@Dmcgee1980 You're on the right track with using less water for the subsequent washes. A 2nd Aluball helps get you good potency and a 3rd will allow you to make stronger beverages, but with a 3rd ball, you'll want to get a larger beverage shaker to allow for more room for all three balls to fumble around. With less room, the balls can't move as quickly before they either hit another ball or the top/bottom of your shaker.
Consider buying a strainer bag and making kava the traditional prep way. You get decent potency with shaking Aluballs, but strength is more easily achieved by doing it the way the Pacific islanders have been doing for centuries. It's time consuming, I'll admit that, but the strength you get from this method over shaking with Aluballs could make all the difference. A good strainer bag should set you back about the price of an Aluball and you can fit much more root powder in one of those, allowing you to make more kava at once. Kava vendors sell strainer bags, with Kavafied having really nice ones that are a bit spendy, but I hear some nutmilk bags may also do the trick. You want something with around 100 microns or smaller in hole size and something that can take punishment as you're supposed to handle your kava fairly rough when kneading. Use a rubber band or some twine to properly seal your strainer bag so the kava grinds don't fall out.
You may also be going through reverse tolerance, so upping the quantity of powder you use should be incremental until you get more pronounced effects. Sadly, kava has gotten more expensive over the years and some folks around here claim the kava being harvested is weaker in kavalactone content than in previous years, possibly premature harvests to meet damand, plus bad weather that can damage crops. We can only speculate without any insiders over in the South Pacific giving input, so take my guesses with salt since I'm just a consumer myself. One way to stretch your kava out is to save your medium grind solids in the freezer. When you accumulate a bunch, you can use traditional prep to knead that and you can either get a good grog in its own right or at least a liquid you can use along with virgin grind. Just make sure you let it completely thaw or else you'll be kneading it longer than normal.
