Harmalas not dissolving in acetone?

[shooting_star]

Hi everyone! This is my first post here and I'm hoping someone can help me. I just finished my very first extraction, using a tek I found here for rue harmalas (link in last paragraph with additional info). I honestly thought the whole process was going really great, but admittedly was disappointed to weigh the product and find it was only about 0.5% yield (started with 81g of seed and came out with only 0.4g freebase). Then things got even worse, when I went to make my changa... When I added the freebase harmalas to my spice solution (already dissolved in acetone), the Harmalas didn't dissolve at all! I even added a bunch more acetone, but no luck. At this point I ended up decanting the spice solution off, and tossing the Harmala solids into vinegar and water, thinking I would just do another round of A/B. I was frustrated and not really thinking clearly, so I don't know if it matters that a small amount of acetone is now in the solution as well, (and hopefully only wasted a very small amount of spice).

Can anybody help me figure out what went wrong? I found this thread that mentioned a solubility of 200mg/50ml, and I had at least 100ml of acetone for the 400mg of Harmalas. This was at room temp of at least 23c, and plenty of agitation of the mixture. Maybe more dissolved than I realized, but if they did it was barely visible.

I used this tek for the harmala extraction, and left it as a mixture of harmine/harmaline without trying to separate those out. I'll include some pics of the extraction in case it's helpful. Oh and the only thing I did find strange, was that by the end of the process, the freebase solids were mostly floating in solution (in the early rounds they sunk to the bottom). But all the pics I've seen on here show them as a bottom layer, so now I'm wondering if I messed something up and if that's related to the solvating issue.

Anyway, I'm hoping to repeat an extraction soon and I'm optimistic that I'll get a better yield as I practice more, but would love to hear any thoughts or advice y'all have, as I'm very confused why they didn't dissolve. I admit I kind of panicked in my frustration there at the end, so maybe I just needed to let it sit for a while?

 

[TransistorBass]

If it helps for your next extraction, I used this TEK - Speedy No-Filter Harmalas Tek (draft) and got 5% Yield harmalas.

Would you have been better trying to dissolve your Harmalas in Alcohol to make Changa? (This is a question, I do not personally know)

 

[Jan e Kharabat]

Harmala freebase doesn't dissolve well in acetone, you'll have better luck with IPA but still the solubility is far from that of DMT. One way to make the changa the way you're trying to would be to dissolve harmala freebase in acetone or IPA first, add it to whatever herb or smoking material you have, evap, then do the same with DMT separately.