Hello everyone!

I am hoping someone can help me figure out what is going on,and what to do next.

I am doing my first Rue extraction and everything was going fine and then I ran into
a problem.
I did my first Base on the liquid, let sit and separate. Then decanted/filtered and collected the Alks.

Do you let these dry before dissolving them in the vinegar/H20 solution? I did not.

When I added the Alks to my hot water and vinegar solution they did not seem to dissolve.
I could see them floating around in the solution. After ,many minutes heated and stirred.

Is this normal?

Then I filtered (2 coffee filters) the soup anyway. and it seems I have only filtered out the vinegar/H20 solution.
It looks like I collected the exact same Alks in the filter again, same amount and color.

Any idea whats going on with this. It seems like such a simple step in the process but I just cant figure out what to do next.

I have what looks like the Alks drying in a coffee filter, and the left over H20/vinegar in a jar.


I thought the Alks would dissolve in the solution and when I filtered only a small amount of impurities would be left. I also did not get the color to change from the murky yellow to the clear reddish.

Any ideas?


should I let the Alks dry and try to redissolve into a solution again?
Or is what I filtered out the actual impurities?

Any thoughts and or advice would be appreciated.

Thank you Nexus!

I have the same issue with a large batch of harmalas I just tried. After filtering the based powder(i let mine dry) I tried to redissolve it in a clearly excessively acidic solution, but no dice. idk what's gone wrong but I decided to try stepping on and the salt precipitation yielded a whopping nothing.

So I would hold onto the solid in your filter, and maybe add like 100ml of fresh water to a sample of the solid, so you can test the ph of it. If it comes back acidic or basic, that'll be a hint to what you can do. If you used too much base, maybe you're now not using enough vinegar.

ICON I am glad you chimed in, because I was going to try to go ahead and salt the remaining solution.
But now i will not.

I tried to redissolve the ALKs in the solution again and got the same material. I do not have anything
to test the PH with. sadly.
The Alks are now drying in a filter and i will save them, Along with the remaining solution.

Let me know if you find a solution to this hiccup.

Has this happened to anyone else? I hope someone can help me work this out.