Tripsten said:

What do you guys think
Cause if I can’t identify the sparkles... it would break my heart but I simply won’t eat it

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I'm assuming the "sparkle" in your tar might be calcium oxalate crystals .


There can be a high concentration of calcium oxalate in some cactus...When ever I hear folks claim they have crystals forming after making a tea or from reducing a tea down into a tar, I assume it's this.

It might also be citric acid if you used anything like that or lemon juice in the extraction.





Those would be my two assumptions.

Can you post a pic of this tar?





-OM


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Tripsten said:

Best I could get
I usually love the smell of cactus tar but this kind of has a foulish Alcoholly smell in it
Will drying the dose more later fix that ?

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I'm not sure about the foul alcohol-like smell you notice.

I don't think I've actually smelled my tar up close before lol, but it's always had a typical cactus/plant matter like smell, smells similar to what the tea smells like.

If your tar isn't completely dried out, maybe the foul smell is coming from mold/rot?...But I think the stuff would still have to be pretty moist to start to develop mold, if at all. The way your tar appears to crumble into small pieces makes me think it's already pretty dry though.



The pic is a little blurry but I can sorta I can see the "sparkle" bits you're talking about....kinda gives the tar a "gritty" look, I can see the "specs" you're talking about.

No way to tell from the pic what those specs actually are ...I'm still assuming it might me calcium oxalate, or other minerals that were in the water you used (did you use tap water?).



Your tar does appear a bit different looking in general comapred to the tar I've made, yours is darker in color and also appears to be a different texture and more shattery/crumbly....When I reduce my tea down into a tar, it comes out as dark brown taffy like material, and I have even had it come out as a bright clear/golden taffy that basically looked just like hash oil.

For the most part my tar would never crumble or break down into small pieces like how some of yours is in the pic, mine was soft like taffy (some small portions of the tar around the edge of the tray I was scrapping it from was a little "shattery" and would flake into shards, but it was mostly a soft/taffy like tar).....I'm assuming that this just has to do with the temperature at which the tea is reduced down, as well as the moisture content in the tar....Maybe yours was reduced at a higher temp than mine and has a lower moisture content, making for a darker and drier/more crumbly tar.



It should still be OK ...I can't think of many things that would make this tar "harmful" to you....but .




-OM

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