Hello everybody! So I recently attempted my first Harmala extraction. I've made rue tea before so I was familiar with the initial steps...I used both the Tao of Rue tek and the extraction guide for my process.. anyways all was going perfectly until the Basing phase. I believe I over basified if that is possible?
I was not smart and instead of saturating water with lie and adding it I just added lye straight away but slowly. Anyways the color turned to a milky white as it should, but when I went to add a little more as the teks says I slipped up and poured way more lye in than intended. My solution instantly went dark brown again and yellowish white precipitates instantly appeared swirling around the solution leaving it looking like a dirty brown snoe globe.
I figured it would be okay so I went ahead and allowed to settle and then attempted to filter. Problem is after decanting what is left is this solution of precipitates that is more solid than liquid and is almost chalky in appearence. I attempted filtering first througb a coffee filter but it would not work. It literally dripped about 1 drop per 5 minutes. I gave up, tried a t shirt. Same thing. Eventually tried a very thing cotton ball layer and with multiple filters and cotton balls going I finally got it to filter for the most part (the very last bit of liquid just will not filter, no matter what I use or how long I wait.
I went ahead and added the precipitates and this small amount of liquid to some hot acidified water. After adding more acid, stirring, and heating it is safe to say that they precipitates refuse to dissolve back into acidified solution. They just refuse to dissolve and I am left with this chalky liquid full of now acidic/basified preciptates that will not filter or dissolve!

What do you think fellow nexians? Is it safe to say I successfully botched this batch or is there some way to save it?
(I sadly used a lot of seeds so it would be a shame to toss it)

Well, I'm no chemist or expert on the matter.

But I would try a stronger acid, i.e. HCl. Or adding more vinegar.

Hopefully someone with some chemistry background can help out here.

I hope so as well. But thanks for the advice friend. I was thinking along the same lines, perhaps the vinegar just wasn't enough to counter the excess base. Ill try that out

dont throw anything away

sounds like you may not have filtered enough before basing
if thats the case add vinegar until all the harmalas has dissolved
then filter well before adding base again

rue extractions usually involves a lot of filtering