# Summary

I wanted a quick’n’dirty way to get a salted full-spectrum Syrian rue extract, without going down the whole Manske route.

Result: I obtained a good yield of soluble crystals, which I estimate contained about 20% harmalas by weight. Whole process took less than 24 hours, mostly unattended.

I had used some of the same batch of seeds previously, for a Manske extraction, and got a good yield of freebase harmalas, about 5% as I recall, but cannot find my notes for that earlier extraction.

The quantities here are quite small, as it was only a test-run.

I also used a pressure-cooker; conventional boiling will work, with usual method/timings.

## Method

Ground 25g seeds in grinder to give ~50ml powder.

In a 500ml preserving jar, I mixed the powder with 150ml distilled water and a pinch of dry citric acid (~1/4 tsp), closed jar.

Put jar *on trivet* in pressure-cooker, and added water to come about half-way up side of jar.

Sealed pressure cooker, and brought up to maximum pressure (15 psi) Turned heat down to near-minimum, and kept at max pressure for one hour.

Turned off heat and let pressure dissipate naturally. Remember, the contents of the jar will still be **very hot and under pressure**, so just let that cool down too before going anywhere near it.

Once cool, the jar will be under vacuum, so use a blunt knife to pry the seal and break the vacuum.

Strained contents into a glass jug, rinsing solids with more hot water to get last bits of solution.

Chilled over night in fridge.

Decanted solution, discarding sediment. Solution poured thru 1x cotton ball filter in funnel.

Container and funnel rinsed with a little more hot water.

Checked pH of solution: it was about 5, so I added some sodium carbonate solution to neutralise (pH 7), used about 12ml.

I now had about 210ml solution. Poured this in to a 12” square pyrex dish, and placed in oven at 80C.

After about 2.5 hours, it had fully evaporated and a hard dry film remained.

Allowed to cool, and set about film with a craft-blade. This was definitely no “sticky brown goo”, it was a smooth hard layer like enamel paint.

As I scored it, tiny sparkly rust-coloured crystals were churned up. By working slowly, I was able to scrape the crystals up, cleanly, without scattering them all over the counter. Glass was spotless when finished, no stickiness or residue at all.

Tried grinding small amount of crystals to powder in a mortar, but it didn’t work. Structure more like graphite than “hard” crystals.

Yield was 6.95g. Assuming the seeds were good for 5% harmalas, 25g seeds contained ~1.25g harmalas. So this concentrate should contain ~180mg harmalas per 1g of crystals. In other words, it’s quite dilute for a “concentrate”. No idea what is making up the other 80%, as the quinazoline alkaloids probably only form a small part of that.

It’s readily soluble in water, so when I assayed a gram, it dissolved fully in about 25ml water. Effects were as I’d expect for a mild dose, with no adverse effects at all. Essentially, it’s a kind of iced-rue-tea mix… ;-)

If you’ve made it this far, you can have a free gift:

Rätsch mentions the traditional use of ground rue as a snuff. I tried a pinch of the powdered seeds before boiling, and it was excellent! Very easy on the membranes, and with a nice uplifted/energized state for an hour or two. Doubt it’s sufficient for MAO inhibition, but I powdered some more anyway, passing it through a strainer to remove any coarse particles. It’s a nice thing to dip into as the mood takes you, and it feels healthy too!