Hello,

I am trying to figure out best way to make rue tea. I read many reports on the forum but descriptions are wildly varied. Some grind the seeds and some don't, some do multiple boils and some roast the seeds before brewing.
Will appreciate any contribution to "what works for you" here.
My current procedure is roasting (until first few pops) 3g of whole seeds and then boil for 30 minutes. Taste is not that bad (like a really shitty coffee) and the effects I have are relatively light. Discomfort almost non-existent and partial inhibition (vaping spice effects are grounded and slowed down, but not as slow as I want it to be)

Thanks!

I think any of the variations you described will be effective. Not grinding might require more seeds, or longer boiling, but will be easier to filter. Toasting results in less harmaline, according to some accounts, and therefore a lighter and less nauseating experience. Rue is cheap and potent, compared to caapi for example, so worth a bit of trial and error to find what works for you.

Personally, I use 3 to 5 grams of whole, untoasted seeds, boil for half an hour or so, with a bit of lemon juice, and pour the strained brew over some lemon balm leaves, steep for a further ten minutes, then drink.

And then there's how not to:
Syrian rue tea: a recipe for disaster

Wut? I do that with eating a capsule containing half a gram.
Maybe they refer to just steep a bag for 3mins like any other tea, if so that's ecological wasting.

Mine is similar to this one, including the lemon balm. I only boil for 5 to 10 minutes and allow it to steep until I feel it's cool enough to drink.

One love

Did I read somewhere that most of the actives are on the exterior of the seeds? Thus there is no reason to grind them?

I always throw three to four grams of whole seeds in a pot with water, boil for ten minutes on high heat, and then from there continue boiling until it’s down to a shot glass amount. Filter the seeds out and take a shot. I find it fully effective and grinding them or adding acidic stuff just makes it taste worse.

That’s when boiling. Lately for sheer convenience I’ve been grinding both seeds and mimosa and putting them in a jar with a cup of water and a small splash of vinegar and keeping it in the fridge, shaking once a day. Just gotta filter and drink. Tastes awful but fully effective.

With boiling it works perfectly well with whole seeds. No need for anything acidic either.

This almost makes me wonder… could the whole seeds simply be swallowed? I’ve eaten the raw material before but it’s sort of a pain wrapping it up in capsules or rolling papers…. If it could deliver an active dose, maybe without the kind of nausea the ground powder delivers, and be as easy to consume as swallowing a spoonful (which is horribly disgusting with ground powder…)

That might be worth experimenting with.

Mimosa/Acacia powder can be consumed raw too by the way. Liquid ayahuasca is usually about five hours, but eating the whole plants is in my experience minimum 12-14 hours. DMT causes no tolerance, and it just gets released continually as the plants are digested…

What are your amounts? Been wanting to explore pharmahuasca more (and ayahuasca for that matter). And thanks for sharing.

Also, does the experience still last longer with this method (since there's no brewing)?



I'm confident I recall someone mentioning doing this.

One love

The harmalas may be concentrated on the outer layer of the seeds however grinding clearly makes a significant difference in quality and potency. The herb's medicine/spirit/power does not consist of harmalas, who would have thought that 🤔

I would very much like to read the source information of the 'outer layer' theory. Much appreciated if someone could link to that.

Lately I switched back to brewing finely powdered raw seeds in a drip percolator. Partly a convenience thing but also on 'plant spirit' grounds. Maybe the prolonged aerated simmers with carefully weighed aliquots of ascorbic acid put paid to the validity of the latter idea but the results were nonetheless highly satisfactory.

Going to church on Easter Sunday after a decent dose of harmel tea was surprisingly good and probably deserves its own write-up.

I usually make my teas with a dose range from 4 to 8g raw whole seeds depending on the strength of the batch, which can vary a lot. I boil it in 50cl water during 45min more or less. I like when the harmalas are quite strong so I remain unsatisfied with lower doses like 2 or 3g. I did compare with and without adding fresh lemon juice and I can say there is quite a difference, simmering is more efficient with it, probably due to the acidification of the pH. The first time I added lemon I was fooled as I used the same amount of seeds as without, it was too strong -> welcome to pukeland. With lemon, I think the taste is neither better nor worse, just different, as acidity replaces a little bit the bitterness. I never tried with vinegar, I hate vinegar's smell =) I also compared raw vs roasted seeds (light, medium, dark), definitely I'm not convinced by roasted seeds method. Some say it destroys harmaline only, but I'm not sure there is scientific evidence about it. I just felt it weaker overall, like if it destroyed all the major alkaloïds, not only harmaline. It's just my feeling and it would be worth to try. Taste is better, less bitter, but you'll have to increase the amount of seeds. I never tried tea with crushed or ground seeds, I prefer to keep them for oral ingestion in capsules and I suspect that it will be a little more difficult to filter properly.

Had a 7g (10mL measuring scoop) brew last night as I was feeling a bit under the weather. With the current batch this was a pretty strong dose (inner visions, getting wrapped up in imagined scenarios and then realising I didn't have to worry about/solve the 'problem' because it was a figment of my imagination - the usual stuff ) even considering this was just powdered raw seeds in a paper tea bag brewed once with boiling water, no acid, no prolonged simmer, just pour the water in the cup and let it steep for 20 minutes or so.

The tea bag took care of the particulates to a large extent so there was only about ¼tsp fine dark powder at the bottom of the brew, but there was very much of a pectin/protein haze too - far more than when brewing with whole seeds. Simmering with ascorbic acid would congeal this haze such that it filters out with a cotton wool plug, but this time I just wanted to cut to the chase. The turbid, yellow brew did not look particularly appealing!

