I'm attempting the "Easy Caapi Vine Alkaloid Extraction Guide" using 30g of black caapi vine. I was wondering if anyone here has done this before and can give me some feedback/assistance.

I first boiled the finely shredded vine in a 250 mL beaker filled with dilute vinegar 4x and then reduced the extracts to 200 mL. Then I filtered the vinegar (which the tek did not mention yet, but it seems highly unlikely that all the alkaloids were in the insolubles) and transferred to a 250 mL graduated cylinder. I added 30 mL 10% NaOH and stirred. The solution immediately became darker but nothing precipitated, so I added another 20 mL. It has been sitting for about an hour now and still there is nothing but a miniscule amount of what looks like plant matter sitting on the bottom of the container.

If anyone can give me any pointers it would be greatly appreciated. The only thing I can figure is maybe the batch is bunk. I'll have to wait and make a tea to see if the vine is active, but it will probably be a while before I get around to that.

If the "black caapi" you got was Alicia anisopetala then your expectations are just too high. Alicia has never been shown to contain harmala alkaloids. Or anything useful at all for that matter.

If your "black caapi" was indeed Banisteriopsis caapi then there is something seriously wrong with your tek. Reading your description though, it seems sound to me. But then I'm no authority on harmala extraction tek. Others may see fit to chime in.

My bet is that you got Alicia.

I don't think there actually is a "black" b caapi. From what I gathered from the small amount of research I did before ordering this stuff, Alicia anisopetala was what is referred to as black caapi, and I was under the impression that it had quite a bit of harmalas in them. A few people claimed to have strong effects off 10-20g and the person who made the tek said he got 1.3g of harmalas from 60g of bark. After further reading it seems most people can't get anything out of it, so I wonder what's going on here? It's too bad I wasted $50 on this stuff, live and learn I suppose.

Can you please share the details of this? Thank you.

I believe some BC (not Alicia A) has gotten some folklore "Black" label somewhere by some people. It's not even close to a botanically determination.

You have to be sure it was Alicia-A or a BC type of wood.

Like I said, I did very little research. I found the tek in the Nexus wiki and then googled "black caapi." Prior to receiving the bark, I saw lots of reports of people saying it was very strong and was actually Alicia anisopetala, and then after failing an extraction I looked into it some more and found that this Alicia plant has no harmalas in it and many people have failed to extract anything from it. So what I'm thinking is that 1) I need to do a lot more research next time, and 2) there are two different plants being sold as black caapi vine, one of which is very potent and the other of which is completely inactive and not actually b caapi.

So to avoid confusion next time go with Cielo, white or red caapi.

I'm going to get p. harmala seeds as I was looking for an economical source to extract from in order to make changa. But as a future reference, which would you guys recommend for an Ayahuasca brew for someone who has never done it before, yellow, white or red caapi vine?