An ethanolic extract shouldn't not fluoresce, particularly when assuming that the ethanol used to extract wasn't completely anhydrous. Ethanol isn't a very good solvent for harmalas, but at least some of it should become solvated and end up in the extract. It really takes only minute quantities of harmala alkaloids to see fluorescence. The apparent absence of fluorescence in your photos suggests that there are zero harmala alkaloids present.

Do you have any information on how the extract was prepared? What area of the world does the extract originate from? In some places where rue extracts are used as a traditional dye, other dyestuffs, such as madder may be offered as rue extract. Obviously, these substitutes would not contain harmala alkaloids.

Did you ingest any of the extract prior to attempting to freebase it? There is a serious health risk in ingesting unknown compounds.

To close this off I was able to get an answer to the product 20X product I purchased. The product does have a light orange glow under a black light.

"Our product is a standard high quality extract prepared in SS Solvent Extraction plant in batched of 2000 kg and solvent is removed, then extract is further spray dried to make super fine powder.. its mostly used for filling capsules or making tablets"

I'm curious to know what other people think of this method of extraction.

It is unclear to me what solvent is used for extraction. For harmala alkaloid extraction, water or lightly acidified water is best. If a very nonpolar solvent was used instead, not a lot of harmala alkaloids will be extracted, I think.

Hi again, so here are my results which I promised to share earlier in the thread.

I followed the easy caapi extraction tek even though I had some rue seeds as well.
I would also like to point out that at almost every step I kept thinking I had done something wrong or screwed it up because colours and things I was seeing didn't match up to the pictures.

This screams to me that I must place my images here since I was actually successful despite the fact that I was tempted to ditch things and call fail more than once through the process.

So this is a lesson for everyone who is new to this:

there will be variation from the processes you follow and the results you get and you must try to trust the method and see it through even if it looks like it's failing. This green fluorescence continually reappeared whenever the stuff was acidic and this gave me hope. (Thinking of a method of proof using digital image of a container of brew using pulsed light)

Also when I ended up with a brown sludge I dried and saved it just in case. Something acetate I guess, but what??

The other thing worthy of a mention is I accidentally late at night did a 50g NaOH in stead of a 5g solution to base the acidified and filtered mixture. Again, when I realised things weren't going to plan (6 decants and re added water PH still 12+) I stuck with the process and just kept decanting and washing until I got the desired PH which took about ten washes in the end, far more than the tek described.

I started as I showed in the previous posting with the three boils of caapi and the three boils of rue seeds about 40g ourinhos and 30g seeds. I added ipa to the rue muck for a last ditched attempt to pull something more utilised by short blasts in the microwave and added this to the hot mixture of the two brews that was reducing on the stove. The alcohol was never intended to stay hence the reason for adding to a hot water based brew. I was pretty confident that for the water to reduce, the alcohol had to boil off due to temperature 80 something vs 100c.

From when the brew was reduced I followed the steps in the easy caapi extraction wiki page included the variations above (extra washes and ipa rinse) and I finished with .42g (in pic + .02=rizzla) of beautiful pale brownish yellow powder which is pretty much tasteless and a bit powdery like a third of the way towards powdered chalk. I don't even know truthfully what it is because I don't actually have any proof that what I boiled down was even the correct plant but I got something and I'm confident that this has been a successful endeavour.

Now I just need to re read about the dosage when using extracted harmala and arrange the next voyage.

I have attached all of the images from the whole process.

It's worth mentioning maybe the rue was responsible for the vibrancy in the colours. Some of the states were so beautiful to see which is why I just kept going. Excited to see what came of it all!

nice pix. my final yield has exactly the same color, have not tested if it's good yet.