In keeping with this, the flavour was absolutely horrendous but I kind of got around that by accompanying it with a bitter tea including centaury which blocks the bitter taste receptors with a more tolerable kind of bitterness. Incidentally, one interesting thing I noticed immediately after this combination was that slightly carbonated water tasted sugar-sweet. I know that artichokes have a similar effect so it might just be due to the centiopicrin from the centaury but this is still something I'll be following up.

I've done a second brew on the same material this evening so we'll see how that compares to the first one - the subjective effects of sequential doses are not something I've found to be reliably consistent though. On the physical level, I felt like I might be coming down with a chest infection last night but this morning it's considerably better. My suspicion is that it's due to air pollution from traffic - a major downside to my present living situation. The harmel brew has, however, made me all the more determined to tackle this through campaigning - and as much for the sake of my kids as anything.

In short, I'm impressed at the power of the raw, powdered seeds brewed almost like tea. The experience definitely comes at the cost of the revolting flavour of the brew, however.

7 grams sounds like a massive dose to me.

On the other hand, i've been experimenting a little with rue tea myself and i don't realy bother to weigh my rue powder anymore, so i don't realy know how much i am taking sometimes.
I started with realy tiny amounts, but sometimes i just take a few teaspoons now, if i want more powerfull effects.

Recently i had some rue tea that worked for 18 hours!! I was locked to my bed for maybe 4 or 5 hours, but at the end of the afternoon i had an appointment with my dentist (just an annual check-up luckily). I was able to go because it was within walking distance from where i live and at the dentist you only have to lay down and keep your mouth open anyway.
But it was a pretty weird experience

7g was fairly heavy-duty, the second wash was barely noticeable by comparison but I'd still be interested to know what that extra amount of alkaloids might have added to the experience. The taste of the second wash was a walk in the park compared to the staggering repugnancy of the initial brew as well. A fluorescence-penetration-depth estimation leads me to guess that around 90% of the actives were obtained in the first steeping.

Your 18 hour session sounds like you had way more than 7g (or a particularly potent batch of seeds) since this amount lasted around 8 hours in my case. Btw, 7g is something of a guess since I use a kitchen scoop to measure out the seeds and know that 5mL of rue seed weighs about 3.5 grams. And I've been on rue at the dentist too, so you're not alone on that count, albeit at a significantly lower dose. Fun, though, was the time I went to buy a new cooker on a museum-level dose of pharmahuasca [Both of these activities were carried out on foot, naturally.]

7g would have me floored for at least 17hrs lol. 3.5 lasts 12+ hrs for me.

Maybe I have a fast metabolism. My pee was already highly fluorescent one hour after dosing... Then again, I'd be more surprised if my pee wasn't fluorescent these days.

Do you know how your CYP2D6 enzyme is? CYP2D6 metabolizes the Harmalas, some people are higher or lower in CYP2D6 than the average population and thus can require more or less Harmalas than average. CYP2D6 status can not only affect dosage/potency, but also can affect duration, with those higher in CYP2D6 not only requiring more of a Harmala dosage but also being a "fast metabolizer" meaning they metabolize the Harmalas out faster than other people do, whereas those with lower amounts of CYP2D6 need less Harmalas and can have a longer duration of effects.

Personally for me, i think my CYP2D6 is pretty average i would guess, i get by just fine with the common dosages, things usually last for me about 6 to 8 hours, although with higher dosages i can feel some residual effects around 10 to 12 hours, including CYP1A2 inhibition which potentiates my sleep medicine Tizanidine, and i've noticed duration definitely extends as the dosage increases or if i keep taking the same dosage and letting the reverse tolerance build up which makes the same dosage stronger each time and lengthens the duration as i regularly consume the Harmalas.

Which i think CYP2D6 may also play a role in the reverse tolerance, since Harmalas not only are metabolized by CYP2D6 but also strongly inhibit it as well, thus inhibiting their own inhibition, with regular consumption.

It's also made me wonder about potentially finding another CYP2D6 inhibitor, to potentiate the Harmalas and perhaps extend out it's active effects which may extend the active gut MAO-A inhibition window for oral DMT dosing, but idk. Could just use some Harmalas to potentiate another dose of Harmalas though, but ya know, kinda don't wanna take too much Harmalas especially if you're wanting a certain dosage range/level of effects, so another CYP2D6 inhibitor before the Harmalas could perhaps come in handy for potentiation of Harmala dosage and extending out the duration.

As for you though, definitely sounds like you're probably a bit low in CYP2D6, how are you with other things metabolized by CYP2D6, like maybe Diphenhydramine or something? DPH is metabolized by CYP2D6 though also some others, but was definitely potentiated ime by the Harmala's CYP2D6 inhibition, same thing with Clonidine which is also metabolized by CYP2D6. If you're low in CYP2D6, you would need lower dosages of say DPH or Clonidine, than the average person.

@ShamensStamen

That's quite interesting info, I havent a clue. I'm not one for blood tests and such for different enzymes etc. I'm not that bothered, it just means a little goes a long way. I standardly dose 3.5g, one day I might try double it and see where it gets me haha. How else might low levels of cyp2d6 affect me? I'm of decent health so trying to work out what could indicate a problem.

To answer the OP btw: i have little over half a kilo of finely powdered seeds, and every night i mix one to three teaspoons in hot water. I then just let it sit for the night and then i drink the cup of rue tea in the morning.

At this moment we're having a heat wave in the netherlands though, with quite a scorching sun, so i'm skipping the rue tea for as long as that lasts.

Rue tea makes you much more sensitive to sunlight.