Hydraulics makes it less of an effort but using what you already have is usually the cheaper option.

Who knows, though - you may just find the perfect hydraulic jack tomorrow morning!

The hard squeezing of the seeds pays off: 7 gr ( = 7%) HarmalaHCl after 1 manske (5.5gr after 8 manskes). Well centrifuged to eliminate max possible salt contamination.

But it was 10 washes, 10x squeezing the bags. I could do more as there was still a based bottom layer at the 10th, maybe at max I could have 0.5gr more with 5x extra washes, estimated.
I'll stop doing so much manskes in the future and some more A/B's to clean up first.

It's not a filter problem I try to fix with the bags, it's searching a way to empty those seeds after a wash with a looooot of pressure. Having water IN and OUT of the seeds was the main goal of this initiative. Letting the seeds boil and strain is not that effective, yield proving, but someone content with 2 gr less they can certainly do that. Rue is not expensive and sustainable.

I'll search a better way for pressing, and maybe 100gr at once instead of little bags, but this excludes doing it in the fists.

It's a sunny day

I'm now wondering what a wheat-grass juicer would make of boiled seeds, but that contradicts the idea of bagging them up. Really I ought to get hold of some seeds myself.

With the right budget a small apple press would also do the trick.

So here's a process I just utilized and I'm really loving it, no need for bags or presses.

Boil your seeds in a brew kettle or pressure cooker. When the boil is done, throw a wire mesh strainer on top of the seeds and use some 3/8" tubing (silicon, tygon, w/e) to siphon the water off of the seeds into a collection pot/bucket. By siphoning through the strainer, you don't suck out any of the seeds and you can tip the pot forward to keep sucking more water out. I don't worry about getting every last drop because you'll get it in the next round. If you really want to, you can pour the seeds into the strainer at the end and let the water run off them that way.

Using the siphoning approach combined with ouro's no-reduction precipitation method, I was able to process a ton of seeds in record time and got remarkable cleanliness in just two FB precipitations.

DWFZ: I think such a juicer destroys the seeds, would be like working with grinded seeds?
Apple press yeah, something like that, yet they're big so maybe good for 5 kilo of seeds

SB what were the yields aprox that way?

I'm looking at consistent 6% yields (or a smidge higher) through the first two batches. Looking at the amount I have from batch three and four, I think it's safe to say that they're all likely going to be around 6%-7%.

To give a sense of capabilities, I believe it's safe to say that using zero specialized equipment, two kilos of material could be processed from seed to second FB precip within about 6-8 hours, with the precip needing a bit longer to dry. I couldn't find my vacuum pump to use my buchner, but if I'd had it available, I think the time could be dialed down to 6 hours for fully dry alks, likely less.

The alks have not been mansked yet, but given the minuscule % of quinazoline alks, it shouldn't have a significant impact on yield.

I had decent results pressure cooking in towel cloth. 2 x 60gm bags double tied with with zip ties, PC'd for 60 minutes in 4L of water with a dash of vinegar at 15PSI (which reduced to 3.5L) and then squeezed and soaked multiple times over 10 minutes whilst still hot.

My yield came in at slightly less than %5. But considering it was my first harmala extraction and I stuffed up and rushed a couple of bits and lost some in the process I'm pretty happy with the result.

It was only on the first filtering that I really pulled out this dark brown nasty stuff. After that it was nice and clean and ran through the filter with ease.

SB I'm all won for simplicity if it yields and I'm really stunned to see a 6% out of 2 washes, I've never been able to match that, batches might differ tho.

Can you refer at ouro's no-reduction precipitation please? (non found in wiki)
Maybe I know it already but can't relate it to ouro.

I suppose you boil an hour with a dash of vinegar?

BTW instead of vacuum apparatus, I'm still wondering if someone tested this route
"Pectin" in peganum harmala seeds making extractions viscous?
until the end of extraction, the thread stops somewhere half way proceedings.
It does not include use of an acid, because of the pectinase I suppose.
For those having death defying filtering problems (Godsmacker you hear this? ) this might work, pectinase is bloody cheap.

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Northerner: Congratulations
if its near 5% FB then you are GOOD, else you are good too, way to go.

I keep believing that working with whole seeds then one gains by forcing water IN and OUT of the seeds. This can be done by:
- bagging and squeezing
- pressure pot use, the pressure forces water IN, decompression forces water OUT.

