Wow as Instant? (Or: quickest prep possible)

[starscolliding]

So, my normal prep for traditional Kava is around an hour, sometimes a little more. I don't always want to do that, nor do I always want to do instant. The micronized stuff is interesting, and I'm playing with that.

But Wow is discussed as being so processed, I was wondering if there was some way to do something 'real' with it that was quick. Here is a recipe:

1/3 cup Wow
3 cups water - 115 degrees
splash of milk
1/2 tsp soy lecithin

Put in blender for 15 minutes. Strain and drink.

The problem is it doesn't do nearly as much as when I do my full process. Anyone have any ideas? I'm thinking next of trying 1/2 cup Wow and 2.5 cups H20. But the rest is the best I understand to do.

 

[verticity]

How is your prep method an hour? Do you include soaking time? I just knead for 10 minutes.

 

[violet]

Traditional kneading is as good as blending for me. I nuke a mug of water a couple minutes and dump it into the bowl over a strainer bag with kava and a splash of cream for some types (flavor). Always do a quick second wash and add to the first before drinking. I knead about 10 minutes too, unless I am busy with a bunch of stuff and have to take breaks from prep.

 

[Rookietwoshoes]

I wouldn't drink kava if I had to prep for an hour. That sounds worse than cooking!Even with medium grind, all I kneed is 10 minutes. Try upping the dose or switching strains altogether. There are many potent instants and micronized that don't require that kind of time investment.

 

[Deleted User01]

Yes @Rookietwoshoes, that is why I don't prepare Kava Powder anymore. I was making huge batches on Sunday Mornings and putting them in the fridge and then I got too lazy to even do that. Just Micronized and Instant for me anymore. I guess I also have to admit that the trigger finger problem on my right hand makes squeezing very painful. I used to have a grip that would turn a wooden tennis racket into sawdust. Now I have trouble squeezing a lime.

 

[Rookietwoshoes]

It's true @Deleted User01 - high quality instants/micros make you spoiled and make kneading feel like a chore. The price for convenience doesn't come cheap. ... Starting to feel like a high maintenance gal, for once.

 

[starscolliding]

Verticity and others - for those of you who do 10 minutes total, what effects are you getting? A carefully/well prepared Wow or Stone is an incredible experience and puts me deeeeeeep somewhere else. I would not classify it as 'relaxing'. It is something else entirely. I think the time and care to get lots and lots of kavalactones out of the source material pays off.

If you 10 minute guys are getting to... travel to other planets as it may be... then tell me exactly what you are doing and I'll try it. It is possible we are having very different experiences, but for all I know you guys are getting what I'm getting out of a 10 min process, but I've never even gotten close with anything under 20 - 30 min. I get laid out on the ground and can't move a muscle. Extremely sensitive to any noise - the effects are amplified. My thoughts are deeper and more creative, and the amygdyla is totally turned off, all fear and stress don't exist at all so I can think about issues much more clearly. It is truly an other-worldly state. Interesting flashes and weird feelings in my brain. Lots of positive feelings.

One thing is that i keep working until the kava gets frothy. That seems to take a while. Are you guys getting to a frothy state?

When I did the recipe above, I feel 'relaxed' and get slight flashes of strong positivity that last for around 10 minutes.

And all that said, even as refined and pre-prepared as Wow is, I don't myself think that any 15 minute process will do the full deal, but want to see if Wow can be quick-prepared and at least do half or a third of what I'm used to. But what I'm getting now is 10%, not half or 33%.

 

[violet]

Kava time come long before I get any down time, so it is rare that I get to sit and listen to it in peace. I wouldn't say total prep time is 10 minutes, time to knead my first wash probably is. I usually have froth or an "oil slick" by the time I am done. A second wash is very important, a lot of lactones stick to the strainer and root material and need rinsed out. My second washes go quickly, the root material is well spent from the first wash.

I have sometimes noticed a perceived increase in potency when the kava soaks a lot longer than intended. I am not sure if this has helped, or if it was more potent because I was fasted 7 hours instead of 4 or 5 before getting kava in me. I tinkered with various extraction methods, traditional kneading is best for me. Adding 2nd washes made my sessions super consistent.

If you are getting consistent results with your prep method with each batch of kava you go through, then you'll know if you are getting out of WOW! what you should be getting out of it. If you are still working on a best prep method, best to go with a kava you won't mind experimenting with until you've found something you really like to use. No prep kavas are another option.

 

[verticity]

@starscolliding - I don't think you've said, what actually is your prep method that takes an hour? How much kava and water? What temperature is the water? What kind of strainer bag do you use? Are you kneading for the whole hour?

