This makes sense, congrats on the xtals. The chilled EA may have absorbed some moisture and maybe that extra water saturated the EA and caused the goo. Once you decanted the goo, xtalization finished as it normally would. I think that as long as you do the rest for a few hours + droplet check and remove any drops, xtals should reliability form

I have seen these drops before, so it can happen. Last time I got them, I had squeezed a bit too hard with the french press. They decanted easily before salting and caused no issues.

A note about resting, cold EA holds less water I believe, so resting in the fridge to check for droplets may be more robust.

Let's see what you get, but I think that we need to add more details around the check for droplets between pulling and salting in this TEK. It could be very important since the TEK doesn't chemichally dry the solvent before salting.

Edit: I observed that acetone was not very efficient at pulling mescaline from a very dry paste, which I think matches your observation. Interesting that you are finding that EA is more efficient, I believe that someblackguy also observed the same thing as you. Also interesting that you did not get dry lime clouds in the EA after drying with magnesium sulfate.