dried mescaline cactus powder and volume

[genaro]

does anyone have dried torch or pedro powder on hand right now and could tell me what exact volume is 100g (meaning how many mL is 100g, without tamping the powder down)
If possible use a "liquid measurement cup" to tell me the exact volume that fits 100g. If you doesn't have anything to measure the volume accurately, poor 100g in a cylindric cup (without tamping it down) of a given diameter and tell me how much centimeter high is 100g of powder.
I know this might sound like a strange request but this would be quite helpful, thanks.

Also if anyone has experience with extracting cactii into alcohol or water, then I'd like to know how much liquid the powder would "drink" (will the powder absorb 2 times its volume of liquid or more?)

[Leafteaner]

If you have powder I wouldnt really recommend mixing with water unless you dont mind the mess. But an alcohol extraction is pretty simple, however some alkaloids will most likely be lost. You could soak in conc. alcohol (96% or higher) for a few days, then seperate and filter the alcohol. Repeat this 2-3 more times and combine all the alcohol in one container. Then simply evaporate the alcohol and you will be left with some slimey stuff that can be eaten (assuming you make sure that all the alcohol has evaporated). That should get rid of most of the plant materials. You could go further and remove the chlorophyll by mixing some water in while the alcohol is evaporating. After all the alcohol is gone, chill the water solution. The chlorophyll should clump up as it's insoluble in water. Then just filter it off. You should be left with a jelly like substance after some evaporating. This can be eaten or dried further. 100g of starting material could be pretty strong tho, depending on the quality

EDIT: by the way the material will not really increase in volume when alcohol is added but it will grow significantly when water is added

[genaro]

fuck swim is in trouble by now. swim didn't have enough 95% alcohol to extract the whole thing so swim added water to it to get a bigger volume (therefore obtaining twice the amount of 45-50% alcohol)...
until this point everything was ok, swim had put the cacti powder in a large jar and had planned to add twice the cacti powder volume of this alcoholic solution inside the jar in order to get a liquid soup that he could easily shake/stir and the allow to macerate, then filter and evaporate to get a paste/gummy extract (just as he had always successfuly done when extracting any plant material)...
of course everything went in a different way than swim expected it to go:
first, adding a volume of alcoholic solution equal to twice the volume of cacti powder proved to be far (much far) from beeing enough to get a soup (the cacti powder drank it all within 1 minute, doubling in size, so the jar was completely filled with it) so swim didn't get a soup but a bunch of humide powder, swim knew that this couldn't extract anything so...swim tranfered it into the bigger jar swim had on hand and added quite a lot of water (in the hope of finally getting a liquid soup cause the powder wouldn't drink it anymore), unfortunately the powder doubled in volume again (how much liquid can this powder drink ! that seem endless!), forming a thick gelatine (exact same consistency of the slime from the Ghostbusters movie) that there is absolutely no way to efficiently stir and that cannot be shaken and therefore won't yield much (as stirring/shaking is essential to get all alkaloids out of the plant stuff), arghhhhhh.

Now swim wonders how he's gonna find a way to stir such a thick gelatine so the alkaloids are extracted and even if he would succeed he doubts much will be extracted out of such a gelatine (contary to liquids I guess gelatine will hold quite some of the alkaloids, right)...and worse he's anticipating the time of the filtration process when this fuckin powder which has drunk tons of water will probably refuse to release any, swim probably has a sixth sense that tells him that this powder drink enormously but doesn't release anything easily....

swim is definately not ok for wasting such an amount of cacti (quite a lot) so swim is getting really stressed by all these pitfalls.

Any suggestions ? (as said swim is not going through acid base extraction, he only wanna get a simple crude extract by evaporating the alcoholic solution, but at this point swim doubts that much alkaloids would leave the gelatine to go into the solution)

[Barebonejoe]

Be a man and drink it as is. )

I've ended up with San Pedro brew of similar consistancy (It reminded me of Ghostbusters slime too) and consumed about 70g worth of powder this way. It actually wasn't horrible(relatively). The flavor is contained in gewyness better than it is in a free flowing liquid, in my opinion. It just feels weird going down.

I froze the rest of the slime I had left over and later mixed it with fresh Pedro brew at a later date. I found that if I added enough water, the slime... waters down. After this happens, you can simmer it for 3-4 hours to evaporate its gew properties and make it into highly concentrated liquid of foul tasteing death.


Fortunately, there is no good way to consume the stuff. It forces you to overcome your senses before it frees parts of your mind and soul. It's not referred to as a teacher plant for nothing.

Learning from the process and enjoying the experience is the best way to consume the stuff.

[genaro]

sure swim could get it down but for several reasons swim wanna get a solid extract (evaporating the solution). The problem now would be to find a way to break the gelatine and liquefy it so it can be shaked, cooked and filtered. Swim is thinking about adding more water but he fears that the cactus would keep drinking it giving even more messy gelatin (and if any gelatin still remains at the filtration step then swim fears he will be unable to get the solvant out of the gelatin which wouldn't release it easily)

[genaro]

Help please !!!!

[Leafteaner]

Yeah that powdered stuff just soaks up the water like a sponge. At this point you could put it all in a pot and add some more water and something acidic like lime juice (a little goes a long way). It could take a bit of water tho. Then boil it down and filter it. A good way to filter that is to put all the crap in a shirt or something and just squeeze the excess water out. Just like the classic pedro tea but using the powder instead of fresh.

You could also try getting out as much water as possible (maybe with the shirt/squeeze), and saving that water. Then performing a crude alcohol extract on the cactus thats left, and once you are to the point where you have the water solution, just add in the water you saved from the original filter. Then try to evaporate that. You will have more plant material than normal but it shouldnt be horrible.

Good luck! Would like to hear how this works out for you

[genaro]

thanks a lot.
swim thinks he will "stir" the gelatin with his own hands (kneading it for 30 minutes, breaking the lumps with his fingers) and then pour the whole gelatinous thing in the freezer for 24h hours to break vegetal cells. Then boil it a little quantity at a time (double boiler to keep the temperature at 100°C no more), 1 or 2 hours of boiling for each quantity (this is going to take quite a long time!)....then knead it again with my own hands and allow macerate for 1 week (kneading once a day)....and then try to filter it through a piece of cloth (possibly trying to build a mall "vine press" on my own as I think the gelatin won't release its water easily, unless huge pressure is applied)
Repeat the extraction a second time on the remaining vegetal mess (no need to freeze it this time).
Then combine the liquids, filter through a cofee filter, without pressing/squeezing this time (to remove smallest solid particles), and then evaporate.

I think the biggest error that swim have made is to add the water to the powdered cacti, much much better to add the powder to the water, a little at a time until all is dissolved (as if you add the water to the powder, then a gelatin forms all around the powder so the powder in the center will not be impregnated with water as the gelatinous enveloppe prevent the water to reach the center of the mess). Always "spread/spray" the powder all over the water surface, a little quantity at a time, knead with your own hands, spray more powder into the water, and so on and so on until all the powder have been put into the water (this way, no gelatin lumps will form which is much better as the powder which is in the center of the lumps never absorb any water, only the surface of the lumps do, forming a gelatine which will be protecting the powder in the center of the lumps from the water which isn't good as it won't be extracted)