What if, instead of doing several boils, one would put the seeds in a large glass jar, fill it with mildly acidic water, and left it alone for, I don’t know, a day, a week, or a month? Would that extract the alkaloids just as well as the boils? Would there be any benefit? Thanks in advance.

Soaking the seeds for a while before whole seed extraction is a good idea but i don't think it is enough. Before, I tried to basify the liquid from a soak that started with boiling water and distilled white vinegar and nothing significant came out, mostly contaminants that make fileteing harmalas so unpleasant. Which led me to the idea of doing a hot water soak to get rid of some of the contaminants.

Another time, i tried to verify this so i separated the harmalas from the contaminants and here are the outcomes. (starting material: 150 g whole seeds)

Pic1: the precipitates of the liquid from the basification.
Pic2: reacidified but most of the stuff doesn't dissolve.
Pic3: the contaminants, ~700 mg (collected from acid phase).
Pic4: vs 70mg harmalas, scraping it off the paper filter made it powdery (collected by manske)
Pic5: the golden yoni :b
Pic6: rough attempt at observing the powdery needles with a foldscope.

The good news: the liquid from the soak can be discarded.
The bad news: a lot more contaminants are still in the seeds and are present throughout the extraction, so this doesn't improve on the extraction process but it feels good to dump that liquid and know that you got rid of some of them.

I think the goods are better mechanically extracted from the seeds by squeezing them out or by pressure cooking cycles.

Perhaps Soaking them longer might be different but it feels unlikely to me.

Yes, I've heard of the 'Sun tea' preparation method for rue. If only I could remember who it was that posted about it (and a search for 'sun tea' doesn't bring up anything about rue that I could find, mostly stuff to do with cactus or sinicuiche).

Thank you for the responses. So not only does a soak not extract the goodies, but it extracts some (but not all) of the stuff you don’t want. Interesting. I was asking because I was reading some posts about extracting alkaloids from caapi with “the herbal percolator” and somebody was wondering if the herbal percolator would also work with rue. And I was also wondering what the difference is between setting up the herbal percolator and just putting your stuff with a large volume of water in a jar and leaving it alone for a long time. Wouldn’t the two methods accomplish the same?

When leaving material in contact with a batch of solvent, given sufficient time the concentration of dissolved substances (in water, in your case) will reach an equilibrium with the solid material. At some point, leaving it to soak longer stops achieving anything.

By contrast, a percolation method is constantly having solvent removed from the system at the bottom outlet while fresh solvent is added at the top. The fresh solvent then picks up more of the soluble substances on its way through the percolation system. The main trick would be to adjust the flow rate through the system such that the contact time for the solvent approaches a state of saturation just before it exits.

Best results will be achieved using a wide and shallow percolation bed, whereas a tall narrow system has the saturated solvent percolating through the lower portion of materials and thereby not achieving much. However, spreading the solvent evenly over a wide percolation bed presents some technical challenges. Looking at cold-brew coffee percolators is instructive with regards to this. The soda bottle percolator is sufficiently wide and extremely low tech and you probably wouldn't need Arduino-controlled inflow and outflow valves

The closest concept that came to mind was Intezam's thought that the daily mesghal of harmel would be cold-brewed while in the the no-kill state of ihram. It also seemed that Intezam had used this method, and might be preferred so as to spread the live seeds after soaking.



I wonder what ever happened to intezam. I went through all his posts out of fascination. I loved his cultural perspective, providing very diverse contexts for our beloved plants and mindstates. Especially the connections between Muslim culture and harmel and cannabis. Wherever you are, intezam, hope you're well and we wish to hear from you in the Nexus!


Sorry I don't have any firsthand knowledge to add in here. I wonder if the seeds might need to be heated to fully release the harmalas contained within. Given a swimming pool and a handful of harmel seeds, I wonder how long would it take to leech them?

A while ago when I was working on sprouting the seeds, I tried sipping from the water that I had soaked them in for a few hours. it was a lot of water and I had soaked 100g seeds in it. Just one sip and it unexpectedly had an extraordinary and powerful effect. I also had tachycardia - a sign of rue overdose. But amazing euphoria, something very good and unusual. I'm suspecting there are heat sensitive desirable components in rue which get destroyed with boiling. Cold extracts are worth exploring. I have never achieved the fullness of eating raw seeds even with hardcore multiple boils, but eating brings an extra harshness...

