The recipes my friend the caterpillar has seen all suggest grinding Syrian rue to a powder before brewing, however the caterpillar has been attempting to grind some Syrian rue seeds with a mortar and pestle for about forty minutes to no avail...according to my caterpillar buddy they seem to have a kind of rubbery consistency which makes them nigh on impossible to crush...is it really vital to crush them? And if it is, how should he go about it?

Thanks in advance.x

If caterpillar has access to electric coffee-bean grinder that might do the trick. The one I used was a small blender sort of device with two spinning blades. No guarantee the device used will survive the grinding.

*Do a small test first

And searching is good skill
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=45211

Yes, a coffee grinder is an essential tool in the DMT toolbox. It'll turn that rue to baby powder; though, I broke mine trying to grind acacia bark, that stuff is tough, prison tough.

Ah, should have thought of that. I had a look through the FAQs but didn't think of doing a forum search. Ta for the heads up.

There is no need to do it as long as you are thorough with your acid boils. Grinding the seeds will make filtering the solution much harder later (it's already tough with whole seeds).

Once I made a side by side extraction of rue, half grinded, half whole. While the whole rue was easier to filter, the yield was significantly smaller too (cant remember the numbers).

Then infundibulum did the same thing and got equivalent yields. That was confusing Since then I have heard of some people having success with whole rue but not really anybody doing controlled side-by-side tests.

I`d think if you do extended boiling or even better, use a pressure cooker, whole seeds might be good enough, and in case you get a very bad yield, just go back to the seeds and grind them and boil another time to see if you can get some more.

I found this is the difference between whole and powdered