So Snozz got me dragging that pressure pot out again and gave that metal mesh idea a go. I did not have a suitable one right away but came up with this variant: the permanent coffee filter. It's pointy so you can get that point right to the very deepest point in the pot (which gets tilted over to 45 degrees in the end).
The red one is not good, too thick a wires and the liquid had trouble getting trough the mesh. The brown one is ideal. It's plastic. I will try to upload a little movie how ridiculous fast and easy this goes, using a dirt cheap vac pump on a siphoning bottle. This was a 5th wash or so thus the tea is very clear, on 260gr rue.
Please come back if that file doesn't work for you, I'm new to fiddling with this vid editor stuff and keeping it small a file. I did some time skip to contain file size, but its the fastest method I had, and no seeds jugling they stay put.

Nice vid. Will try this when I get round to obtaining more rue.

I've tried pectinase and it worked much better when filtering -- I also used it with a vinegar extraction and it worked fine ( it likes lower pH)

Geeg30 that is a wonderful continuation of that thread, thank you! This goes beyond rue for that matter, especially cacti.

Can you share a number of used pectinase please? (on what volume ...)
Any further particularities that are relevant to know? (temperature, handling,...)

I did it with a 50g batch of rue seeds boiled in vinegar/water solution(enough to cover the seeds) . Let it cool down a fair bit (as I read somewhere that pectinase is degraded in boiling water) and I put in a level teaspoon of enzyme and gave it a good mix, left it to cool for 10 mins and then filtered. The rue seeds were whole and in a muslin bag and removed before enzyme was added and the process was repeated to recover more alkaloids but I used less pectinase than with the first boil

I don't know if the teaspoon's worth was too much or not enough but it was much easier to filter than normal. I never tried any variation of this method to see what temps/pH work best or volume of enzyme but filtering was faster and less clogging.

Hope this helps - would be interesting to see if it worked with cacti!!!

Thanks for the update.
These are some recommendations found on different packages of pectinase (internet search):
So I guess the concentration or activity might differ between sources.
Reaction times usually between 12 and 24 hours.
Temperatures varying between room temp and 100deg F.
So RTFM of what one gets I recon. This is usually for filtering fruit pulp.
I've not found anything about pH range so far, but a batch of lower pH fruit is quite thinkable I guess.

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Because the press pot and easy decanting setup makes a hard competition for bagged seeds approach, I changed the thread title a bit

I would love to see how pectinase helps.

As for the filtering, what works for me is a 2 L vacuum filtering flask, round funnel and a couple of rubber gaskets in between.

The cotton ball is plugged in the funnel and vacuum is created with a hand pump. This works very well and it's quite fast for initial filtering.

The squeezing seeds may be done with a juicer maybe. I had a vertical juicer (Omega) which squeezed dry poppy seeds and could even crush cherry kernels.

For the moment I declare the squeezing bags officially outdated

With he pressure pot system (thx snozz for bringing it to attention again), I estimate to have done 8 or so washes (until little-to-no precips came due basing), and each wash had like 3 pressure swings each, the yield was my best ever 6.14% dried FB (good for a calculated 7.2% rueHCL).
No fudge with seeds whatsoever they stay in the pot and easily draw off the tea as in post #30. So simple you go for some extra washes with a smile on the face.
Life can be easy

My latest round of extraction I used 500gm put into the cut off sleeve of a cotton shirt and cable tied to a sausage. I pc'd for 120 minutes @15psi in slightly acidic water and only squeezed out the rue sausage once so it wasn't dripping. This yielded, after 3 rounds of base and 2 manske, >20gm of dried alks. I didn't bother measuring the total exactly. Total yield was not the point, I just wanted to see how the seeds would extract/react with an extended pressure cook. To check if there was anything left in the seeds I refilled the cooker and and pc'd the seeds again for an additional 90 minutes. The total yield after the first base was far less than a gram. Almost all of the alk's were extracted in the first cook.

I'd call that a semi-squeezing method
Thanks for sharing

I'm a fan of cooking Syrian rue seeds whole...way less work and mess than crushing them first, and in my experience you still pull the vast majority of the alkaloids from the seed. Even if some alkaloids are lost, given how cheap the seeds are there is nothing to stop one adding a few more to make up for any potential loss. I find Syrian rue tea without any seed matter much easier on my system too...less body load, and allows for a deep clean purge...for some reason if I ingest solid seed matter or extract I tend to feel really nauseous but seem unable to purge, whereas this isn't an issue when I drink a tea made from the seeds.