Whether or not this step is ultimately necessary in a rue harmala extraction it is nonetheless extraordinarily beautiful and well worth the effort!

Nice

Awesome needles!

This was always my favourite extraction to the point I was frequently swimming in more harmala than I would ever know what to do with.

What salt and harmala concentration do you use?

I rarely get nice needeles as it is very hard to hit the right concentration point.

beautiful.

I used ~100g/litre for that session. I was afraid it wasn't working so I decided to just leave it alone and next day that was what was in the beaker! Generally I follow teks to the letter as I have zero chemistry background. So this was from following "The Tao of Rue" - and the the "phlux" version of the salt adding as it said "for prettier crystals". I mix the salt into solution first before adding.

I have since processed about a kilo of rue seeds and generally always get this. Once there was just too much stuff in too little water and it pretty much 'solidified' but when there is at least 60/40 water and crystals per volume it seems to grow best. And a bit of time because it doesn't appear anythings happening at first. Not sure how much harmalas were in there.

I love them so much I always end up keeping some. Don't know what to do with them (are they edible?) as I only usually use the powder. Its kinda disappointing to convert these into a tan white powder.

Now I wish my spice tek would get as good! I'm just not getting it somehow and suck at yields. Lots to do with finding the right solvent, but not sure what else! I get most success from FASA method as its pretty straightforward and Toluene is Toluene everywhere. But 'naphtha'? Oh boy, outside the USA that's just not as cut and dried!

Yes I also get best results with 10% saline.

I found the rate of cooling and nucleation points are a big factors too. Sometimes I have no crystals even after leaving it standing overnight and then a single scrape with glass rod crashes all crystals at once in about 30 minutes or so.

I also found the harmala concentration plays a big role too. I will probably run an experiment with 25 test tubes, trying different parameters and see what produces best crystals/yield.

please do.

So umm, might I inquire if you've had the chance to do some or all of the experiments you had in mind regarding this matter?

When the Harmala concentration is quite high it tends to look like mush rather than those nice needles. But after two iterations its quite beautiful again. I've been trying to clean up some Harmalas for a THH reduction because I have had zero success doing the extraction from Caapi for some reason and ran out of raw materials. Fortunately the Rue version is usually always successful :/ and the Manske remains my favorite process I've learnt here.

One possible reason I've suggested, but hasn't been confirmed: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=94603

The new round of pics is very nice. It looks almost as if you've jammed a load of sliced bananas into the beaker

Wow, some nice photos you have there. Put my yellow mash ( which I am usually very proud of ) to shame.

Not entirely related but I will ask nevertheless... is manske ultimately necessary in rue extraction?
I know it purifies the end product as well as removing some more toxic alks... but also that quite a few nexians drink rue tea Au naturel, and speak highly of it ( I cant bring myself to do it myself as unlike caapi, i find the smell and taste a bit too much for my sensibilities )

So besides everything I just said, any reason not to skip the manske stage in order to get a more "full spectrum" product ?

Thanks

I find some of the alkaloids in the seeds I've worked with highly unpleasant.
It's possible that profiles vary widely between strains.

Very beautiful merkin, it remembers me how my first needles looked like, now I do less of an overkill in making it pure and have way less of the long needles. It's possible I use different concentrations too.

I've posted about this a few times. I was having no problem at all extracting from Caapi until a few years ago, when tried and true processes just stopped working. Others had the same experience. There was a lot of discussion a few years ago about other, similar vines being sold as Caapi. But... the process stopped working for me at the exact same time, a ancient, stern, humanoid female entity told me to: "Drink the brew!" She has shown up recently without any maoi
repeating her entreaty, her command, for me to drink the brew. I still haven't done the basic real deal beverage. All but. Soon, I will. I have a feeling I will be barred from extracting from Caapi until I do I can't even find the extract on the internet. It used to be all over the place. I need to do another rue extraction, but it lacks something that the vine extract gives me. THH I guess, but I've been out of the loop for a couple of years and haven't been keeping up.

Damn Mister Niles, that's funny. Well I haven't tried the drink itself either so maybe that's my problem. I attended (but did not participate in) a 'ceremony' and quite frankly I found it all a little sketchy (this was a local version and the leader would not elaborate on the contents of the brew).
Anyway, after witnessing 12 people in various stages of barf and unease over the evening I resolved to follow the Pharmahuasca way and set out on a mission to get some THH the long way round via the Rue/VDS route. Having finally achieved that recently I think I'm now ready to venture in. Hopefully I will be allowed since I used up all my Caapi in unsuccessful attempts on extraction.