Rue Trouble :(

[OneFive]

Hi, i'm desperate for some advise please.
I'm extracting harmala from syrian rue.
I based the 1.5 ltrs of boiled/reduced rue juice, earlier today.
I'm following the Tao of Rue by the way.
Decanted the top portion, and this where im having trouble.
I'm supposed to disolve the harmala with vinegar and water then filter and add salt, but when i added the hot water/vinegar it didnt disolve the harmal and its acting like ive based it again.
I took 100ml of white vinegar and 800ml of boiling water, mixed them then added them to the harmala.
Last time i did this i did a 50/50 mix of water/vingar and had no problems.
I dont know what to do from here.
Any advise would be great, thanks

 

[arcologist]

You need to add significantly more vinegar to neutralize the base from the previous step, why did you add 800ml of water? Should have added only vinegar until the harmalas dissolved, sometimes it can take 400-500ml. You might need to reduce the liquid volume with heat after this step to make it manageable. You should be able to get it down to less than 1L unless you are extracting loads of rue.

 

[OneFive]

You need to add significantly more vinegar to neutralize the base from the previous step, why did you add 800ml of water? Should have added only vinegar until the harmalas dissolved, sometimes it can take 400-500ml. You might need to reduce the liquid volume with heat after this step to make it manageable. You should be able to get it down to less than 1L unless you are extracting loads of rue.

The tek says "add hot water and vinegar", it then later states, "use minimal vinegar".
After re reading these sentences about a hundred times, i thought he/she meant use hot water with a touch of vinegar.
I added 800ml water because i wanted space for the needles to grow.
I did all of this from 300grams of rue.. A big cook..
Thanks for your help

 

[tryptographer]

Here's a quote from the official Tao of Rue:
"Once you have redissolved your alkaloids in a minimal amount of fresh, hot vinegar and then filtered the solution, it's time to perform the manske."

Too much water indeed, vinegar is usually only 5%, very dilute already.

Don't throw anything away, the alks are there! Boil off the excess water, start again and add pure vinegar until everything dissolves, then Manske...

 

[Infundibulum]

OneFive, "minimal amount of vinegar" is not equivalent to "a tiny bit of vinegar" - it means add as much vinegar as necessary for salting the harmalas which, depending on your scale of extraction, may be a fair amount of vinegar.

 

[OneFive]

TAO:"After you have decanted the basic (high ph) lye water off the top, you want to add some hot vinegar and water to your freebase alks to redissolve everything back into the solution as harmala acetates. Once your alkaloids are redissolved, filter out anything that won't dissolve. This is mostly plant matter and oils."
Then i was adding the salt.
Because at this point its already dissolved and filtered and hot, so add the salt

I took my water/vinegar mix last night and decided not to wait for a nexus reply but to take action myself.
So i added a sodium carb mix and the goodness fell back out.
I since added hot vinegar and did the salt bit.
I have lovely fiber glass looking stuff on the go.
Tomorrow night i will collect the needles cook them a bit in water , filter, then add hot vinegar, then the salt, one more time before the final basing..
I'll add some pics of my needles tomorrow ..
what a palava