CIELO tek small drops of liquid at bottom of EA after 1 day

[mud1]

I gave the CIELO tek a try yesterday and it went very well until today. I noticed that 6 hours after mixing citric acid into the EA, no crystals were really forming. Today when I checked, (24 hours) I see that there are small drops of some liquid at the bottom of EA, with no crystals forming:

Yesterday before adding the powder citric acid I made sure there was absolutely no debris or water. Anyone know what is happening? Is the bottom later likely the salted out mescaline? And if so, can I just extract that and dry it out to save this batch?


Also if anyone can offer insights on how I ended up with water/liquid at the bottom please let me know

Thanks!

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Is that definitely liquid? It's hard to tell from your pic. If there is a high level of humidity in your area it can end up making its way into the EA. The mesc.citrate will then pull the dissolved water back out of the EA.

Whatever, if you've followed the instructions precisely up to this point then it's most likely that your mescaline (if any, this depends on the cactus you used) will have ended up at the bottom of your jar. Carefully removing the EA will allow you to retrieve whatever is there. If it is liquid or goo, a careful rinse or two with dry EA may well cause it to crystallise.

 

[mud1]

I'm pretty sure it is liquid, but haven't tried shaking it or anything to confirm since I still want everything to collect at the bottom first.

My relative humidity is ~30-40% so it probably wouldn't cause that much condensation? Mason jar is sealed and the EA was from a new can.

Is there any reason to use fresh EA to recrystalize? If the bottom is mesc citrate water, couldn't I just evaporate it all in a dish and scrape that off?

Otherwise, would drying EA be the process using anhydrous epsom salts in the EA? And by rinse do you mean shake my bottom liquid with that new EA and filter it out or do you mean to just let it rest with that EA for a few days again?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

That is a low relative humidity, although one has to consider the absolute humidity if you're dealing with refrigeration. The higher the temperature the bigger the divergence between relative and absolute humidity, so if it's very hot there might still be enough moisture in the air for it to get drawn into a cold hygroscopic solvent. This is something that can be looked up and/or calculated (i.e. the relative humidity at different temperatures for the same absolute humidity).

Evaporation of a liquid residue would present a likelihood of excess citric acid remaining in the product, which in turn would skew yield and dosage calculations. The EA rinses would clear this up. There are some current threads that go into sufficient detail regarding attempts to resolve CIELO goo.

But first of all, you'd best ascertain what physical state the precipitated material is in before going too far up the garden path (although the background reading would likely be at least educational even if not immediately useful). And yes - should the need arise, anhydrous magnesium sulfate will dry your EA. And if a less-than-complete dryness would be acceptable you can even soak up a small amount of excess moisture from a solvent with the use of salt (NaCl) that has been dried in the oven.