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Harmala CWE experiment

Sakkadelic

Sakkadelic

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Recently, inspired by blig-blug's success with mimosa CWE I wanted to try the same with rue for the purpose of daily harmala use. But then I thought if it is effective, it makes sense to use it for harmala extraction, no more hours of smelly rue cooking and no messy filtration, it would take a few days to complete but the effort is much reduced. CWE doesn't make as much sense for dmt extractions because of the large water volume and we already have STB.
I will first outline the general steps and then go in more details about what I did in this first experiment and the results I got. Although I've been a big proponent of whole seed rue extractions, I believe for CWE griding the seeds is necessary, so that is the only high effort/power step.

Harmala rue CWE general steps:
  1. finely grind rue seeds, the finer the better.
  2. mix the ground seeds with an large volume of acidified water (2 L), let soak for 24h and mix it every few hours.
  3. for the last few hours let the extraction vessel stand undisturbed so the ground seeds can settle at the bottom.
  4. pour the the liquid through a cotton cloth into a large glass vessel (3 L), leaving the ground seeds behind. then top the ground seeds with fresh acidic water to begin the next soak.
  5. basify the liquid from the first soak and let settle for few hours.
  6. decant as much as possible of the liquid leaving the crude harmala freebase behind.
  7. acidify the harmalas with a minimal amount of acid so that they redissolve and pour through a coffee filter into a collection vessel, getting rid of undissolved stuff.
  8. by this time, or in some more hours, the second soak should be complete and steps 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are repeated. A total of 5 soaks should be enough to extract the majority (>90%) of the harmalas.
  9. the collected filtered acidic harmala solution is then based and 2-3 water washes are performed before drying and collecting the freebase.
The resulting harmala freebase is relatively clean due to CWE (+ settling) pulling less impurities, large volume of water decanted for each soak, and going through 2 A/B cycles and water washes. of course further purification steps like manske and more A/B cycles can be performed if desired.


for the first experiment I wanted to assess the efficiency of the water soaks and determine how many pulls are required so I performed steps 4,5,6,7, and 9 on each soak separately.
From here on I will refer to water soaks by pulls.
  • starting with 50g rue seeds, I ground them as fine as I could with a coffee/spice grinder Moulinex AR110, I passed the gorund seeds through a fine sieve and kept grinding until almost all of it passed, there is some at the end that won't grind fine enough and appear to be part of the seed hull.
  • I then added the ground seeds to a 2L PET plastic bottle, added 50 ml 5% distilled white vinegar and topped it with room temp water (I used mineral drinking water but distilled would be preferred). during the 24h soak I left the bottle on its side and shook it every few hours for a total of around 10 times. in the last few hours, after one last shake, I left it sitting upright for the seeds to settle (if your bottle has ridges give it a flick a couple of times during these last settling hours so that the fine sediment collected on the ridges would fall)
  • I poured the water into a 3L glass jar through a cottom cloth leaving the gorund seeds behind, some minor amount of floaters will be poured along and I just discarded it. I then added 50 ml of acid and topped the bottle with water.
  • I based with a strong NaOH solution (50g dissolvedin 500ml water). I use a glass pipette to add the base and stirr with a glass rod until the harmalas crash out and no more color change is observed, then I add a few more mls for good measure. If using pH paper, a pH of 11 should be enough. I then gave it a good stir to knock any freebase stuck at the surface, coverd it and let it settle overnight.
  • In the morning I decanted as much as possible of the liquid, acidified with vinegar until color change is observed and the solution becomes fluorescent again, I add a bit more acid for good measure but a lot of stuff won't dissolve so one should not keep adding acid. I let the solution rest for some hours for the impurities to settle, then pour the solution slowly through a coffee filter leaving the impurities till the end so they won't clog the filter early on.
  • I then based again using as little base as I could, let settle, decanted and did 2-3 water washes with at least 10x the volume each (I used mineral water with 7.9 pH). Finally I moved it to a narrow cup and let it settle in the fridge, poured off the water, and put it a wide dish to dry on the roof in the shade.
  • I repeated the same for the remaining 4 pulls and collected the freebase separately. The CWE liquid became dilute quickly which made the basification a bit tricky as it was hard to observe the harmala precipitation, so it's better to rely on color change or pH measurement. Also because of the low harmala concentration, the freebase started to crystalize even on first basification. The crystals make the harmalas appear much more than they are and then they break down and compress during water washes giving the impression of yield loss. At some point (pull 3 and 5) I attempted to squeeze the water out of the ground seeds hoping it would improve yields but it didn't seem to help significantly, but it could be that the seeds were already low on harmalas.
  • Finally, to make sure the seeds were depleted, I gave them a freeze/thaw and a 1h simmer, then proceed as above. However I experimented with freebase crystalisation on this pull so additional A/B cycles were done.

