A speedier harmala extraction would be most tubular and rad.
I'm sure if we all pool our notes, we can come up with some good insights.
Here's my current process. It's mostly the same process as on the wiki plus I tweaked it in order to reduce time spent filtering.
1.) Grind the rue and spoon the powder into teabags.
2.) Simmer for a while in either ph neutral or acidic water for somewhere between 20min and 120min.
Drain the solution into a collection vessel.
Rinse the teabags in hot water a few times and combine into the collection vessel.
3.) Strain solution through a gold filter, t-shirt, cheese-cloth, sort of thing. This should only take a minute.
4.) Reduce solution on stove top. The less liquid the better but there needs to be enough water that the harmalas don't drop out of solution and stick to the pot. I'm thinking like 200-500ml of water if extracting from 100g of seeds should be sufficient. Perhaps after several trials, a sweet spot can be determined.
5.) Strain again through gold filter to remove the crud that builds up after reducing.
6.) Add the now filtered and reduced solution to a large amount of hot salt saturated water. The water must be acidic or ph neutral. 500ml salt saturated water worked well when extracting from 100g of seeds.
*Instantly a precipitate forms as a sparkling mass of tiny crystals.
*Stir it with a chopstick for a couple minutes.
7.) Filter while still hot through a gold filter, etc. Again, this should only take a minute.
You can discard the liquid now or filter through a paper filter for a greater yield.
8.) Rinse the harmalas out of your filter using a minimum amount of hot ph neutral water. Collect the solution.
9.) Add your harmala containing solution to a large amount of hot sodium carbonate saturated water.
*Instantly a precipitate forms as a sparkling mass of tiny crystals.
*Stir with a chopstick for a minute.
10.) Filter while still hot through a gold filter, etc. Once more, this should only take a minute.
You can discard the liquid now or filter through a paper filter for a greater yield.
11.) While the harmalas are still in the filter, rinse with ph neutral water.
This will remove excess sodium carbonate. *I haven't actually tried this step.
12.) If freebase harmalas are your goal, rinse the harmalas out of the filter using ph neutral water (or your solvent of choice) and let dry. Otherwise, proceed with this recipe.
13.) Use a minimum of hot acidic water to rinse the harmalas out of the filter and stir until fully dissolved, adding more liquid if necessary.
Let them dry or keep liquid for tincture.
*If you use vinegar to acidify the water, and evaporate, all the excess acetic acid will evaporate. Otherwise there may be contamination present from a non-volatile acid.
That's it in a nutshell. Next time I do this, I'll take a stopwatch and record my time on each step. If any one else wanted to do the same, we could compare times and that would be cool.
These aren't the droids you're looking for.