I am brewing my first batch of Asian ayahuasca or formohuasca, and the recipe I am following does not specify whether it is useful to grind my Syrian rue seeds or just brew them whole. I figure if the recipe wanted them ground or powdered, it would specify so. What does The Nexus think: ground seeds or whole seeds?

I prefer whole seeds because they are easier to filter. 3g brewed in plain water (no acid) is enough for me. Considering how cheap syrian rue is I'd just use more seeds instead of grinding them or using acid.

Once I extracted ground vs whole and got significantly smaller yield with whole rue, meaning you might be losing alkaloids if you do it like that..

BUT.. Infundibulum tried the exact same thign and said he got equivalent yields..

So this is still in question, I'd like more people to test it side-by-side and let us know.

i used to only use ground seed, but i use whole seed now, and don't notice much difference.
if there is a difference, it probably isn't drastic

Yup-as endlessness said;

but it all boils down to what you really do. Intuitively, doing just three acid boils on ground vs whole, feels like the ground would give you more. But the difference most certainly diminishes the more boils you do.

When I found no difference in yield between ground and whole I did six 1 hour boils on the seeds, including a two day preicubation of the seeds in vinegar in the ground and whole seeds.

The only difference is in the filtration times - whole seeds filter like a charm whereas ground seeds will clog your filter immediately and will give you some hard time.... You could do 10 x 1 hour boils of whole seeds if you're worried about yield loss and it'd be quicker than 3 x 1 hour boils of ground seeds due to their damn filtering issues.

Use a big teabag.
No need for filtering.

use the whole seeds for sure

As said, don't try to filter ground seeds, it is pain in the @ss.

Thanks for the feedback. I think I might try the whole seeds at first and compensate with additional boils. I like the teabag suggestion though, I have thought about that possibility with other extractions. Perhaps I'll split the batch in half and see which one works better for me.

I ran a rue batch last week with whole seeds for the first time.

I ran 3 boils of about 1.5-2 hours on 200g of rue and proceeded to base, after a couple of A/B cycles I was left with 8g of goodies.

I then blended the seeds and ran another boil of 1.5-2 hours and after a couple of cycles of A/B was left with 1g of goodies.

I didn't do any more boils as it didn't seem worth it.

My conclusion is that I wont bother to grind the seeds again, in future I will just run 4 boils of 2 hours on whole seeds.

Thanks for sharing your results!

Thanks for the results everybody, it´s good to get confirmations that not grinding results in high yields and easier filtering.

Did anybody consider (or do) pressure cooking whole seeds?

I just did a pressure cook on 1kg whole seeds and I didn't realise the seeds took on so much water and was left with only a little very saturated water.

I then boiled them naturally open air style and they did not pick up nearly as much as PC.

I then grinded the wet seeds in a blender with water then did one more cook and all this yellow harmala bounded out in to the solution wheras the water from previous whole seeds was just clearish brown and not much harmalas came out - grinded made it yellow again like you see on the first boil. It took almost a full day or two to do this.

I'm thinking of just lightly crushing the seeds in a pestle and mortar so that they're opened up a little. If/when I get round to this I'll do a comparison with whole seeds and report back.

This illustrates how taking your time pays dividends, IMO. Trying to rush extractions can often lead to disappointment.

I know this might violate the ethos of good chemistry, but if I can save time and effort with lower yields, I will sometimes accept the lower yields.

Syrian rue seeds are very inexpensive and easy to obtain. My time is a tight commodity. From my experience, the maximum yield loss of dealing with whole seeds is 20%. Time savings, and not dealing with t-shirts, cotton balls and all the mess is priceless.

^^ Word ^^

From my experience, the maximum yield loss of dealing with whole seeds is 0 %.
But only since short, by using force to empty the whole seeds:
Harmalas extraction-syrian rue (by SAKKADELIC)

Agreed, we've been working on whole seeds in the thread Jees linked. Patience and diligence really pays off, I've found!