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Ground rue seeds.

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Dilution of harmala solution color with each successive pull, cloudiness in the last one from squeezing the ground seeds.

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Contrast between freebase harmalas from the first 5 pulls and pull 6

Pulls 4 and 5 yielded very little on first basificatiom so I combined them but after the water washes the amount was not worth recovering, I estimate it was around 100 mg.
Pull 6 went through 2 more A/B steps and crystalisations so it became much cleaner and there might have been additional losses so for a fair comparison I increased its 150 mg yield by 20% to 180mg.

And here's the full results

Pull 1: ......................................................... 1.41g /60.7%
Pull 2: ........................................................... 0.35g /15%
Pull 3 (+squeeze): ....................................... 0.28g /12%
Pull 4&5 (+squeeze): .................................. 0.1g /4.3%
Pull 6 (freeze/thaw+simmer+squeeze): ... 0.18g /7.8%

Total yield 2.32g / 4.6%

I usually expect around 6% from these seeds but I've had them since 8-9 years and the 50 g I used were traveling with me for many years and were stored in a plastic bag in a cupboard so they might have lost somr potency. In the next experiment I will use the same seeds but from the properly stored stash.

Disregarding pull 6 (the simmer), 2.14g / 4.3% were collected through CWE alone equating to 92.2% of the total alkaloids.

60.7% were collected on first pull alone, and I believe if I had poured off all the water from that pull and squeezed the seeds it would have reached 70% or a 3% yield (disregarding pull 6). This makes me think that CWE is actually not that effective pulling harmalas, and the grinding action on step 1 is the most effective step for releasing the harmala alkaloids.

The results from this first experiment are great in my opinion, considering the avoidance of the smelly rue cooking and the filtration hassle, especially when working with ground seeds. The steps can be followed as is for people who don't mind spending the time but I believe significant improvements can still be achieved. Here's some thoughts and potential ways of improvement:
  • Grinding the seeds further and using a finer sieve
  • Griding presoaked seeds with an immersion blender
  • Freeze/thaw cycles
  • Not filling the soaking bottle all the way to the top to allow for more aggressive shaking. When it's full shaking it feels more like gentle mixing.
  • Grinding the seeds with an immersion blender between pulls would be good but I want to avoid that for the mess free spirit of CWE.
  • 24h soak is probably overkill, 12h should be fine I believe, but I liked the 24h workflow where I can time it to a period where I know I'm likely to be free and freebase settling is done overnight. The workflow is generally very flexible and one can take as much time as they'd like. Once the acidified solutions are collected, the process is fast to get the cleaned freebase. It's possible to collect as freebase after first basification to reduce the number of steps but I felt that collecting it in salt form is safer against potential degradation.

I Plan on doing a second CWE experiment soon and try some of these ideas. Although I'm sure freeze/thaw cycles would work great, for now I want to try without it as I'd like to find a process with as little effort/power and discretnenss as possible so for now only the grinding is the effort/power extensive step. My goal would be to maximize yield on first 2 pulls and hopefully achieve above 90%.

Any feedback and thoughts on how to improve the process would be greatly appreciated!

I would like to thank @blig-blug for the discussions we had on the CWE process and I'm looking forward to hearing about the results of his CWE experiment.
 
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doubledog said:
Excellent post 😀
It would be worth to experiment with various water temperatures. RT water seems to be moderately effective, maybe maceration in 60°C or so could be also interesting approach.
I would definitely squeezed the seeds after each pull.
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Thanks!

Yes, it should be easy to try that with a sous vide cooker.

Regarding squeezing, on pull 3 I tried it and based the squeezed water separately, but the amount of alkaloids was very little and not worth processing, so I combined it with the the 3rd pull again. I expected a lot to come out with squeezing but it didn't, probably bcz the seeds were already almost depleted. In the next run I will squeeze after the first pull to maximize the yield. For later pulls I feel it is not worth it, transfering the seeds back into the bottle can be a bit messy and squeezing introduces more of the fine harmala looking impurities that clog filters.
 
doubledog said:
French press could be a very useful tool here, could help with gentle squeezing and overall manipulation with ground seeds.
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Oh yes, I do have a 1L press that I use for making cold brew coffee. I was also wondering if it could work well with less water and probably it would. The large volume of water seems to help getting cleaner extracts and can easily be removed with basification and decanting.
 
