Looking for an efficient route to IPA extraction from fresh material

[blig-blug]

I have a decent amount of cactus material (but not necessarily of actives) and want an IPA-extracted full spectrum resin (following @doubledog's tek) as the end result.

So far, I've been boiling the cacti, evaporating the liquid until resin combining several boils (with freeze-thaw cycles for the cacti), and cleaning that crude resin with IPA.

This works well, however it is extremely time consuming, as the cacti stay noticeably bitter in their greener surface areas even after four or five boils. So I'm looking for more efficient ways.

An option that I have thought of is squeezing the fresh cacti and collecting their dry juice, and then evaporating it intto a very crude resin that would be cleaned with IPA. I would also let the pulp dry (it should be much faster after it having been squeezed, and can maybe heat it up in a hot water bath) and extract that with IPA too.

Anyone has done anything similar, or has any comments or ideas?

 

[doubledog]

Water and cactus is always lot of work. Do not bother.
I would extract dried cactus powder with ipa/water solution. Or alkaline alcohol.

 

[DetritusTheEgo]

Not that you have a soxhlet but I did a bunch of reading and stumbled across this gem Mescaline quantification in live cacti using TLC from An1cca which has a PDF attachment. In the attachment the first half covers mescaline quantification via TLC and in the second he does an alkaline ethanol extract via soxhlet.

That came to mind when doubledog mentioned alkaline alcohol.

 

[doubledog]

Soxhlet would be great, but even without it, extraction using alkaline alcohol is quite easy. It's especially usefull for processing lot of weak cactus.

As there is a pH change, it's a question if we could still call it full spectrum.

 

[DetritusTheEgo]

That extract I linked I feel was worthy of a share but don't want to redirect the thread. I have a soxhlet and ran into it after searching here on the Nexus. Mine is 1000ml and I don't have a thimble yet but I've estimated you can process ~100-125g of dry powder as a reference point which doesn't scale massively to but can swap thimbles out which An1cca mentions.

I'm following along and interested on the discussion. I was following along in the Defatting/Purifying San Pedro Resin thread but admittedly started to get lost in regard to broad stroke implications of some of the modifications resulting in the subsequent affect.

 

[Jamie01]

Unpopular opinion. Long boils are entirely unnecessary and you can have full activity with a fast 30-40 minute boil.

I have experimented a bunch with 12 hour books, 30 minute boils etc. I just do short cooks now because I don’t notice a difference other than longer boils = more sickness.

Some people have resorted to juicing cactus.

I just reduce the tea, base it and pull with hot iso.

 

[blig-blug]

Long boils are entirely unnecessary and you can have full activity with a fast 30-40 minute boil.

After such a short boil, isn't your leftover cactus material still very bitter?

 

[Jamie01]

I dry and powder the cacti first of all so I should clarify that. I’ve made 2 brews in the past few weeks just low doses a few grams of super potent bridgesii. I also have stopped removing the outer skin. I slice it up with the spines on, dry it then just snap off the spines from the chips and powder it in a mortar. This is what I then brew in acidic water.

I tasted the mush after filtering through a T shirt and it’s not entirely devoid of the bitterness but it’s pretty mild. I have been listening to the mescaline garden podcast a lot and some others and this has been an ongoing discussion. There isn’t really a consensus…some people swear by brewing for 3 days…others do the quick brew. I honestly don’t notice much of a difference personally aside from the long brewing times I used to do made me more sick. The quicker boils I have done produced a cleaner feeling brew. I have sworn off cactus brews in the past but the last 2 I have been fine. I don’t know what’s going on tbh but it could be longer boils are pulling extra alkaloids that bother my guts more or some people claim it’s other non alkaloid stuff coming out.

I do know that I am pulling the non mesc alkaloids through because I can clearly feel them hitting within 30 minutes and then the mesc at like hour 4.

It could also be that I’m working with a lot of potent bridge in my garden now where you can trip off a few inches etc and in the past I have drank a lot of peruvianus and weird pachanoi that needed more material so begin with.

Anyway I’m rambling good luck cactusing.

 

[Jamie01]

Also I should add I do at least 2 boils. I don’t always do 3 but still if you are trying to cut down on time and dealing with larger volumes of cactus it’s still probly annoying

 

[blig-blug]

extraction using alkaline alcohol is quite easy

Could you go a bit into detail on how you do this? Overall process and ratios involved.

