Rue Seed Extraction

[childofthetao]

I finally got my rue seeds

Can someone link to to an easy extraction please? I've found a few but they seem complex, I extracted alkaloids from rue seeds once before, it was a nice simple tek that unfortunately has fled my memory.

Thanks

 

[SnozzleBerry]

I'm working on a pictorial that will be up in a week or two, depending on when my new seeds get here, but if the extraction in the FAQ was too complex, allow me to propose a simple outline...

Preparation
Take your rue seeds and grind them up...place them in a linen bag of some sort (pillowcase works great) and boil them in slightly acidified (I use vinegar) water for 30 minutes. There should be enough water that the seeds are submerged the whole time. After 30 minutes, pour off the water into another pot. Repeat this step twice, for a total of three acid boils of your seeds.

Once you have collected your rue tea you can either reduce it or go straight to manske...personally I like to reduce, but to each their own

Manske
After reducing or not...bring your tea to a boil and add in as much rock salt (or other non-iodized salt) until no more will dissolve. Once you have super-saturated the solution, pour off your salted-tea into a container and store it in the fridge overnight (call it 6 hours minimum) to allow the precipitates to settle.

Strain your precipitate-laden tea through coffee filters to collect all of the very impure alkaloids

A/B
Once you have collected the alkaloids, redissolve them in acidified water (again, I use vinegar) and pour the solution through a funnel with a coffee filter. You shouldn't need to replace filters due to using a linen bag earlier in the extraction, but you can replace them if you wish to speed things up. After your liquid is initially filtered, you can filter it again through multiple coffee filters to collect more contaminants. After filtering, you may discard the used filters as they are trash.

Add a base into your filtered acidified harmala solution - personally I use small amounts of water and NaOH as it takes remarkably small quantities to shoot up the pH and I find it to be rather easy, however you can use sodium carbonate or ammonia to great effect as well. When you basify, the entire solution will color-change as the harmala alkaloids precipitate. Place your container in the fridge and allow the freebase harmalas to settle. Once they have settled, pour off the liquid through a coffee filter and collect your alkaloids on the filter.

Repeat the A/B step as many times as you like to further clean your product. I have found that a total of 4 a/b's gives a very, very light tan product that, ime, is rather pure

 

[childofthetao]

Thank you SnozzleBerry, that sounds like a great tek, Ill be following it.

One question, is non-iodized salt labelled as "non-iodized"? I saw some rock salt the other day, I didn't notice weather it was labelled as "non-iodized" or not but with it being rock salt, does that mean that it WILL be non-iodized? I have everything ready to do this except the salt.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

I know that iodized salt is labelled as such, but rock salt should be non-iodized by definition, I believe. Just take a glance at the ingredients and make sure it only lists NaCL.

 

[childofthetao]

I need a little reassurance, I don't like the idea of adding lye or ammonia just to reduce the PH, they are deadly are they not?

A while back, I did an extraction, is was very similar to what you wrote, but the tek I used never said anything about lowering the PH and so I never did it. I presume NOT lowering the PH would lower the yield?

 

[Xt]

Childofthetao, those things may not be good to consume but by the nature of the physical property's they should not be in the end result.
Otherwise things would be very different in the drug world, phosphorus oxychloride was used in some lsd manufacturing techniques... you can bet it wasn't in the lsd. This is chemistry, not cooking.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

I need a little reassurance, I don't like the idea of adding lye or ammonia just to reduce the PH, they are deadly are they not?

A while back, I did an extraction, is was very similar to what you wrote, but the tek I used never said anything about lowering the PH and so I never did it. I presume NOT lowering the PH would lower the yield?

Well, bases (such as ammonia and lye) raise pH, they don't lower it. The purpose of raising the pH is to convert the salt-alkaloids to freebase-alkaloids, which are insoluble in water, so that they precipitate out of the solution.

Also, what xtechre said :d

 

[childofthetao]

I got them the wrong way round :/ I did mean to say raise the PH.

It seems I'm being paranoid about the lye, is there any specific PH level to be reached? Or just get it as high as possible?

 

[childofthetao]

Oh man, I have so far done this:

Take your rue seeds and grind them up...place them in a linen bag of some sort (pillowcase works great) and boil them in slightly acidified (I use vinegar) water for 30 minutes. There should be enough water that the seeds are submerged the whole time. After 30 minutes, pour off the water into another pot. Repeat this step twice, for a total of three acid boils of your seeds.

