SWIM has only done 2 extraction of rue.

Both consisted of:
acidic water brewing
filtering
reducing + salting
filtering
dissolving precipitate
filtering
basifying
collecting precipitate.


SWIM finished his first extraction think "what are these people talking about, it was lots of filtering, but it wasn't that bad"

His first extraction was using hot tap water and lots of it. Lots of reducing too.


SWIM was thinking to reduce on the mildly long reducing periods he'd use boiling acidic water for the pull, reducing the volume needed. BIG MISTAKE

Now midway through his second extraction. he is extremely annoyed.
filtering the mix a good 20 times with a cloth so it can finally be VERY SLOWLY filtered through a dozen or so coffee filters. UGHHHH
It is taking at least 3x as long as the first time!


The end product is very strong and very pure but for those planning to extract rue.

Take your time, use LOTS of water and NEVER boil the seeds. Make sure the seeds are out of the mix before reducing, you will be thankful.

The long reducing times are a small price to pay for the filtering taking much much shorter.


Sorry, SWIM knows this filtering issue has been brought up a few times, but SWIM hasn't seen a thread blatantly stating this fact.

Cheers.

I tend not to filter at all and just use fridge decanting and patience. Then once that first salting is out of the way it's mainly clean sailing from there on out.

The only filtering I use is the T-shirt squeeze to get rid of the bulk of the original seed matter.

two tricks for harmala filtering:

filter before reducing.. and

progressive filtering when harmalas are in solution (first cloth, then double layer cloth, funnel with loosely packed cotton plug, funnel with tighter cotton plug, etc)

if this is done thoroughly before first precipitation, your life will be much easier later on..

I've heard most of the harmalas are in the outer coating of the seeds. I have always thought grinding the seeds was the biggest mistake toward easy filtering. You used the word "seeds" though in context of reduction. I guess that means you didn't power your seeds?

I've noticed I get bigger yields when I grind the seeds.