Many posts advise to increase ph to around 12 to make sure to precipitate all the harmaline out of the acidified extract solution. Then Gibran2’s caapi tek has a couple of these water wash steps (add water, settle, decant, add water etc) to clean/purify the alkaloids and also to drop the ph. But now surely dropping the ph will lead to some of the harmaline going back into solution as the ph goes lower than 12 again? Or is there something else at play chemically now that will allow these water add-settle-decant steps not to cause loss of harmaline as we approach ph8 like gibran2 is recommending? I am a bit confused by this and hesitant to do this in fear of losing harmaline, which is my main goal at present for a thh reduction.

I was kinda following Sakkadelics tek with the water washes but noticed Gibran2 also had those steps even tho he’s dealing with caapi not rue.

Anyone have any advice or explanations? TIA

The first wash waters are usually uber clean, if you keep washing and washing then the wash water will turn fanta-colour alike. Yep it's the harmaline dissolving again on the dipping pH. But the question is: how much? What is the loss of harmaline? I've never tried to asses the alleged loss, it might be nothing to worry about, but I don't know

If you are planning to turn harmaline into THH, I would not wash it the same way as if was for consumption. I'd just do one good wash and let the pH be what it is. It's all going to be acidified anyway as part of the reduction act.

Oh, I do a tonne of washes, until the full spec FB is beige/white and the water is almost transparent. Some freebase alkaloids must be soluble in water as the water fluoresces under UV after washes. Loss is minimal dissolved in solution.

Pubchem claims freebase harmaline is practically insoluble in water:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm...h.gov/compound/harmaline

DMT Nexus claims it is slightly soluble in basic water:
https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...rties#Freebase_Harmaline

As long as the water is basic enough to keep the harmaline in fb form - pretty much so.

After cooking my seeds (in 400g batches), I end up with 10 liters of acidic soup and don't reduce the volume. Instead, I base it as is with lye and decant the excess water. I still get yields in the area of 6.5% post-manske, with ~45:55 harmine:harmaline ratio. If fb harmaline was considerably soluble in water, it would yield considerably less harmaline.

Cool, thanks. I feel a bit more confident of giving 'em a wash in the basic state then

The more times I do the rue extract the more I'm looking to simplify the process. Since my ultimate goal is Harmine plus THH (got more than enough DHH to do many doses at the recommended pharma ratio) it would be nice to cut the steps down, especially the cleaning - as Jees says there's going to be yet another acid base round in the zinc reduction. Every time you mess with it (decant + add water, acidify etc) you need another day while stuff settles, if not more, so its a protracted process as it is.

Plus doing multiple Manske rounds is a time consumer of its own (not to mention salt!)