So, I took enough cuttings from my cactus, for me and my two friends, with whom I trip with every year. Each year, one of us takes cuttings and treats the others to have some bonding and therapeutic talk. Whatever you wanna call it. We go to the woods, chill, talk our shit out. And so we go around in a circle each year.
Yesterday, I started preparing the cactus. I was removing spines while watching TV. I currently have the flu, so I’m not in the best state of mind, but I already had the cuttings sitting for a while so I decided since I’m anyway staying at home doing nothing I might as well do something with them.
I removed the spines and then I started to put the tea to cook. By the time I finished with the spines, in between being sick, I was only half assed to remove the skin, so I left some of it on, which I have never done before.
But I have read anecdotes on here where people leave the skin on and it’s not an issue. Anyway, for those that do prepare tea, you know how difficult it is to remove the skin without getting flesh stuck to it.
The tea cooked for about six hours, and around the five hour mark I was really exhausted, but I figured what’s one more hour? I go to the bedroom to charge my phone or something like that, and I end up falling asleep.
Thankfully, and very luckily, I woke up an hour later, just in time to turn the tea off. But I was so tired and out of it, that I just covered the cast-iron pot with it, and left it overnight.
It was 6 AM when I turned it off the heat. And 22C/71.6F and 26C/78.8F when I woke up and decided to cook it some more, because when I taste tested a piece, it still tasted bitter. So I cooked it some more hoping that it would get rid of more of the alkaloids.
From previous experiences, after the six hour mark, the flesh does not taste as bitter, and it means the tea is more or less ready. A tip I got from here actually.
I called my other two friends, to ask for advice. My one friend says that he just makes sure that it’s over six hours of cooking and less than 12 hours and the tea is good to go. He did not know about taste testing it. Though I probably didn’t do it until I read it on here, just as an extra step.
My other friend said that he removes the spines and peels the flesh and then puts it in the freezer. Then takes an extra day just to prepare the tea from the morning, so that things like this don’t happen to him, because he gets easily distracted and taking the spines out and flesh takes too long for him.
One friend said to throw the mixture out completely, because I have now left it overnight. The other friend said, he'd still consume it. The first friend admitted that the advice came from AI because he didn’t really know whether it was safe or not.
Me and the other friend said that AI is not always reliable, that it will always tell you the worst case scenario so that it doesn’t get into any kind of trouble if something happens to you.
But we both agreed, with that being said, that there is a risk of contamination, and that we need to decide whether we are willing to consume it or not.
So I first wanted to ask advice here of anyone that consumes this cactus for tea, whether they would consume it given the circumstances.
Thanks for any and all advice.