This is for working with syrian rue, no solvents!
Here it's a CWE of powdered rue.

Jars with big lids tend to leak after a time, no fun when shaking them.
You can make them seal again perfectly by cutting a fitting circle from a simple zip lock bag, see first picture.


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Decanting by tipping over is not ideal, it disturbs the settled matter too much.
Make a siphon-off jar and use under pressure (instead of gravity) by sucking with your mouth on a tube. The second tube is for skimming off the top layer to the matter level.
The 2 tubes fit in a snug hole in the lid and some hot-gun glue to seal and fixate the tubes into their place. The liquid-tube points to the side a bit.
See pictures and the attached siphon.avi how it works. Rinse tube with some water as shown.
Decant like a pro

I strongly suggest if you make a skim-off jar like that, you do make a seal for it too. The tiniest of vacuum leak with the lid will seriously compromise the functioning. Just two holes extra in the seal-plastic for the 2 tubes.

That's a nice little bodge
Last extractions I did I was dealing with large amounts of liquid so I purchased a petrol siphoner with a hand pump.
It was a bit violent so I had to stop the process when I got within a few centimetres of the bottom layer and then switch to glass syringes .
It was a hassle but saved me a lot of time.
Yours looks really good, ill try that one day . *Tips hat*

The advantage of sucking under pressure in the jar with your mouth is that this leans itself for controlling the degree of fast/slow. Once at the bottom reaching the settled matter level, sucking less hard and skimming just over the top surface makes it possible to really fine tune the skimming action.

I also have an "adapter" piece to fit on the liquid-transfer tube that ends in a lesser diameter, then things can be really slowed down when you skim off the liquid layer with a smaller diameter. I don't use it much actually, hardly at all, just pointing to possibilities. You can start with a bigger diameter for the bulk of liquid, and at the end sticking on a piece with smaller diameter.
The green is the usual tube, the silicon pieces and the grey tube is the "adapter".
It really helps to have a stiff tubing (or it's end piece) for the skimming off job, the tube in the .avi file is actually a bit soft, sticking on a hollow rod is also a good idea.

Nice little modification .
I didn't realise that you have to suck continuously , I thought maybe one toke and it works on auto.
Aren't you sucking in fumes though?

That will show soon how it works. It mainly is about flow rate, if you make once an under pressure and stop, then the under pressure will drop gradually and thus also the flow rate. For the bulk of liquid one likes to work steady with good under pressure in the bottle, just not in the end to work finer towards the settled matter surface.
But now that you mention this, I saw a little check-valve (one direction flow valve) at an aquarium store lately. I gonna try that out, good hint.



No solvents this way, neither have I tried on warm liquids. I've never tasted anything awkward even siphoning water+HCL at pH 1, same with lye water pH 12.
And I actually don't suck the volume from the jar into the lungs, I mainly use the mouth as a kind of air-pump, like how babies do on the mothers nipple, sort of.

You had me with nipple but lost me with baby

It doesn't take necessarily a large lid, the bigger the lid to more prone for air-leakage thus vacuum loss. A bottle with a screw-able cap can do, just insert the 2 tubes trough the cap and seal it with glue. Is what I use of late, a 2 liter bottle, it works like a charm.

Then it can look like this.
Note that the "liquid tube" is longer than the "sucking tube" so that you never suck up liquid by accident. When its screwed on the bottle its less visible which one is which, be sure you suck on the suck-tube.
This cap has a rubber ring that seals 100% on bottle and tubes, no seal glue necessary.
With a hard plastic or metal cap without rubber ring, some hot-gun-glue might be necessary to seal the tubes with the cap, drilling the holes snug fit is always advised.

amazing

Jess, could this work with gravity instead of suction? That is, raise the jar being decanted like home Brewers do. Gravity will be the force moving the liquid over. To control the flow cover the air tube (the one that can also be used to suck) with your thumb and let air escape slowly.

You could also raise the decanted bottle to a strategic height where gravity decanting would automatically stop once the sediment is hit because the liquids are level.

Finally, if the liquid tube is filled with water, no suction is needed to get the process going.

PS- I'm a fan of all the work you and others have done with rue. Some of you deserve an icon under your Nexus name

Thank you for the kind words

The problem with gravity decanting is that no air is allowed to enter the transfer-tube or the transfer stops. This would happen when the level drops and one wants to skim off the top layer just above the settled sediments. When you keep sucking the suction-tube then you can skim off the top layer very gently like 50% liquid & 50% air.

With the tube diameters as shown the gravity-only style would also take very long to finish. Using bigger diameter tubes would help but then the gravity-transfer would also become more difficult I think. With the sucking technique the transfer goes really nice, I can't see much improvement by changing the style tbh, but feel free to test your proposal and compare. One doesn't need actual extraction materials to check it out how things work for the best, a simulation pot with water will do.