Step one

Grind rue seeds in blender or grinder (for the making of this guide 200 grams were used, but adjust
to your desired quantity). If you freeze the seeds beforehand, they will be easier to grind.

Step two
Boil for half an hour in water with a little dash of vinegar. No need to be exact with amount of
water, just dont use too little that it forms a thick syrup, better give a bit more water space for the
alkaloids to move out to.

Step three
Pour the water out and keep it in a separate container, filtering in some very coarse filter such
as very loosely-put cotton on the bottom of a funnel or even better an old tshirt/cloth.

Step four
Put the seeds back in the pot, with more fresh water and dash of vinegar, and repeat steps 2-4
for a total of 3 or 4 times.

Step five
Put together the liquids from all the boils and discard the solids

Step six
Filter in a funnel with cotton plug. Be patient, it may take some minutes. It goes faster when there
is a lot of liquid in the funnel to press down on the rest. If its taking much too long, filter again once or
twice through a coarser cloth filter or dont pack the cotton plug so tightly.

Step seven
Repeat step 6 packing the cotton tighter for removing finer particles

Step eight
Put filtered liquid back in the pot to reduce in low fire. If you had, say, 4 liters of filtered rue tea,
reduce to 1l so that its more manageable later.

Step nine
After reducing, filter again like in steps 6 and 7 because more solid impurities will have appeared in
the process of reducing.

Step ten
Slowly add sodium carbonate (or lye) to your harmala tea At first it might bubble from sodium
carbonate reacting with acetic acid from vinegar until it neutralizes. Dont add too fast or it might
bubble up and make a mess. After it stops bubbling, the colour starts changing as the pH rises and
alkaloids start precipitating. Keep adding a bit of sodium carbonate even after colour stopped
changing, just to make sure everything will precipitate. Dont worry if there's a lot of sodium carbonate
because any excess will be removed in the next step. Let it rest for at least a couple of hours in the
fridge, and then filter with a coffee filter.

This time you want to keep the alkaloids so you have to use a finer filter that wont let the alkaloids
pass, like a cloth or cotton might. Therefore, has to be like a coffee filter and this step may be slower.
Some shortcuts can be made which is to use a vacuum filtering system, and if one cannot afford a
propper one, it can be improvised at very low cost, or adapting a paper filter in a french coffee press.

If you use lye, it will make for an easier filtering. If you dont want to use lye, use sodium carbonate.

harmala tea changing to lighter color as sodium carb is added

''' This is a mix of harmaline and harmine + some unwanted alkaloids, vasicine, deoxyvasicine and
vasicinone. They will be removed later on during step 12'''

Step eleven
Redissolve the Harmalas in hot water+vinegar (1:3 vinegar:water for example)

Step twelve
Filter a couple of times with coffee filter. Now there are less impurities, so using a fine filter like
coffee filter, a few times, will help getting more and more rid of the finer impurities too. Your alkaloids
should be dissolved in the liquid so any solid/color that stays in the filter is impurity. A coarse filter
would not be enough, needs to be coffee filter or even two stacked up. The colours change
beautifully from the yellowish salt precipitation to the clear reddish colour when redissolved.

Step thirteen

Decanting the rue tea after having added the salt, when one adds a lot (200g/l). Notice the salt that stays behind.
When adding 100g/l the brew stays transparent after all salt is dissolved, and takes hours to start precipitating

Saturate the solution with salt. Have the tea boiling in a pot, and add 100-120g salt per liter of
water. Let it cool down to room temperature slowly over the next couple of hours, and then you can
stick it in the fridge. After 3-5 hours, the harmalas will have crystallized. If you add more salt (closer
to 200g per liter), the harmalas precipitate faster but less pure and more powdery than crystally.

What is happening here is that with excess of salt, the harmalas get the Chlorine ions from salt and
precipitate in the salt harmala form, harmine and harmaline HCl, which are insoluble in salt saturated
water therefore precipitate. In this step one removes the uterotonic and possibly more toxic alkaloids
vasicine and vasicinone, dangerous specially for pregnant women because they are abortifacient.
Analysis done by Shulgin and others have shown salt-precipitated harmalas to be indeed free of
these mentioned alkaloids.
Picture of the harmala salts precipitating in the second or third round. Notice the lighter precipitating alkaloids
and the yellower liquid.