I had a long term cold acidy soak of whole rue-seeds before. It works but with a bad yield.

Thanks Jees. You wrote that using powdered seeds was efficient though, right?

There is a valuable component in rue which degrades quickly, is practically gone in about two months after harvest. This same component is heat sensitive and is destroyed especially with a long boil with the fresh seeds. I cannot know what it is. İt gives fullness, depth, time dilation, spirit connection, amazing visionariness... Eating seeds can be harsh. I will be trying cold soaks with the coming harvest of this year. Upping the dose is the least one can do to compensate for inefficiency.

I did an extraction this way recently. I got OK yield (4%) but it took 6 or 7 soaks until it stopped giving.

- I placed 500g whole syrian rue seeds in a 5L jar, filled with water, added some acetic acid.
- I did some room temperature soaks, some with slight heating (maybe 45°C)
- I let each soak sit for 3-6 days, strained it, let it sit overnight, then coffee filtered it
- I based the 'tea' from each soak with lye, siphoned off most of the lye water, coffee filtered the bottom to catch the crude freebase
- Once the soaks didn't yield much more, i combined all the crude, redissolved, and based with sodium carbonate.

All in all it took me about a month.

It's a lot of water, but i really recommend using distilled or deionised water. Tap water can screw with the process due to alkalinity and salt content.

A summers day hello,

My aprox 50% yield on that long soak was just 1 soak, I imagine HT's multiple washes indeed do a better job.

From memory, I do think cold soaks work alright on powdered seeds, very near to boiling. I remember doing 1 wash cold soaks (powdered seeds) in the fridge for 2 days, filter and drink, yeuk but very powerful. Did same with powdered mhrb, dynamite combo it was. Very elementary no boil and most easy recipe, there will be purge

I've only had the typical Iranian and lately Pakistan seeds that probably lost that fresh-component the moment it arrived.

Correct me if wrong but so far I see no golden benefit to use cold soaks over boilings, except then maybe for Dithy's idea on the fresh seeds thingy. I thought cold soaks would enable easy use of coffee filters but they IIRC were just as fastly clogged. Now I only decant (actually skimming off watery layer with a tube) and A/B until it becomes clear enough to start using coffee filters.

Having some pots with soaking seeds over a (very) long period is also a period of being vulnerable to providing proof of making-extracts. We know it's harmalas and usually okay but tell that the uninformed. Limiting the overall time of ongoing extracts-making in general might be a prudent strategy in some people's situations.

I didn't notice any benefit either, besides not having to boil stuff - it took a long time to complete, but each step was almost no work. If i ever get fresh seeds, i might try this again. Otherwise, i don't intend to.

Very valid point about the risk exposure in long extractions. Also cohabitants might not appreciate it, and mold could take hold.

For filtering, i haven't found any way to make it easier except letting the coarsely filtered tea (by strainer, cloth etc) sit undisturbed for about a day. This leads to most particles settling in the bottom, and is usually enough for my teas (boiled or not) to pass through coffee filters at an acceptable rate. I do this after every boil, soak, or reduction.

With long, cold soaks, you may want to add a considerable amount of vinegar to inhibit mold growth.

If you're going to do an A/B extraction with lye, there may not be that much benefit to cold soaks over boiling. Boils are quick and there is no need to reduce them, as the alkaloids will still precipitate easily even in dilute solutions.

Could the beneficial but volatile component be harmalol? İs harmalol more unstable compared to the other harmalas?

İf harmalol is the metabolite of harmaline in humans, I would expect it to have more powerful effects, similar what goes on with psilocybin and psilocin.

ever tried crushing the seeds in a mortar and pestle, and soaking it in clear water, before squeezing through wool cloth? according to werd, wool proteins absorb tannins

on another note, i've experimented with freezing the seeds, and running them through a 120 micron metal mesh, collecting a golden dust, capping it

better than tea, wastes alot of material tho i assume