I am trying to extract harmalas from rue for the first time and I have run into a weird problem. I am following Sakkadelic's tek and have just finished the manske (12 hours) and dried the filter. Instead of an expected ~6g yield from 100g seeds, I have only 1g of red (not orange) colored crystals (they did look really nice in the jar). I think I followed all the instructions to the letter and it's taken me three days, so I'm really frustrated. What could have gone wrong? I did save the water layer from the manske jar, maybe more crystals are recoverable from there?

Alternatively, can anyone recommend a rue extraction tek that doesn't either require hours of painstaking filtering or four days of work?

Also, is it safe to freebase and use the red crystals, or are they too impure or something?

Yeah let it sit another 24h and see what happens. Sometimes manske can be slow. You could also reduce it by maybe 30% before you continue the manske.

The red crystals will probably become nice beige to near white freebase.

For your next extraction, i can recommend NOT grinding or mashing the seeds, but simmering the whole seeds for an hour or more, in ample water that's slightly acidic, at least 3 times (i like to add 2L per 100g seeds and simmer until it's reduced to half, 3 times). Also i recommend, instead of super tedious filtering, just strain it through a cloth, squeeze the water out of the seeds without bursting too many, then let the strained liquid sit for 12h+. That will settle most of the sludge, and after that it usually passes through a coffee filter alright.

I don't know of a way to get harmalas quickly, but if you give everything extra time at each step, you can get them without much work. I like to do one simmer each evening, crude-base these (with lye) separately each after sitting until the next evening, then combine all the freebase for the Manske and final base (with ammonia).

Sounds like a good arrangement! Will try that. Any specific reason to use ammonia?

I have two reasons for using ammonia:
- i can smell if i didn't wash the freebase enough
- if there's any traces of it in the product, they'll evaporate

Not that there's anything wrong with using sodium carbonate or whatever, it just gives me extra peace of mind.

Yep, sounds like good reasons. I have it and will try in the next extractions. Thanks.

So the tek is:

1. Simmer 100g whole seeds in 2L acidic water (is 1 tbsp white vinegar enough?) until reduced to half
2. Strain and squeeze seeds gently
3. Wait 12-24H for sludge to settle, decant liquid leaving sludge behind
4. Add lye until solution turns milky
5. (Here's one I'm confused about--do you wait for precip or filter immediately?)
6. Repeat steps 1-5 2+ times
7. Combine precips from step 5
8. Manske
9. Filter and dissolve crystals in acidic water
10. Add ammonia until solution turns milky
11. Wait for precip, filter, dry thoroughly, use

Is that right?

Also, do I need to do the water washes from Sakkadelic's dek after step 7 and 11? And can I just run those through a coffee filter right away or do I need to wait more time to settle?

I'd say for step 3 you'd decant into a filter. Also, you appear to have steps 8 and 9 the wrong way round. The combined precips get dissolved in acidic water, then you add brine for the Manske (best if the alk solution is around pH 4 at that point).

It can help to do water washes on the precipitated base, although I've found this loses a significant amount of the finer precipitate.

Settling and decanting, or even better, syphoning is a viable alternative to filtering, especially if filtering turns out to be tediously slow - which with harmalas often turns out to be the case. somehow rue produces ongoing amounts of fine, sticky, powdery crud that seems designed to clog filters. Btw, when I do filter - which is usually as an adjunct to dissolving freebase back into acidic solution - I tend to use a large polyethylene funnel with a cotton wool plug that is neither too tight nor too loose.