Step fourteen
Redissolve your harmala salts in hot water and repeat steps 10-13 a few times to make
product cleaner. When repeating step 10, specially on the last run when you dont want any excess
sodium carbonate, I recommend, instead of straight away putting the sodium carbonate in the tea,
better heating some water to around 50c (around the limit where you can touch the water without
burning yourself), and adding excess sodium carbonate, shaking/stirring, to make a saturated
solution, and filtering/decanting away from excess sodium carbonate. Then, with this sodium carb
solution, add it slowly to the solution of your dissolved harmalas.

I recommend repeating the steps 10-13 at least 3 times. I also recommend always doing in this
alternating order, precipitating the salt, then redissolving in warm water, precipitating the base,
redissolving in warm acidic water, repeat again, until its clean enough for you. In the first runs it is a
darker brown, and then it gets progressively lighter yellower, like in these pictures:
Picture of harmala salts from salt precipitation getting lighter with repetitions. For pictures of how the harmala
bases look, check lower down the guide

Step fifteen
Redissolve the Harmalas in hot water (no need for vinegar as salt-precipitated harmalas are
very water soluble already)

''' For keeping the mixed harmalas, read step 16, for separating harmine and harmaline, go to step
17'''

Step sixteen
Slowly add a sodium carbonate saturated solution to your dissolved harmalas. As you add the
sodium carbonate solution, you will see the harmala solution changing color. Keep adding slowly until
you see no more color change. Let the harmalas precipitate over a couple of hours in the fridge,
decant/filter with coffee filter, dry them up and you're ready to go :)

Or if you want to separate harmine from harmaline:

Step seventeen
This step is only if you want to separate harmine and harmaline. For this process we use the
difference in their pKa, which is basically the measure that says at a certain pH, how many of its
molecules will be freebase or in salt form. Harmine becomes a freebase in a pH where most
harmaline is still salt, so one can separate them. If you have accurate pH meter, at pH 8,75, 92% of
harmine present in rue will precipitate while only 8% of the harmaline present will precipitate. Add
sodium carbonate saturated solution till pH 8,75 or add sodium bicarbonate saturated
solution freely till it stops changing colour and a bit more, to precipitate harmine. Wait at least
half an hour and filter with coffee filter, and add sodium carbonate freely to precipitate harmaline.
Wait at least 2 hours and then filter with coffee filter to retrieve your harmaline. Note that depending
on the original ratio of harmine and harmaline, there might be considerable amounts of harmine in
your supposed harmaline. Check this thread for more info. If one really wants mostly pure harmaline,
one can redissolve the harmaline and again precipitate with same selective pH, and the first
precipitation will be most of the harmine and the second will be purer harmine. Dry and enjoy :)

The more one repeats the whole process, the cleaner the alkaloids get. I recommend repeating and
alternating a few times between the salt precipitation and the freebase precipitation, with more runs
on the salt than on the freebase. The reason for this is because even at a high pH, it is possible that
a small quantity of harmaline still does not precipitate, so every basing could lose a small amount of
it. It might not be such a significant quantity but maybe if one repeated many many times one could
lose some alkaloids. One could make for example 3x salt precipitation, 1x base, again 1 or 2x salt
and 1 or 2x base. If one does this, this is what happens:

In the first two or so base precipitations the product Then after repeating the clean ups it starts getting
browner, with maybe a dark pink tone. lighter tan.

And after one or another clean up run, the final products can be such as this:

Harmine Harmaline
 Materials Required
Source Material:

 Syrian Rue (seeds)

Solvents:

 Water
Reagents/Desiccants:

 Salt (rock salt or iodine free table salt)

 Vinegar

 Sodium Carbonate (which can be made from sodium bicarb by putting in the oven on high
for an hour or two)

 Sodium Bicarbonate (optional. Either you can make sodium carb from it if you dont have,
or also it would make your life easier if you want to separate harmine from harmaline. If you
only have sodium carb and want to separate harmine from harmaline you'll also need a pH
meter)

 Lye (optional)
Equipment:

 Funnel

 Coffee Filters

 Cotton

 2 big pots for boiling and transfering liquids

 2 big jars for transfering liquids