Doing first rue extraction, Tao method. At first basing step, I added a 200ml H2O to 16g lye solution. The rue soup turned milky but then seemed to turn back to a somewhat brown color. Is this a problem? I can see lots of precip happening, just sort of nervous with this being my first attempt at this type of extraction. Also, is there some sort of cheat sheet out there that can give me ratios of base to water to get a specific ph? Seems this would be much simpler than having to do the math.
Thanks

Just get yourself a pH pen so you can get it up to 12.
Those pens come so dirt cheap on ebay these days.
At pH 11 you still lose 5% of harmaline that is not solidified, get to 12.

Depending how acid you had your first go, you will need different amount base to compensate.
If your milk turns brown again, very likely your general pH is not up enough.

You can work on sight and people do so: add base until the milk does not turn brown anymore, add base till all yellow traces (the last harmaline present) also became white-ish, and then keep adding some more base to have a definite overshoot.

Happy trials

And happy trails once you knock back a good dose of harmalas!