The theory seemed so good and simple, i always advised my friends interested in rue but not so into extractions to try it, though i never tried it myself.

So i attempted this method to see how effective it is and the results were way beyond what i expected, i thought i will get a crude extract but i got the usual golden chips i get with normal extraction, not the same purity but definitely a fairly good product.


I will detail the process here for those interested.




I soaked 35g of whole syrian rue seeds in some hot water for 30 mins, {added twice of their volume water and a bit of vinegar then microwaved them on high for 5 mins, filtered through a piece of cotton cloth, squeezed well the liquid out of the seeds by twisting the cloth}×5

The combined rue tea volume of 1.5L was filtered through a bottle with cotton stuffed at the neck

I reheated the tea in microwave and dissolved 200g of table salt in it, the tea was left to cool slowly for 8 hours then i stirred it gently and let the tiny crystals settle

I decanted the top layer and filtered the crystals with a coffee filter, then i pressed the water out of the fiter with tissues and dried it using a hair drier

The whole process is fast and very simple it took less than 12 hours to finish it

Farther purification steps can be done but i'm satisfied with this and i will test it soon

Sorry for the rotated images, anyone knows how to fix it?

The nexus automatically strips the (whateveryoucallit) data from images, including orientation data. You could try opening the picture in an image editing program, ensuring it is in the right orientation, then saving it as another file.

Thanks for posting your inspiring results, I'll have to dig out an old bottle of Rue tea that I have knocking around somewhere and give this a try. What's been stopping me is that it requires boiling off the alcohol that was used as a preservative and I'd rather do this through a distillation set up to recover the alcohol. That is a bit time consuming for me at the moment.

Cropping the images worked, thanks a lot for the advice

But how did you replace the previous images? I need to do this with a couple of photo's I've just uploaded.

I like the smiley face Sakkadelic, very creative!

Anyway, well done on your extraction, looks like you got a nice little yield there.

In the upper right hand corner of a post with uploaded pictures, there is an "attach" button (near the edit button). Click that and it gives you the option to delete pictures and/or the option to add more pictures.

Yes i had to delete them all to reach the first.. but there should be a way or if there isn't it should be added, one should be able to add the name of the picture between the [imj]name[/imj] <Trying to make them appear

Thanks i had one(120mg) of them yesterday before sleeping and had a night in Wonderland

Nice!

Sakadellic is da the seed wringer

7% wie ya he ya

Haha
I want to freebase some to see how pure it is but my scale is not precise enough, maybe if i freebase a whole gram i can work around it, 1g of pure harmala HCl should give 860 mg freebase?

Would an aeropress be useful for squeezing a rue soak?

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work because it basically acts as a french press. Personally, I like to use an old white t-shirt for squeezing and twisting the goods out of whole Rue seeds after each boil.

I'm curious about how much pressure one can exert on a given press installation. That Aeropress I'd prolly desintegrate it while enthusiastic singing Under pressure. I really think it's not about a mechanical straining technique here, but rather brute power needed to get the seeds empty.

For my next batch I was planning on the following: divide 100 gr seeds in 5 parts, that would be like euhh.. eh.. 20 gr each. Take 5 well sized handkerchiefs (and without lace for christ sake) and drop 20 gr in each. Tie those handkerchiefs with a fine rope, string, whatever. But make sure the seeds have max space available to swell as they do that.
Divine twine will lead to divine results obviously.

The seeds will not leave the temporal "bag" until discarding. You will not see the seeds back until them.
Drop the 5 bags in the pot with + dash of vinegar + minimal water level, just covering the bags, no more. Cook. Freeze thaw if you like.
Once cooled and hand warm, wearing plastic gloves, pick a bag and twist/squeeze, then the next ,..
Collect the squeezed waterzz.
Bags back in the pot, repeat the process 784.6 times
When to stop?
- til the squeeze water get clear;
- you could base the squeeze water of each boil session to see if something still precipitates.

I believe it's hard to find a mechanical press that surpasses a twisted towel/textile, while that press costs less that 5 pieces of textile.

I wanted to execute this idea and pour it in a thread later, but Sakkadelic here made me to reveal the new take-on here and now.
I've been doing the seed squeezing in handkerchiefs before with great success, but not in the closed tied bag-style as laid out here. Should be extremely handy I presume, to rid of all seed handling in and out of a towel to squeeze it. Note that your handkerchiefs will be harmala yellow from there on, a way to spot a fellow harmalist in the future, just watch the color of his handkerchief. For true ghetto style: use your underwear but people sure will confuse harmala yellowed underwear with acute incontinence.

Honestly I don't quite understand why you all so much want to press it out 'til the max. As, as far as my experience goes, there is very little left in this stuff.

But has anyone yet tried to use a grass juicer?
Could this work?
Probably not strong enough?

If I'm not mistaken you are referring your statement to ground seeds? That was how you worked if I remember correctly.

Once working with whole seeds and then still going home with 7% (HCL form) is quite a feat, and you can be darn sure the squeezing of the whole seeds adds to that.

This immediately shows that the grass juicer falls out of the whole-seeds department.
If one has such a juicer at hand it might work indeed, but then again it would not differ from any other method of grinding seeds I suppose, except for an expensive machine. If I had such a machine, I would first soak the seeds thoroughly wet before entering, because I suppose the grasses inserted are also fresh, dunno much about those thingies.

Ah OK, didn't get that whole seeds were used.

BTW: Do the results after the 1st Manske always look as in the pic above? I ask because I always get some bright pale yellow stuff after the first Manske. Nothing "golden" in it.

I get the same golden color everytime but in the tao of rue extraction they get copper color, and when the crystals are redissolved they get a clear but deep red solution and i get a clear yellow solution.. even the original tea looks different
By microwaving and pressing the seeds you use a minimal amount of water to fully extract the harmalas without extracting a lot of the impurities that would be extracted with longer boils and bigger volume of water..

Great idea jees i will try it next time with microwave, transferring the seeds every boil and squeeze is annoying..

I suggest enclosing the seeds in the textile and tie it with a knot, it's better than a fine rope and you can handle the bags from the knot and twist for easier squeezing.. also new strong textiles should be used bcz the acid and all the boils and pressure will weaken the textile, the old and used textile always gets ripped at the second twist with me.

Yep how-to-best must still be found. Just make sure your knot leaves enough space for the seeds in the bag to swell, they swell quite a bit. Maybe to let them swell first to max size and only then do them in their bags? This way you know they wont get bigger and allow for perfect bagging. Just some ideas. But that Divine Twine however ....
The bags system would:
- eliminate seed joggling;
- allow max pressure to empty them seeds;
- allow to work with a minimal water, the water (+ acid) added would be enough to re-fill the seeds, just covering the bags. Allows for a multitude of squeeze sessions and not ending with a lake of tea to evaporate.