San Pedro Preparation

I know there are many threads across the Internet with good information on procedures to prepare San pedro but this is my first time dealing with this method so some input/advice would be healpful.

Ive prepared San Pedro 4 times prior to this each time was either making the tea, eating the green flesh or a hybrid of the two. The hybrid method works extremely well for me as I usually gag on the tea, so I enjoy eating some as well.

This time I'm drying it out. I've despined, decored, deskinned and sliced off the green part and have swapped between the oven and fan drying for a day and a half now. I do not own a food dehydrator and its pouring rain outside so sun drying and dehydrator are not options. The material is still not completely dry and alot of it is starting to ger kind of reddish/brown, still alot of green though. I've heard the dry material referred to as 'cactus jerky' so I'm thinking its on its way but I also know mold and other crap can grow on it rather quickly so I'm making sure its not that before I proceed with the remaining cactus thats still not cut.

 

You have to slice it quite thin to have it dry into a crusheable potato chip, just the green layer only. In a warm dry place a fan blowing over it on high for a couple of days will usually do it nicely, but winter not so easy. See PM.

 

when dry, cactus chips are green; not brown or reddish. even if it doesnt dry and just turns into leather; still greenish...

 

what about the inside part whitish/light green part could it be just remaining dying parts from that giving it the color because I do have a foot long uncut specimen and its getting reddish at well on the base where I cut.

 

The dark green layer is about 4 mm or less. The white layer is basically a "fat" layer. This fat layer can do just about anything, it needs to be shaved off the green as much as possible, if the green layer is clearly defined. If the layer is not sharply defined, then that is a weak, overwatered cactus. the best green layer is like dark green gel. When you remove the green layer, it will be kind of like green water melon (on a weaker cactus). The white layer is gloppier. once you have the green layer removed (and that waxy white outer skin peeled off) shave the fat side of it, thin layer by thin layer.Each shaving will be whitish, more white than green until you get down to just green, basically white, white, white, whitish greenish, whitish greenish, greenish white.

have never seen the pure green layer turn reddish or brownish. the white layer yes, green, NO...

do you have a picture?

 

ps. shaving the white off the green is best with a thin, sharp, short bladed knife, like a paring knife or maybe a filet knife. handle of knife will be longer than blade...

 

Ok so this round is sounding like it may be a dud which is unfortunate. There is still tons of green, its mostly green in fact but it looks like some diced up mixed peppers almost, definitely heavier on the green. So next go round I'll make sure absolutely no white is remaining, I didnt try to leave the white on but I was not super cautious about it removing it either. I was under the impression that part could be dried as well it just didnt contain a terribly high degree of alkaloids.

I can possibly put up a pic tomorrow...

 

Never throw anything away. Everything will dry eventually,even the fat layer, but during winter and humidity and cold, cactus leather is usually what shows up rather than hard crusheable chips. The more fat you remove, the less problems you should have drying, but worst case scenario, throw your cactus leather in a pot of boiling water...

keep the chips warm, dry, with strong wind blowing on it from a fan...

 

So the stuff really is starting to look like beef jerky. I checked out some other photos of cactus jerky (albeit it wasnt san pedro) on the web and its the same reddish/brown color as this and beef jerky. Some of it seems hardened too.

I tried a picture but I only have the camera on my phone and it didnt come out good.

 

I boiled chopped piece of the cactus and drank it. It was pretty foul, and I've cut off the cutical skin stuff and tossed it in a blender with a bit of water and drank that. Both work just as effective. They were both just as foul.

 

No way. Something highly amiss if it looks like beef jerky. My pm comments to you stand. As long as the dried skins can be powdered, good. If they persist in being leathery, then options are limited: slice it, dice it, blend it with acidified distilled water, boil...

Keep in mind, powdered sp is a sharp spicy smelling light green powdered dust...

 

I gotta assume it burned in the oven then, why would I keep it?

 

Oven influence was my thought as well.Seeing as how you have unlimited outdoor sources, obviously no reason to keep it at all. The rest of us would be fighting tooth and nail to save it...

Incidentally, the times I've used an oven, always went sour...

Also, anecdote describes sub varieties within the echinopsis pachanoi species; this evolutionary spectrum may explain variations in cactus properties from alkaline content to other physical characteristics, such as tissue response to dehydration and the like. Usually, I believe vendors have found the convenient visionary variety and maintained clonal colonies to produce a consistent stock for market using these cacti. Observe your cache of cacti for a difference in rib count; this should be immediately apparent. Trial and error should assist you from here in narrowing down your target population...

 

By way of example: all of bbb cactus were relatively weak, but dried to a hard chip, and in sufficient quantities was beautifully psychedelic. By contrast, Home depot nursery varieties turned into leather and were heavy body load style trips, not worth the effort...

Perhaps no surprise bbb was the vendor chosen to be an example to the market in federal raids...

 

Any recommendations on where to go from here? I'm thinking put the stuff in a grinder and turn it to goo. Then fan dry, would an artifical light (lamp) aimed at the material possibly speed up the drying process at all?

 

This was your only option at powdering the cactus: dry thin green layer and crush in blender. Powder is the optimal starting point for any extraction because powdering exponentially increases surface area for chemicals to act upon. But you do not have to have powder to do petrochemical extractions, these agents will work on cactus tea. Sufficiently acid in ph, this aqueous solution will covert mescaline to it's salt form sufficient for it to dissolve in water, and away you go, lower yield but still a yield.

If you're going to make a blended goo and dry it to a crushable medium, this also has problems. Cactus tea does not dry to a powder. Heat, water, blenders, etc release plant fats and plant waxes and metabolites which dry to at best a paste or a syrup. If heat is applied the syrup dries into a black glass which is quite hard and difficult to chip out of pans.

Is your goal powder, or a petrochemical extraction?

 

mescaline acetate

 

You don't need powder then. Acidifying your cactus tea with vinegar instead of lemon/lime juice results in a higher concentration of m. Acetate. After combining multiple washes of the Marc your excess vinegar will boil off until only your cup of tea remains. If instead your referring to using vinegar as the acid in an a/b or stb extraction, and you have the technical skill to pull it off (I do not), then you don't need powder for that either. Green layer only, blender and boil and acidify with vinegar and take the semi reduced volume of tea into the chemistry of the procedure, using vinegar again at the end to salt out your product. however hcl is much better. M-hydrochloride has the lowest molecular weight of any mescaline product, so it requires less product to get you to where you want to be. Excess Hcl also is 100% volatile, it evaporates completely...

 

Note: I edited the above to be a little clearer; it's a precursory summary only...

 

I pretty much plan trying to follow the tek (Im sure you know which one) straight by the guidelines. It calls for dried cactus, so thats what I'm aiming for. Ill have to figure something out, I can't imagine why the drying methods would be so difficult and not really looking to noodle around with other methods if im already having this amount of trouble. I've sampled the specimens before in a tea and it was fairly psychedelic.