My method is approximately the following:
0.75 cups kava
4 cups very hot water
nylon stocking as strainer
knead for ten minutes. After kneading and squeezing the liquid out of the strainer, you can feel that the kava has become gritty. The stickiness and squishiness that you feel at the beginning of kneading is gone, I take this to mean that almost all the KLs are extracted. If I do a second wash, the result is very weak (but still slightly potent, so I guess it would be worth it to get every last drop... just use a lot less water for a shorter time.)
This makes 4 very potent 8oz "shells", enough for 2 or 3 "sessions" for me. My desired effect is a state of happy relaxation, but not to be completely laid out so I can't function. If I were to consume the entire 4 shells at once, I would literally be unable to see straight, feel an intense need to lie down, photophobia, sensitivity to sound, dizziness, "extreme relaxation" I guess you could say.

 

[starscolliding]

Right - nothing too crazy, but it is multi-step, and can be 2 hrs with soaking as someone asked about above.

Amounts depend on how many people are coming over, I do seem to use a lot compared to other people, they talk about 5 tbs or whatever and I'm usually closer to a half to two thirds of a cup just to get an experience that would be: 1 cup + 1 cup later (a cup for me is a real measured cup, which I think is 2 shells? never was sure on that), with two thirds of a cup I might do 3 - 4 cups H20
I'm doing the 115 degree water that has been circulating recently based on some tests, I used to do 80
some soy lecithin
splash of soy milk
lemongrass seems to help the taste
5 min spin in Cuisinart 16-cup food processor
55 min wait (sometimes I do another 5 minutes halfway through this period)
5 min spin
5 min wait
15 min spin
5 min wait
5 min spin
10 min wait
Then I strain with this, which I absolutely love and might start a thread to share this device with everyone, it helps soooo much, I'm in love with this device:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/1094903/?catalogId=21&sku=1094903
and then for a while I was also doing a gold coffee filter as my naseau was getting pretty high, but I did notice that reduced intensity of the experience. Sometimes I can go without the gold coffee filter and sometimes I can't

Note I only go for the fairly extreme experience I described above maybe 1 - 3 times a year. That isn't a weekly thing!

Take something as 'pedestrian' as black sand from NAH, and use that process and it is quite potent, let alone what it does to Wow. Note my food processor heats the Kava just through the mechanical action, if it didn't I'd keep microwaving it to keep it around 100 or so degrees throughout the process.

 

[violet]

When you strain do you do anything additional to squeeze the last of the liquid out of the root material? Do you perform a second wash? I've tried blending and straining with a sieve, but the experience felt sub par to the results I get from hand kneading and squeezing through some type of fabric strainer. When I added some extra filtering to decrease the particulates that I thought were responsible for my nausea I seemed to lose most of the potency, the lactones like to stick to the strainer and fine root matter.

If you are doing all of this to try and prevent nausea, perhaps you should try some different strains of kava, there are many that can be drunk without inducing nausea. I tend to be very sensitive to kava induced nausea myself.

Like verticity detailed above, when you are kneading by hand you can feel when the lactones have been agitated out of the root material. If for some reason you are unable to knead out grog totally by hand, you can still blend but I would use a traditional strainer for getting the last of the liquid out of the root and doing a second wash.

 

[verticity]

@starscolliding That is an interesting method. I wonder about using the food processor, though. I'm sure it's an excellent way to get all the kavalactones out, but the Cuisinart blade is capable of pulverizing the root quite finely, I would think, basically you would be creating a kind of micronized, but without removing the "makas" or tough fibers, that might account for some of the nausea.

 

[starscolliding]

Violet - it comes with this wood thing that is basically a pestle and I do use it to push down on the Kava. For such a large filter, it is quite fine in its pore size. Maybe because of the wood thing and the pushing I do there, it still goes well? I have a bike water bottle and I do squirt things afterwards, that might act a bit like a light second wash.

Verticity - interesting. Yeah - my goal wasn't for the blades to be sharp, I just like the 16-cup part and the fact that it does mix. And it doesn't break mixing for that long, you have to have a really really good blender or food processor to mix for that long. The whole base is metal and gets really hot acting as a heat sink for the motor. And it has a waterproof lid that mostly works. VitaMix only goes to half that (8 cups), and that is their extra large container, most blenders are less. If someone else likes the idea, maybe get a 2nd blade and dull it . When people come over its nice to have the capacity. In terms of it pulverizing the kava more, all I can say is that tons are left behind in that sieve/cylinder strainer thing. I'll bet if I put it in there dry it would do that - we do make peanut butter in there for example, but the kava in water maybe it keeps it from doing too much to the powder grain size.