Thanks for sharing, @Sakkadelic!

İt's all very interesting combined with the recent thread that mentions a cold water extract of even caapi works.

For me, because of who knows which factors, without properly boiling I am not satisfied with the spirit power of the rue in the tea. Simmering without boiling does feel cleaner and smoother, but the spiritual opening that comes with boiling is just not there for me.

This doesn't change whether the water is acidified or not, and I prefer non acidified brews.

Straight up eating the seeds give the deepest, most powerful experience (and it's not just about higher efficiency of harmala alkaloid ingestion; the whole package has key ingredients which we know or do not know). But it is the roughest experience also and I reserve it for special occasions.

BTW, the smell of a cooking rue tea for me is among the most pleasurable things I can imagine. İt connects me to the Divine, and extremely powerfully if the seeds are fresh. İt kind of works like incense, but smoother as it is vapor.
 
dithyramb said:
BTW, the smell of a cooking rue tea for me is among the most pleasurable things I can imagine. İt connects me to the Divine, extremely powerfully if the seeds are fresh.
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I love the smell too. It works like a smudge and cleanses you and the space. Maybe you need some getting used to in the beginning, but enjoying it is easy. I cleansed a few houses that way: cooking rue seeds and reducing the tea inside 😂

"No evil or misfortune will come to a house or its surrounding forty houses where the smoke of Harmal is used."
 
Prima Materia said:
@dithyramb @northape regarding the harmala aroma ...

Did you ever think about working with P. harmala incense?
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One option is smudging sticks made with the harmala plant, the stalks dry up and die anyway. I've made it once mixed with sage but gifted it to a friend so I never got to try it.


@dithyramb I personally don't dislike the smell of cooked rue and I find the taste of dilute non acidified rue tea to be okay.
For extraction not having to cook it seems to be quite convenient, especially if one wants to be discreet or having a low imprint. For example when staying with my family, they are ok with me pursuing my peculiar "hobbies" but I still prefer to do things with as little disturbance as possible. I imagine with CWE one can make it by their bedside, with vinegar and soda carb from the grocery store (not unique to the CWE approch).

Regarding the full spectrum cooked rue effects, yes I do believe it to be a more proper/full medicine than purified alkaloids. And I do feel I have a special connection with the plant spirit, but perhaps a bit differently and less intensely than you do. My trips are dominated with my inner and existential struggles, it may be still a long way before I am able to let myself connet deeply to the divine.
 
Prima Materia said:
@dithyramb @northape regarding the harmala aroma ...
Did you ever think about working with P. harmala incense?
Click to expand...
I used 50/50 P. harmala and Palo Santo incense in all my rue ceremonies for the last few years. And by used, I mean the whole room was permeated with incense smoke. It's a good tool to ground, to go deeper, to purify, or send prayers. The usage pattern sounds like mapacho tobacco use, and it actually fulfills many of its roles. I'm a strong believer in rue incense.

Sakkadelic said:
Regarding the full spectrum cooked rue effects, yes I do believe it to be a more proper/full medicine than purified alkaloids. And I do feel I have a special connection with the plant spirit, but perhaps a bit differently and less intensely than you do. My trips are dominated with my inner and existential struggles, it may be still a long way before I am able to let myself connet deeply to the divine.
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Rue itself urged me to drink the tea. I don't know how much of it is real, but it worked for me. When it comes to the divine, it took me ten years of sublime misery to see the light.
It was always right here, but I was too focused on my stuff and some idea of healing. Our sense of being is the divine, and we see it all the time in life. Looking at a setting sun without much thought, but with a complete immersion in the present, is divine. Beyond that, God has a plan for everyone, and everything comes in due time. It's not about some guy on a cloud, but the mystery itself. Our little personas can never touch it, and it's the core of what we are. We're all dream characters here. The Dreamer is One.

🙏
 
Prima Materia said:
@dithyramb @northape regarding the harmala aroma ...

Did you ever think about working with P. harmala incense?
Click to expand...
I use rue incense all the time, much more frequently than I drink it. If you don't have access to charcoal, just putting the seeds on a pan and heating it is enough. It's good basic maintenance. People start the day with smudging their whole houses or workplaces with rue in Iran, I heard.

@Sakkadelic, I by no means am a totally liberated soul. I get tons of personal karmic processing in my experiences also. It's not mutually exclusive with having a taste of heavenly vibrations. The rue vibration itself is heavenly.

I understand the need to conceal your "esoteric hobbies" from your family (parents?). My life is all about these plants so my family, including my 4 year old daughter is very familiar with rue. We smudge each other every day and she loves it.
 
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