Once you have collected your rue tea you can either reduce it or go straight to manske...personally I like to reduce, but to each their own

Stupid me forgot to put vinegar in it though :O

How can I save the situation?

 

[endlessness]

add now then. You didnt throw away the seeds yet did you? just do another couple of boils on them with fresh vinegar water

 

[childofthetao]

I still have everything, what should I do with the un-acidic brown liquid that I have? Throw it away? What exactly is the brown stuff in there anyway, something I want to keep or throw?

 

[SnozzleBerry]

I would do a normal number of acid boils on the seeds and then add the non-acid extracted tea to the acid-tea and reduce it slightly, that way you don't lose any alks that did fall out in the non-acid tea

 

[endlessness]

there should be alkaloids in the unacidified brew.. The alkaloids in rue are naturally in salt form (its slightly acidic) therefore they will be water soluble, but adding vinegar can help get more of the alkaloids out. So as snozz said, just put it all together later on.

 

[Apoc]

there should be alkaloids in the unacidified brew.. The alkaloids in rue are naturally in salt form (its slightly acidic) therefore they will be water soluble, but adding vinegar can help get more of the alkaloids out. So as snozz said, just put it all together later on.

Wouldn't people want the end product to be in salt form, so they can eat it? Why not just stick with the salt crystals from the Manske tek? Or, on the other hand, why not basify the brew first so you know you got all your harmalas (I read Manske has low yield compared to basifying), and then acidify and add salt? Isolating the harmalas with base would minimize the liquid to be used when adding salt. It would take less salt to saturate the solution. I don't know if that's good or bad. I just wonder because I have failed with harmalas on every attempt.

Or what if you just threw some baking soda in with a rue brew and theorhetically, harmine should precip, or a harmine concentrate should sink to the bottom of the container. I ask because baking soda is not bad to consume in small amounts, so it should be ok if the end product has some baking soda. I want to know if anyone else has tried and succeeded. I tried.... I failed.

 

[Ljosalfar]

Or what if you just threw some baking soda in with a mimosa brew and theorhetically, harmine should precip, or a harmine concentrate should sink to the bottom of the container.

Does Mimosa contain harmine? How much?
Is baking soda a strong enough base to precipitate harmalas?
My limited understanding is no to both - can someone clarify (no pun intended!) this?
L

 

[Apoc]

Does Mimosa contain harmine? How much?
Is baking soda a strong enough base to precipitate harmalas?
My limited understanding is no to both - can someone clarify (no pun intended!) this?
L

No mimosa doesn't have harmine. Some people suggest that mimosa has its own RIMA, which is suspected to be yuremamine, but I'm not sure if this has been confirmed. I believe the pka for harmine is 7.70, while hamaline pKa is 9.80. The ph of baking soda is about 8, which fits it perfectly to extract harmine, the more commonly desired harmala. In theory that is. I don't haven't heard anyone succeeding with this method. I hope it gets confirmed.

oops, in my above post I meant to ask about throwing in baking soda with syrian rue, not mimosa.

 

[childofthetao]

I have just added the salt, attempting to supersaturate the soup, I put way too much salt in and there is a thick brown sludge in the bottom of the pan I was boiling it in (after pouring into a jar to put in the fridge).

I presume the brown sludge is just salt? Should I add that to the jar that goes in the fridge or throw it away?

EDIT, the jar I will be putting in the fridge has small holes in the lid, does it have to be air tight?

 

[childofthetao]

Here's what I was thinking of doing, adding all the brown salty stuff back to the jars, add lots of water to the whole thing (in a pan) so the salt dissolves and then reduce. Will that work?

 

[endlessness]

it might be salt or it might have some harmalas that precipitated first too.. I dont think you should add back to the jar, I think you should keep them separate, let the rest precipitate well. With this, that might be mostly salt and a bit of harmalas, I would dissolve in hot water and add sodium carbonate to see if any freebase harmalas crash out. If anything does, you can always just filter to retrieve it and redissolve back with the rest in acidified water if you do another round of cleaning afterwards.

This way you want have all this salt contamination with your main jar.

 

[childofthetao]

I added everything back together already before you replied. Then I added a bit of water so it all dissolved. I then poured it into a jar and put it in the fridge.

Does this mean that I have impaired the quality of the MAOI?

EDIT: Seeing as I added some water, the liquid in the jar will not be as acidic as it was. Should I add a little vinegar or does that not matter at this stage?