Does anyone think it is one of the most annoying processes on the planet?

Yes.

SWIM has done it several times in the past. It's very time consuming and filtering it is a complete nightmare. While its steps seem simple, extracting DMT is actually much easier. Pure DMT can actually be extracted in a matter of minutes if you use a good tech. Harmala alkaloids can take days to extract and purify. It’s no fun at all.

this is exactly why i buy my harmalas
they are too cheap not to when you consider the pain
god bless FV

its annoying if you didnt get the tricks that make it easier, as well as if you are in a hurry

for me its one of my favourite extractions.. Its cheap, it can be done with foodsafe products, its legal, there is nothing dangerous about it, and once you get it right, its fun, all the colours changing, the solutions getting clearer and clearer and the alks cleaner and cleaner. Its beautiful stuff

though I have my tricks and Im never in a hurry, so...

Even with all the tricks it still takes a long time and is still quite a hassle compared to DMT extraction.

hrmm - wouldnt quite call it a hassle.

I love extracting anything, it is the extraction proceedure and continious experimentation that brings me joy - the harmala extraction was great fun and as end said - its the little tricks that make life so much easier.

Phlux-, it's an interesting experience, and can be rewarding when you complete it, but it still takes a long time. I don't care how many tricks you know of. It's going to take a long time if you want good results. Just the salting step alone takes a very long time and there's no practical way to speed it up. The crystals take X amount of time to form in the salt solution. You need to do the salting step if you want the harmala alkaloids free of the other toxins. Well, unless you want to run a column or something similar, which is also not fun.

I've run a column a few times. It's time consuming. The best way to separate the harmala alkaloids from the other toxins is really the salting trick. And no amount of tricks will speed that process up. It takes hours to even days sometimes for all the crystals to precipitate out.

Like I said, extraction of DMT is faster and easier.

Extraction of harmala alkaloids looks easy. I mean all you need is some water, salt, vinegar, and some base. The main thing is that the salting takes forever and needs to be repeated a few times for good results. And then the filtering is a pain in the ass. If you skip filtering and decant, that's also a very lengthy process. No fun. SWIM did it a few times and had it. If he doesn't have the money to buy harmine or THH, he just makes tea from caapi or rue. It's just too much hassle to extract the alkaloids and purify them and SWIM honestly doesn’t have the time or the patients for it. When he has time he’s extracting things like mescaline, bufotenine, and other things that are much more worth the effort.

if you go into it already thinking of comparing, if your standard for extractions being good is whether its easy like extracting dmt, then of course you are gonna be unsatisfied with many other proceedures

Its like cooking, for example.. Sure there is some food that takes much longer to cook, but if you're loving the process of cooking and are not comparing it to how easy it is to make a hamburguer, then its gonna be great and rewarding at every step. For me, like phlux said, the whole extraction process is amazing independently of the results. But one need to already go into it with this mindset.. If you expect/need it to be fast, dont do it. If you are looking for one more alchemical experience, of watching the processes of change, of continuously experimenting, then it might be for you..

For example, in a dmt extraction an STB using naphtha might be the quickest way in and out, but I find much more interesting to make a bit more complex and more time consuming limonene + salting + freebasing extraction. Its all about what you consider important and what you get your kicks out of. If its speed and quick pure results, if its comparison to other extractions, then you're gonna be enjoying different extractions than if for you what is nice is experimentation, the process itself, etc.

BTW, just to note, no the salting step in harmalas does not take long at all... Once you mix the salt (or salt saturated solution) to the harmala tea, it will immediately start precipitating and if I filter, say, 20 mins after, all of the alks are already precipitated (I tested myself, filtering after some minutes and then later adding more salt and letting it overnight in the fridge to see if more precipitated, and it didnt).

anyways, I dont want to convince you or something, each one has their prefferences, enjoy whatever you like.. just trying to give the perspective from someone that doesnt consider this process a pain, so that you understand why some people might enjoy it

A small idea also is to put the "dead time" procedures -such as "waiting patiently for Jack Daniels to mature, we all know he is an immature bastard - in your "dead time".

Crystals precipitating while you sleep!

Yes,it can be a long procedure but i find it gratifying!

I find this extraction very rewarding. Especially as it's food grade and has some very nice colour changes.

I love the process of getting the liquid as clear and lovely as possible before I start to crash stuff out.

Also if you do a bulk extraction you can easily get a year or more's worth of supply and why not?... as rue's cheap cheap cheap!

I think I'd rather buy it rather than extract it, it takes too long to do and time is valuable, it's annoying the first time you do it figuring out the right filters and things, on the other hand doing it once you'll learn something new and you'd know how to do it if you couldn't buy it for whatever reason so 1 time is probably worthwhile.