 

[doubledog]

Easiest would be to make a wet alkaline paste similar as in CIELO (using calcium hydroxide, but also sodium or potassium hydroxides works) and macerate it in alcohol, ofc you need multiple pulls, then evaporate the alcohol (distillation would be great here, otherwise it's quite wasteful).
You can also use ammonia as in mentioned tek, I did it in the past, but do not remember the details, sorry.

There are many ways how to extract cactus, but all are in some way messy or work demanding.

 

[blig-blug]

How much is it reasonable to use per pull, relative to the volume or weight of the alkaline paste?

There are many ways how to extract cactus, but all are in some way messy or work demanding.

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. Still very much worth it Extracting directly with alcohol sounds potentially easier than boiling, plus I'm tired of heating up the house in the middle of a heatwave.

 

[doubledog]

I would use 800ml per 100g of powder in first pulls, then smaller amount in later pulls.
Yes, boiling in water is fine when you have potent cactus, otherwise it's not the best ime.
Evaporating alcohol is very convenient during heatwave.

Btw. there is some bitterness (it's more like adstringent taste with slight bitter undertone) in cactus which is not mescaline.

I would recommend you to extract directly into alcohol (with no pH change).

There is one crucial step which most people seem to skip in alcohol based teks: after evaporating alcohol, redissolve residue in water again and filter it. This is the most annoying step as it's quite difficult to filter. As almost always, sedimentation is your friend.

 

[DetritusTheEgo]

Is there any preference in type or proof of alcohol? I'm envisioning standard proof vodka or something quite high proof such as everclear. Vodka would be the most economical if not recapturing via distillation.

 

[doubledog]

Depends strongly on local availability, I use very pure and clean evaporating technical 99.8% ethanol as I can get it quite cheap (no tax due to not suitable for human consumption) from a company which sell bioethanol.
Easy to dilute it with some water to reach any required concentration.

Vodka contains too much water, and most important reason for using alcohol is to avoid water as much as possible. Water and cactus mucilage like each other too much

 

[Transform]

After such a short boil, isn't your leftover cactus material still very bitter?

Fwiw, I've oven dried and powdered spent cactus stars after brewing, and it made a surprisingly refreshing additive to herb tea blends. With multiple short boils, there was little detectable bitterness remaining in the 5-mm-thick pieces. Don't ask me how many "multiple" was, as I've long since forgotten - but it was probably five.

[PS - for the male bittern, pursuit of a mate could well lead to bitterness either way…



I'll get my coat on the way out.]

 

[blig-blug]

I've been doing several extractions with the method of several boils -> reduction of combined boils -> cleaning with IPA at 80% -> decanting in the freezer -> evaporation (I will try to extract directly from IPA in the future). I've been obtaining a decently potent, black resin.

In the decanting in the freezer step, I've always been obtaining a clear, tan residue that sticks to the bottom and redissolves again (becoming dark) once the container goes back to room temperature. However, this time I'm getting a thick, black resin as a residue. It looks identical to the end product of the above process, but it doesn't dissolve in IPA and dissolves in water only with great difficulty. I've tried a bit and it's quite bitter (although less than the true resin), so I think there are probably a lot of alkaloids trapped there.

Any idea of why this may have happened? And/or any idea of how to clean that? I'm going to try redissolving in water and cleaning with IPA, but I already did that once and most residue remained there after the freezer step.

Worst case scenario, I'll just mix it with the true resin. I'd rather have more doses even if the resin is less potent per gram.

 

[doubledog]

Reason could be different cacti or maybe different proportions of extraction.

I would probably eat the material separately to assess activity.

 

[blig-blug]

The cuttings are from the same plant as others I've already extracted (a big, old bridgesii). A difference may be that these were perhaps bigger, and so it's more concentrated. Maybe there was more plant material in the reduced liquid.

I would probably eat the material separately to assess activity.

I will do this if it keeps not being possible to extract it by dissolving in water and cleaning with IPA.

 

[doubledog]

The freezing step is based on an assumption that mescaline is still soluble in freezing alcohol, especially in such amount.
Ofc, there could be a limit where it begins to separate from the liquid.