I thought i had harmala extraction nailed by now but it seems i've run into some trouble.

I ground 1 lb of seeds to as fine a powder as i could and began heating in a large pot with water and half a cup of vinegar. The boils were strained through a t-shirt cloth and collected 4x, last one being 40min long.

Then I put the saved liquid in the fridge over night, added more vinegar to make sure all the alkys are dissolved in water and not sediment on the bottom. Next morning the liquid was decanted carefully and a layer of sediment/gunk was left at the bottom.(to which more water and vinegar was added to later add the remaining trapped alkys to the decantate)

Solution with goodies was boiled down to 2-3L about, and salted until absolutely no more could dissolve at almost boiling temps. This was let to sit for an hour and decanted/saved leaving a nice layer of salt/goodies at the bottom. This was done 2 more times.

To a sediment of salt/harmalas, 3L water was added and lots of vinegar(1-2 cups approx.), and stirred until there was no solids. This was let to sit for several hours and dark decantate saved, leaving a small amount of gunk layer at the bottom which was added to a pot of saved Manske salt water decants. I saved all the liquids just in case yields are low or i mess up.


NOW AT THIS POINT, i simply add a bunch of baking soda little at a time patiently waiting for the beautiful eye-candy payoff when there is no more bubbly reaction and with a pinch more bsoda, everything crashes out, right? Well, that didn't happen. I added sodium carbonate now, and then even NaOH. Nothing crashed out, or it seemed. Something did crash out, and it seems like it is harmala, colour and amount wise. But it was not light coloured at all, not noticeable. Only if carefully looked at up close with a light.

The liquid was decanted and saved in another large container. The sediment was very brown. To this 500mL water and lots of vinegar were added until everything dissolved. Again more baking soda was added and no clouds. I kept adding baking soda until i saw little red/brown sand chunks forming and falling to the bottom.

I've done A/B several times saving the liquids. I will boil that and base it a little more and hopefully recover some harmine maybe?

I've done rue extractions three times before this, and every time there were massive tan clouds. The seeds were somewhat moist and a very delayed shipment. Could they be really fresh and contain mostly harmaline and almost no harmine to account for the dark alkaloids?

I boiled the goodies quite a lot, could have heat degraded them?

How far up and down the pH scale can harmalas withstand?

Heat doesnt degrade harmalas, they are extensively boiled in ayahuasca, extractions and other brews with no noticeable problems.

It is very possible that harmalas in your rue are mostly harmaline. Ive ordered rue from the exact same vendor with only a couple of months appart and once it was 3:1 harmine:harmaline, the next time the batch yielded 1:2 harmine:harmaline..

Though the whole issue about color is a bit of misunderstanding. Both harmine and harmaline freebase are white when clean. If precipitation was of dark colour, it doesnt necessarily mean that its one or the other, but rather that it is impure precipitation of either of them. The first times the redissolved salt harmalas are precipitated by adding the base, at least with me, its always a darker colored precipitation, ranging from brown/red to tan. Then redissolving them, filtering the solution several times and reprecipitating will clean it up, and doing this several times will eventually get you pure white harmalas (though there will be some yield loss)

But yeah it could be bad seeds with little alkaloids in general, or it could be more harmaline and less harmine.. Also note that it may happen that harmaline takes longer to precipitate. If you filtered the solution quickly after precipitation, you maybe are leaving a lot of alkaloids behind. Add the base, and leave it in the fridge for a few hours before precipitating.

good luck