Haha thanks Loveall, I plan to update the tek someday but I still encountered weird stuff on my last extraction and I am not having time to do more kitchen experiments.

Yes, i always noticed this gunk that results from basing with NaOH and refuses to redisolve with vinegar. And I suspect it to be the thing that makes filtering harmalas a pain. So basing with NaOh is a good cleaning step.

I like to use  Na2CO3 for the final basing if I want to keep the freebase and I also add a few drops of strong NaOH solutiom to eliminate the yellow color from solution that remains after basing with Na2CO3, and a couple water washes after that. There's not much harmalas left in there but this results in purer looking harmalas.

Recently I wanted to try eliminating the gunk even before the first basing by just washing the seeds. I started with 75g seeds and I did several cold water soaks and 2 hot ones and I collected the water. I added NaOH and a lot of gunk precipitated, I cleaned the stuff as much as I could and only a tiny amount of harmalas was in there (70 mg) the gunk was 700 mg. I added pictures of the gunk.

More gunk came later in the extraction so washing alone is not enough to remove it, but I think it is useful to do a soak and discarding the water at the beginning. I don't know if that could help when drinking rue but I'll be doing a soak and some washes before preparing the tea whether for drinking or extraction.

Very interesting what you observed in the last post. The flakiness reminded me of the mysterious blobs i got in the past. These blobs survived 2 A/B cycles and a manske. If you identify the substance you got please let me know.

Thank you Loveall for all the beautiful work you do