Hey guys, long time lurker here. I've extracted from MHRB once and since I've got some more on the way I thought I should hurry up and extract some Harmine and Harmaline. Pharmahuasca is kinda my thing lately and changa was a great starting point in smoalking for me.

First, didn't grind the seeds. Blended with "cleaning" vinegar and water in an old school blender. A creamy white layer appeared and I regret not decanting it and giving it some further investigation... Into the pot! 4 boils with vinegar (stinky) using purified water except for the last pull which was tap water. The tap water seemed to introduce a green tinge to some of my tea. I am concerned. That pull has been seperated from the purified water pulls.

Anybody know what's up with that? Or is there a green tint to the tea in general (doesn't seem likely.)

What a great forum to be a part of. Extracting is such fun.

Update: reduction of the tea and first basification went smoothly. Alkaloids are settling overnight.

A little bit more about me: I've experienced all of the classic psychadelics other than mescaline. That baby is high on the to-do list as well as bufotenine. This forum has given me a lot of interest in extracting some bufo however the low success rate of many extractors makes me nervous.

Colors in the tea: since you're about to make an extract, gradually all the colors will eventually become discarded in the process. The based product should be leaning to white-ish, the salted product smiley-yellow -->
The first salted products might be brown-ish, you can re-process until smiley-yellow.
For salting (manske) the concentration plays big part in success for needle growth, too much of water/material and they will hardly to not grow, despite using many salt like 20gr/100ml.

Success whished

Thanks, Jees! So just to be clear, I only want to dissolve in a minimal amount of water and vinegar for the manske? I thought the tek mentioned that an excess amount of water and vinegar would be desirable.

EDIT: Okay, yeah. A minimal amount of hot water and vinegar. I think I got this. I was going to go for the prettier crystals method but I think I'm going to keep it safe and go with the basic recommended approach.

TAO document:
Recommended style: if you use minimal amount of water, then the crystallization (needles) is forced to happen stronger, and less salt is needed to make it happen, hence the suggestion to use 10 gr/100ml.
Phlux prettier crystals style: here more water room is present and the formation of the needles can use some push from more salt/ml power. It sais 50% volume non salted + 50% volume fully salted gives 18gr/100ml <-- almost double !

So the salt concentration is a parameter, and the water volume too, and both have to work together in favor. Then time is a parameter too actually, when the growth rate is really low, much more time is needed. I had cases where time could not do the trick anymore and had to act on the other parameters. Then cold is also parameter, the fridge helps. And of course the amount of alks is main parameter. So a lot of things play part in how the result will show, or not . So a low yield might have source in a poorly tuned manske process.

You can max yield by forcing the parameters in favor, like working in full salt saturation (or 20gr/100ml and +) and keeping volume not too large. This can be helpful for a first manske where salt contamination (of the resulting in-between product) is no real problem. A basification-precipitation takes away all the salt contamination at once, and then make final manske with less salt/ml.

Okay, when I get home tonight I'm going to Manske and try to follow the directions to a T. I'll split up the batch since this is a pound worth of seeds and I think maybe the batch will be too saturated for good growth. I will update late tonight or tomorrow morning.

I've made a monumental mistake! I added 10 grams per 10 ml for some awful, stupid, stoned reason. I'm not even sure the alks are fully dissolved at this point, they are probably all mixed in with excess salt. I was going to heat it up again and try to dissolve the alks properly and then try to filter out the excess salt. Is this my best option???

Thanks so much for reading and helping.

Only way to get rid of the salt is dissolve it in more volume water (little warm helps) and base it to high pH (not warm), filter to retrieve your alks. Water can dissolve 36 gr salt per 100ml. If you know how much salt you used, then you know how much water you need at least. Split if needed to fit a pot. Yes you've been stupid

Shit. That's going to be a lot of jars. Thanks for your help Jees.

If you had a lot of rue left, you could discard your error-batch and start a new batch. Rue is cheap, the plant is sustainable. Dumping a huge amount of based liquid is prolly less good for environment than dumping salt.

I agree with Jees. You can add more water to dilute the salt a bit and give the alks room to dissolve into the solution. Then heat it up and hope the manske crystal growth happens as it cools back down. You don't have to base the solution yet until you retrieve your manske crystals.

You should be able to recover from this pretty easily with some patience. The worst that will happen is you will have some salt contamination but that's not a big deal as it can be removed later in the process.

Good luck with everything and keep us posted!

Yes he could try to dissolve so much that he end with like 30gr/100ml. It's just that I fear the alk concentration will become way down low to form needles, but it's sure worth a try before basing or ridding the batch. Anyway the diluted and warmed liquid is best coffee filtered before cooling down. Flep, feedback your decision/actions and results please.

heheeeh, sorry couldn't resist

I've watered things down considerably with hot water. I have nearly 3000 ml, shit maybe more, of solution cooling down. Theres already a thin layer of something lighter colored at the bottom happening so maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe it's just salt. If nothing forms in 12-24 hours I will base and decant/filter. Don't feel like ordering more seeds! One of my acid pulls hasn't been based yet so not all is lost.

EDIT: actually that thin layer was just a reflection. Feeling pretty sheepish about this live extraction now!

It's alright Jees, I deserve it.

UPDATE: crystals are forming along the bottom of my jar!!!

After watering down my salty soup crystals began to form withing hours and after a day they seem to have stopped growing. They did look quite pretty in the jar. Currently filtering out and drying the crystals a bit before doing another Manske. I think I managed to save this thanks to Mel-Cat and Jees. Hopefully by end of the weekend I'll have a finished product.

Awesome man, congrats! Extracting harmalas is a very rewarding experience.

Some practical things I d'like to know:
- how much rue did you start with? Whole or powdered seeds?
- what was the rescue salt concentration in the end? How much salt was in how much volume water?

BTW in between manskes it is not needed to dry except for weighting purpose. I'm curious about degree of success though.

I started with a pound of seeds. I did not grind them. They are in a freeze/thaw cycle now for when I decide to do some more boils. The filters and cotton balls I've used are in with them as well.

Salt concentration was around 25-30 grams per 100 ml with around 3000 ml of liquid total in the rescue operation.

Right now it looks like I have a good 12-24 grams of off-white harmine/harmaline eyeballed.

Also: Is vinegar required for each manske?

For manske, you need to dissolve all the harmalas in water at ph=5.
If they are already in salt form they will dissolve easily without anything but if they are in base form then you need to lower the pH with vinegar.
What i do is heat some water, pour harmalas in it, swirl and add vinegar slowly until everything is dissolved.

450 Grams looks much for working with as first try, so I recon you only took a part of that pound that you had the rescue action on, and put the rest in freezer for later? Did you weight how much seed you used in the rescue session? I'd like to know/estimate the alkaloid concentration in the 3 liter.

PS: Its very hard to estimate weight on eye sight with alks in water.

Thanks, DansMaTete!

Jees, I did three boils on the entire pound of seeds. The first two boils got over salted and had to be rescued. The third boil wasn't filtered well enough and is now gumming up filters at every step. I accidentally dumped half the alks from the first two boils at one point so there is some more loss right there.

The first two boils have now done three manskes and I want to keep these alks in their salt form so that is drying out right now and appears to be a decent amount of paste (pretty much covering a small baking dish and plenty lumpy.) Going to filter the last pull some more and then start cleaning it. There is at least as much alks in the third pull as what I have gotten out of the first two pulls.

I'll update tomorrow when I have some dry product.