I'd highly recommend folk try this, but do so with absolute patience.

Next time I do this I'm going to spend a good 2 weeks+ on the process. Mainly just squeezing every drop of goodness out of the seeds, then letting the solution settle in the fridge for a week or 2, then carefully decanting. Then there's no messy filtering involved pretty much.

As end said - the salting takes the same amount of time as a pot of hot water takes to cool.

ILPT has to say that rue extraction is indeed his favourite one right after trichocereus extraction. Only downside of rue extraction is that it produce only harmine and harmaline which are the less popular alkaloids for ILPT

But whwn we talk about it as hobby or enjoying the procedure it`s indeed very nice. Only the intial cooks and decantation are a bit messy and smelly, but as soon as first salting commence it all become a great fun and joy, something he trully like

ILPT extract DMT mostly via traditional a/b and has to say that acid cooking on mimosa species (esp. pudica) are much more nasty a stinky then acid cooks on the rue seeds

He shopping for thh or concentrated aya extracts here and there but he wouldn`t spend penny for pure harmine or harmaline, no way

He still have few grams of harmine and few hundred miligrams of harmaline reserved for pharma mixtures but honestly he has huge respect to dmt and hasn`t use it as often as cacti, shrooms or caapi(on it`s own)

lol he is a bit pussy even when to come to smoking dmt as he loosing his mind on it easily. Now a days he prefer to trip lightly and not to loose his mind . For this purpose is THH the greatest ally and harmaline the worst one. Harmaline is so powerfull that it can actually fucked his mind even on light doses of cacti. Harmine is somewhere between.
For this reason ILPT doesn`t use much harmine and harmaline and concentrate on sources high in THH or on pure thh , therefore rue is somewhat out of interest.
that`s why ILPT

I also find harmala extraction a fun and instructive way to break someone into extractions...

Yes, its not a "standard" extraction that could work for anything but its a nice introduction of "seperating materials taking advantage of very basic chemistry principles" that has a nice visual component (throw a UV light in and it goes to magnificent!) plus its very gratifying having someone isolate his/her first alkaloid!

As a material also its very interesting...Many people report feeling great the next day, and the experience is for many very "mind movie" like , given one takes advantage of set and setting.

Its also a far more effective use of rue if you remove the harmaline also. Then you can smoke the harmaline and use all the harmine for pharmahuasca

Wow I thought harmala's extraction was way easier and faster than DMT extraction.

Boil Seeds + Water + Lemon Juice three times
Boil Salt + Water

Reduce combined seed/water boils
Add boiling salt + water to reduced volume
Filter seed/water
(2 hours max)

Put in freezer for 1 hour
Filter
Put in fridge for 1 hour

Put Harmala goo in fresh water(from filter paper)
Add sodium carb until it crashes freebase
Filter and dry

It's like a 5-6 hour ordeal where as dmt extraction takes at least 72hours (48hour freeze precip) using solvents and semi-dangerous bases/acids. I would do harmala extractions all day if I had rue, it's so fun!

You can extract DMT down to crystals in less than 1 hour and some harmala extractions take days because of the initial salting. The first time SWIM did it, it took 2 days for the initial salting to complete.

I'm disappointed in the other posters saying it's so fast of a process. Even the well documented professional tech recommends a full day or two for the initial salting.

If you did it in a few hours, you didn't do it right and you threw a lot of harmala alkaloids away because they take longer than a few hours to initially precipitate out the first time the salt is added. It takes at least 1 day for most of them to precipitate out.

I wouldnt say its THAT fast,but...is it of such prime importance to reduce times down to almost "fast food preparation" times? Certainly many people are not wishing "I wish those procedures took more time ,'cause i got heaps to spend" but a counterargument would be that the fastest way would be to just buy a product from a dealer and simply stay there : they are active,they want to sell them and you can get some really potent stuff to make a stash of.They are quite happy to sell very potent RCs,good ol LSD and more or less anything one can imagine.

Before "camps" are formed, let me say that i respect everyones opinions,some people might even find an overnight waiting (sleeping through it) too much.I think though that the material is worth it even in crude form, and this comes from a guy that run through quite some problems during extracting it because he used less than ideal methods.One could perform a quite big extraction and stash away the product not having to re-extract for a long time.

What about the acidifed Isopropyl extractions? They don't give the greatest yield, but are a million times easier/quicker than the Manske. I guess you're still dealing with the nasty oils and you gotta clean the end product, but yield aside, I can't imagine you guys find all Rue extractions to be a PITA. Manske is definitely labor intensive, but as with percolating caapi, several hours in the kitchen with some good music and a good purpose can do the body and mind some good. Also, my chemistry knowledge being fairly limited, is there a reason why nothing truly more overall efficient and less "intensive" than Manske has been created?