the late reply, I'm not sure why but in the end it never worked, maybe it was a bad cactus, maybe it was never meant to be. I had black tar which looked like the ball you posted in the other thread but it didn't do a thing.

Although I'd love to experience mescaline, I have now decided not to. I've explained why in this post: http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?p=7522696

Peace.