Citric acid

[AlbertKLloyd]

How many people here have any knowledge of citric acid salting of mesc?
SWIM has found STB to citric salt to provide the best results they have seen.

Rumors of problems abound, and yet SWIM thinks that, due to SWIMs experience, that is all they can be; rumors.

What are the potential drawbacks?
Perhaps SWIM overlooked something?

 

[Infundibulum]

The only problem is that unused citric acid contaminates the final product (mesc-citrate). This of course is in the step where the (freebase) mescaline is moved from the non-polar solvent to the citric acid acidified solution.

If this acidified solution is left to dry then mescaline citrate will be left (as well as other alkaloids) and unused citric acid.

 

[AlbertKLloyd]

SWIM tells it like this:

Never had that problem. When the evap is used to make crystals they form before all of the water is gone, just suck up the citric acid rich solution and the resulting crystals, which are left behind, are very pure. Citric acid is very sour, however M-citrate has very little if any sourness (metallic bitterness with a kind of chalky quality to it) and does not resemble citric acid in the least way, not in look, taste or solubility. The dose of M citrate is not higher than for other salts either, so clearly the amount of citric acid left over in the product has to be a couple of milligrams or less, virtually nothing.

The idea that citric acid contaminated the end product is clearly not consistent with their results.

Those who have excess citric acid in their end product are just doing it wrong.

 

[Infundibulum]

That's cool. SWIM was unaware about that.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[69ron]

SWIM tells it like this:

Never had that problem. When the evap is used to make crystals they form before all of the water is gone, just suck up the citric acid rich solution and the resulting crystals, which are left behind, are very pure. Citric acid is very sour, however M-citrate has very little if any sourness (metallic bitterness with a kind of chalky quality to it) and does not resemble citric acid in the least way, not in look, taste or solubility. The dose of M citrate is not higher than for other salts either, so clearly the amount of citric acid left over in the product has to be a couple of milligrams or less, virtually nothing.

The idea that citric acid contaminated the end product is clearly not consistent with their results.

Those who have excess citric acid in their end product are just doing it wrong.

SWIM has never been able to get it to work. He’s tried dozens of times. The final product is always greatly contaminated with citric acid. It will taste sour. If you can get it to work than great, and please post exactly how you did it. SWIM is a fairly experienced plant extractor and it has always failed to work for SWIM. Either he’s doing something wrong or this just doesn’t work.

 

[AlbertKLloyd]

I can relay the information:

The alkaloid rich NP is combined with the citric acid solution and placed in the freezer.
The solution freezes and the NP is poured off.
The solution is thawed and evaporated at low heat.
As the solution evaporates the crystals form.
When a recoverable amount of crystals have formed, but before the water has all evaporated the remaining solution is removed. Then some tap water is used to cover the crystals and they are swirled around a bit, then this water is removed and added to the citric solution that was previously removed, so that it can be re-used.

The resulting crystals are transparent and barely tinted, so appear very close to white.
They have almost no sour taste, if there is a bit of sour just compare it to pure citric acid. If you can detect a sour flavor that is nothing compared to citric acid, which is extremely sour in small amounts. However the flavor of M-citrate is chalky and odd, not sour.

The M citrate is nearly insoluble in the tap water here (pH 8-8.5)
At no point in the extraction is any special water used, just tap.


also the major extraction proceeds as follows:
Fresh chopped cactus is boiled to make it soft, it takes less than 10 min of boiling.
Then the cactus is placed into a blender, being made soft already. It is blended and then added back to the boiling container. Then it is boiled until it is reduced to the appropriate volume. Then it is placed into a glass gallon jar and lye is added.
At no point is the cactus skin removed, or spines removed, nor is there a defatting step, all of those steps are completely unnecessary.
The caustic cactus solution is allowed to sit overnight.
Then xylene is added to it, the mix is shaken and allowed to separate. The NP now rich in cactus alkaloids is removed and salted out.

That is what I was told by SWIM.