Not entirely true, Mike. Combine 51% of a noble kava with a moderate level of Kavain and DHK, and a somewhat hight level of DHM (for a noble) with 49% of a tudei with a ridiculously high level of DHM and low kavain and DHK, for example, and there's a good chance you get a wacky chemotype with DHM in one of the first two positions (Clearly not noble). The chemotypes would have to work pretty well together to get a noble chemotype in your scenario. And playing devil's advocate, if you did mix two and end up with a clearly noble chemotype, there's a good chance you'd have desirable effects, along with relatively low Fk levels...
To be fair, right or wrong, the stance of the Vanuatu Government is what is addressed in your links. They do not speak for all in Vanuatu. Many kava growers don't really understand why they shouldn't grow and export tudei. I've encountered this multiple times in my trips. I'm also pretty sure that the standards were written based on Dr. Lebot's recommendations, even if they weren't written by him.
I never tried koniak, maybe you had stopped selling it by the time I started drinking kava? Out of interest though what were the effects actually like? Was it actually more likely to make you feel ill the next day?
Hi @Edward. We stopped selling it a year or two ago. It was very popular. We sell a whole lot of kava, maybe more than anybody, so of course there were a few bad reviews, as there are with any kava, but they were overwhelmingly positive. We also served it at the kava bar in Portland to hundreds of people daily and they mostly raved about it as well. It was very physically relaxing. Great for pain and sleep. A little bit of a nice wash of euphoria came along with it. For as much talk as there is about the potency of tudei, it wasn't overwhelming. Any next day effects were minimal. That's the thing- Economics 101. If we sold products that made people sick we wouldn't have gotten to where we are. Demand wins every time, and this is a business of repeat customers and word of mouth.
So we can safely say that not all tu*ei kavas are created equal. I'd be interested to know what causes that kava to be more relaxing than others, is it simply more kavalactones? Could it be as simple as that? It's like GHK kavas or BKH kavas, some of those can be really strong, I'm thinking Hanakapi Ai or Nangol Noble (also stone, on that bad boy tonight and feeling good), so I know they're strong I'm not going to need 8 tbsps. 4 will probably be enough for a good session without getting too messed up. With other kavas I need more to get a similar effect or in fact you won't get a similar effect without bringing on stomach issues from the amount of root/sediment. If tu*ei kavas are just really strong versions of the same thing surely you could just limit your amount to get the desired effect?
In terms of actual potency (kl %), tudeis are not necessarily stronger than noble. In fact, looking at the latest collection of samples submitted to the Codex Com, many tudeis were weaker than popular noble varieties. I think the idea that tudeis are stronger than noble came from the time when few people sold decent noble and tudei has always been cheaper and faster to grow than anything else.
That is correct. Not all non-noble kavas are equal. The particular effects of any kava are caused mostly by the quantities of different kavalactones and how they interplay with each other. Some non-noble kavas you would simply want to avoid in any amount though.
Yep, awesome review. The laughing bit in the middle reminded me of something funny that happened in Morocco when I was there. My other 2 friends went for a massage which I didn't fancy, been to the hammam already that day. My friends Moroccan friend took me for a walk around Agadir. We were walking and talking for quite a while, sometimes in English but quite often in French because he speaks both and if I can't get something across in English I'll try French. He's a nice guy and I've met him before so didn't feel uncomfortable in his company. Anyway, I asked him what cut of meat do they use in lamb tagine, thinking like leg or whatever...he just looked at me and said, "Yeah, leg,(pause), head, stomach, whatever" and we both looked at each other and laughed like trains for a full 2 minutes. You probably had to be there.
As time goes on though we're finding it a lot easier to get noble only kava. In fact you'll struggle to find a pure tu*ei kava easily to be imported to the UK because the main vendors just don't sell it. Also imagine what would happen if one of the main vendors did sell a mixed kava and that started making people ill, it would be all over the site before they knew what was happening. In that way as a community we have become very self regulating. I believe testing should be done but a lot of the kavas available now have not been tested due to funding and time constraints at TK which is fair enough. Despite that there are still a good number of vendors only selling noble kava and word of mouth does as good a job in the long run as testing.
