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I pass all credits to the lab coats and the people carrying this site.
About "household": it sounds friendly but lye etc is to be taken carefully.

No need to use lye if you can get baking soda!

You can use the baking soda to precipitate harmine, then take some baking soda that you have baked in the oven at 400F for a few hours (sodium carbonate) and use that to precipitate harmaline.

You probably already know this Jees, just passing a friendly reminder along in the thread.

I've been researching syrian rue extractions and this definitely seems like easiest method I've seen. Awesome job man I'm going to try this pronto.

Agreed, I like this method. I am currently testing it out on 300g of whole seeds but I am substituting sodium carb for lye. Also I did regular acid boils (5x1h and squeezing in an old shirt) on the stove versus the microwave. Right now I am at the first basification with 1L of rue tea. Waiting for it to cool a bit before basing.

I the idea of not having to filter so much! I plan on doing at least one filter during one (or more) acid stages. Thank you guys for putting out this useful information!

May your endeavors be blessed

When thinking lately about the workflow, I wondered if it might be beneficial to get the seeds more full of water before the first freezing act. So that the water in the seeds do a better freeze action. For this I thought maybe to do a first boil so the seeds can soak up max water. Then freeze/thaw.

I was thinking about the same thing jees but we are doing more than enough, my next objective is to minimize the time and make sure it works on larger scales maintaining 6% yields. I'm glad people are liking this method and i'm interested to know the yields u will get The Grateful One

Okay, so here we are so far and this is what has happened:

0. Freeze and thawed whole seeds 3 times

1. Boiled 300g whole seeds with approximately 1-1.5L of water and dash of vinegar for each 1 hour boil. 5 times. (did an extra two boils (total of 7x1 hour boils) on it just in case, haven't based the extra boils or anything yet).

2. Squeezed liquid out of seeds using an old white T-shirt after each boil. By the 7th boil, the liquid being squeezed was nearly completely clear, like water. The t-shirt also acted as a filter for each boil, obviously.

3. Reduced squeezed liquid down to 1L on stove. Allowed it to cool. Poured into 32oz "beaker" ...it is actually the glass part of a french press with all other parts removed... I actually ended up splitting it into two glass "beakers"

4.Based with sodium carbonate until the color stopped changing. Allowed to settle at room temp for a couple hours and then allowed to settle overnight in the fridge.

5.Carefully poured off the liquid. Kept the solids.

6. Boiled some water and vinegar and allowed it to cool for a couple minutes (approximately 2L...1L for each beaker). Poured this into the solids/mud. Allowed whatever goodies time to dissolve and stirred it thoroughly.

7.While the solution was still very hot I saturated each beaker with Salt. Stirred thoroughly. Allowed to cool at room temp for several hours and then in the fridge again overnight.

8.Carefully decanted the liquid and then filtered the solids through coffee filters to catch the goodies. I must note that the filtering at this stage went much faster than normal.

9. Redissolved the harmala salts into their respective beakers in approximately 1L of hot vinegar and water per beaker. Once dissolved and the color changed back to that beautiful deep dark red/brown, I decided to filter through a coffee filter. Kept liquids, discarded solids.

10. Based acidic solution with sodium carbonate again until the color stopped changing (mustard yellow). Allowed to cool and then placed in fridge to settle.

This is currently where I am in the process. I know it is not exactly how Sakkadelic wrote it up but I am mixing and matching things from different teks here and there. But it is basically the same concept. It is much easier with whole seeds. WAY LESS TIME CONSUMING FILTERING! That is the best part about it.

Now, I could recover my freebase and use as is but I think I will do at least one water wash seeing as I have not done one yet. I may also acidify and do another manske just to purify further. Then I'll convert it to freebase one last time and report the final yield.

The pic is showing where I am right now. The freebase harmalas are settling in the fridge. The dark brown sludge beaker on the far left is what was left after I based the original boiled tea again to see if anything was missed. The jug behind the yellow filled beakers is the remaining Rue tea (the last two "extra" boils) that I plan on going through this whole process with to see if anything remains. So no final yield yet but you can probably get an idea just by looking at this pic. These beakers are 32oz....seems to be a decent amount...not sure about 6 or 7% but then again I have only extracted Syrian Rue a handful of times so I am by no means, an expert!

*Got my camera working! Hooray!*

Keep up the good work

I find the liquid above the FB to be very yellow, is it based enough with the sodium carbonate? At pH 10 you have 99.5% of the harmine in FB, yet 2/3 of the harmaline is still in water solution, just to give an idea. What is the pH in those pots please?

