Thanks guys!

I think 7 boils was probably over kill but there is no harm in that, obviously!
Perhaps I'll write a song about this...call it "Squeeze the Seeds: The Downfall of Filtering"



On a serious note, I will never go back to grinding rue seeds. This method is sound. I love it!

We actually still filter by squeezing, like a [filter + squeezing] in one action. "The downfall of gentle straining" is more puritan anal correct

And yes grinded was yield-top before we got to squeezing, powder is now becoming more obsolete. I think that squeezing powder is a very messy job and for what possible gain? Perhaps I will try it once just for the academic sake of it, but with a gross course then instead of fine powder.

Indeed there is still some filtering going on (squeezing plus a couple times during the acidic stages). I'm just glad that I no longer have to watch rue tea drip painstakingly slow through a funnel with cotton balls and a coffee filter over and over (I don't own any cool filtration equipment, unfortunately...)!

"The downfall of gentle straining" ...

I love this place, I really do!

Results!

I gave a shot at finding out the utility of extracting harmalas from rue using a microwave and whole seeds. I have now run four extractions with this premise (the first two attempts being failures) and can say, that although it may not be the approach for everyone, I find that there are many advantages that make it worth considering.

In a nut shell, significant time savings over crushing seeds and/or boiling, similar to Jayrocco experienced with boiling whole seeds. I was able to obtain 4.7% and 5% fairly pure harmaline/harmine yields with a couple of hours labor, and a few overnights for soaking/settling/manske chilling.


Yields are about 20% less than mashing/boiling or extended boils with whole seeds. But, there is virtually no mess, no cotton balls or t-shirts. The first boils can be filtered through coffee filters. Only 90 minutes of cooking. Very clean results can be realized with a basify/rinse/manske/manske/basify/rinse and final rinse. I personally would prefer to extract 20% more seeds to avoid the process for crushed seeds.


Process:
- Soak seeds in vinegar acidified water for a few hours
- Freeze seeds
- Defrost in microwave
- Run 6 cooks in microwave at 15 min. each with vinegar acidified water and filter through wire strainer. (I lost about 200ml each cook to steam, so would add 400ml vinegar/water solution to filter off about 200ml from each cook)
- As each cook is filtered, run the solution through a coffee filter 2x
- Basify with a minimum of NaOH, decant and rinse
- Manske in minimum of vinegar and total of 400ml of solution

- Re-dissolve in hot water and Manske again
- Basify with a minimum of NaOH, decant and rinse, decant and rinse (to ph8 )
- Dry in pyrex dish an scrape up final yield

From 4oz (113g) seeds in each case:

Wow Nitegazer amazing crystals
It's funny how not grinding seeds makes the extraction faster and much easier

Thanks Sakkadelic--

It is all microwave cooking-- I edited my post to reflect this.

I don't have the beautiful yields of Grateful, but I like the 90 minute cooking time, and I only had to work with 1.2 liters of liquid. Since there is less cooking time I think I may get less 'gunk' in the brew.

Regarding the crystals, I followed Endlessness' advice to put the salt saturated solution in a heat bath (larger pot with near boiling water) to help it cool more slowly.

Was the microwave on high? what kind of container u were using during the boils? If i exceed 5 mins microwaving in a jar it will boil out

I was gonna ask about that, i will try it next time for sure

5 % on whole seeds without squeezing them is really good
Wonderful needles too.

Straining the seeds (as you did) or squeezing them empty in a T-shirt is IMHO same effort/trouble. I dare to believe that if you had squeezed them (all 6 times) then we had another member in the 6% FB club

You may just be right, Jees. A twist in an old t-shirt would be worth the gain.

I will have to give those seeds a little hug next time and report any increased yields. It will have to wait a bit, though. After all the extracting, I have plenty of harmala for the near term.

I will keep monitoring this thread though-- I'm really enjoying all the good work from everyone.

My microwave is 1400 watts, and I did run it on high. Since the temps won't get above 100c, I figure the rapid boil is helpful, though I have no facts to back this up.

I used a Pyrex bowl with lid (about 1.5 liters) which is about 20cm across. I read in one of the MAE papers that a large surface area is preferable, perhaps it also cut down on boil-overs. I was able to combine seeds with 450ml water with lots of room to spare. The lid just sat on top to keep water from splashing out.

Very nice, Nitegazer! I like how quickly this can be done...I usually have to spread out my extractions over several days ( be it DMT, Cactus, Syrian Rue or whatever ) due to time constraints. For rue, I like to let it settle for at least 12 hours (for each stage that requires settling) so that is what was taking up most of the time! But hey, at least it isn't because of filtering anymore!

I messed up on almost every stage of the extraction and i still got 5% hcl harmala yield.
after 1 mw boil, 1 freeze/thaw on 50 grams seeds, i did 4 10 mins mw boils with squeezing and mashing i lost around 1/3 of the first boil when pouring the liquid because i was using a glass casserole like Nitegazer did(which i think is the best boiling method so far) i had trouble pouring out of it the first time.
Then i basified with much less lye of what i usually use(the only step i didn't mess up) then i added 1 liter vinegar because i was too stupid thinking it's impossible for all this (looking like freebase) precip to be only plant material(which i think is what gives the original tea it's cloudiness) i should start counting on the colour change untill i get a ph meter.
Then i filtered and rebasified, did 1 water wash and continued to manske where i poured some of the reduced harmalas tea by mistake
Also i was working fast and only waited around 45 mins on each freebase settling stage the whole procedure was done in 16 hours first 4 were for first boil and freeze/thaw and last 6 were for slow cooling after manske plus sleeping, the filter was dried in less than 30 mins using a hair dryer.
so with only 4 boils, losing a significant amount of the liquid and working fast i still managed to get a satisfying amount of these beautiful gold xtals
The first picture is the second basifying stage after making the vinegar mistake, u can see how much vinegar i used the volume was around 200 ml before adding the 1 L vinegar and 300 ml water i even did 1 water wash before this to prevent using a lot of vinegar.

Damn,

That looks great, Sakkadelic--

Only 40 mins of boil? I certainly must try pressing the seeds as you and Jees recommend.

One of the things I like about the shorter boils is that is seems that they make it easier/quicker to get a clean product.

From several days via the Tao of Rue to 16 hours via this method-- great work!

Thanks
I love the golden colour, there is a story about an arabic alchemist/scientist making a gold like material that gave it to the guard to escape from prison maybe it is hcl harmala if there is a way to make it solidify like gold.
Yeah u can see how the seeds get swollen it's all water, the water trapped in the end is supposedly from the last boil which doesn't have much alks but that's not the point i think the advantage of pressing the seeds is reducing time, the alks that needs long hard boils will go out by mechanical force...
I think 4 boils are not enough i got 2% less than good hcl yields and the quantities i lost when pouring and fast settling can't cover all the 2% loss so maybe a 5th boil is needed, i kept the seeds i will work on them later to see how much was left.

Just a quick question about the first post please. In the list of "resources" it doesn't have a quantity for the Rue, as I read the thread, there is quantities for the other resources, but not that 1. Any help much appreciated with this particular batch size.

It was mentioned in the "NOTE" above the resources, 50g or less of rue seeds

Thanks a lot for the quick response Spaced Out, I didnt put 2 and 2 together with the quantity as I guess I was looking for more definition like a recipe (with a definite measure/amount for each item). Again, tha ks for the help ;-)

I didn't mention a specific quantity bcz in the later steps you add as much as needed of lye and vinegar and water...
I will rewrite this soom bcz i learned new things and some details need to be changed

Thanks Sakkadelic, I will wait for the updated info to get a better idea.

yeah, sakkadelic please revise!