I'm not used to work with sodium carbonate, could be that too making the yellow.

I think it could be the sodium carbonate because at this stage(assuming that it's been settling for enough time) even if the ph is low and the harmine/harmaline is still in the salt form the solution will look watery yellow not milky yellow.
the grateful one, thank u for ur work and at the end of step 6 did all the solids dissolve? If yes then using a shirt will help reducing 2 steps of the tek.

Yes that is important to know, TGO will tell us soon

This is how my basings look like with lye till pH 12:


I've always been a tad anal about having all the alks precipitated, and wondered if some lower yield reports are result of losing alks by not basing high enough.

What about simply boiling seeds,ensuring they are filtered, then basing them once. Would that be good enough as a freebase to use, if one isn't overly fussy?

It would be an improvement over plain seeds or a tea thereof. It would still contain appreciable amounts of substances other than harmaline and harmine, for example vasicine and vasicinone. In some respects, these are interesting compounds in their own right. They can however cause uterine distress in females, potentially even provoke an abortion.

Yes, good point; Well done for pointing that out, but i'm a male, so i've no issues with the extra Alk's. Thing is i've read others saying these purification steps are good, but at cost of potency and full MAO inhibition per req'd dose. It's a case of balance.

I'm not sure what the pH is because I do not own a pH meter... I think I'll order one today! Any tips on what brand to use would be much appreciated! It was indeed very yellow! You can't tell from the picture but it was more of clear yellow than milky yellow, as Sakkadelic mentioned.

When I took the picture the mix had been sitting in the fridge for about an hour. The harmalas settled very fast. I let it sit overnight again regardless. What is strange is that it slowly lost that bright yellow color and started turning back into that brownish red color. I added more sodium carb today when I got off work and now the mix is brown and settling just in case if I did not base it enough. Don't know if that color change is normal or not...?

Any other time I've used sodium carbonate the solution turns yellow upon basing and deep red/brown upon acidifying.



Yes, mostly. There were some impurities that settled, but not a lot which is why I went ahead and saturated with salt at that point. Then when I filtered during the next acidic stage, it went through coffee filters pretty easily with minimal impurities.

Like I mentioned above, the liquid above the FB harmalas was pretty clear except for the yellow tint. Hope this clears things up a bit!

EDIT: I can't see your picture for some reason, Jees!

Are you referring to this recent post in particular? That is the only report that I have so far seen that claims this. It is not my personal experience. I see no mechanism for how the potency would drop, nor did the reported indicate any possible explanation. Based on my information, I wouldn't classify this as a tested and established fact, more as a single personal report.

IMHO you should simply perform the different purification stages yourself and try the results of different grades of purification for yourself. If you can find repeatable results, please report them here, so we can increase and refine our common body of knowledge.

1 hour settling time is not enough, then there are still a lot of fines (FB) drifting in the water making the water yellow-ish. After those fines are also settled then you get the darker color because the bright fines are now all down. So it looks pretty normal what you describe.
Personally I keep repeating some A/B transits ( & filtering each acid state, finer filter each time) until the water above the settled FB is kinda clear (see pic below). Then I do my first manske. Just a habit of workflow.

You must have forgotten to pay your contributions?
It does show on my screen, will attach here extra:

Ok, thanks for clarifying that.

I've never done more than 2 manskes, can't see the benefit for more, also because I do manske after several A/B's first that do the major cleanup.

I generally let particles settle overnight (which is what I did with the beakers in the photo) which is why this process is taking several days. I just wanted to snap an early photo and share. The liquid above the FB became much clearer after sitting overnight, as usual. Nowhere near as clear as your photo but I am still getting the hang of this process, trying to find what works best for me. I appreciate all the feedback and advice!

However, it seems like I am losing product somewhere though because I am currently drying out the FB and it looks like it couldn't be more than 10 grams. Albeit quite pure, I'd imagine. Is it possible that sodium carbonate should not be used as the original base, but perhaps use it later in the process? I mean, it works, clearly but I wonder if it is as efficient as using lye first and then switching to sodium carbonate later in the process...just a thought. I believe lye is a more effective base, for sure, but I like to keep things food safe whenever possible. But I make exceptions sometimes...

Also, I saved the liquid from the original 5 boils and based it again. More harmalas precipitated! That seems to prove that I either:

1. Did not add enough base to begin with or

2. Sodium Carbonate will not effectively precipitate all the harmalas on the first go.

It should be noted that these are just ideas and by no means fact. When I get my pH meter it will make experimenting much more accurate and it will allow me to see where I might be losing alkaloids.

Edit: I also only do two Manskes.