Another way of making kava. The Fijian Method.
- Thread starter The Kap'n
- Start date
KavaTasteGood
Kava Curious
Very interesting! It seems to me that this is a percolation process where the water is still pure when it reaches the kava, compared to the traditional method prepared in a batch of water containing kava. By maximizing the force of osmosis, this could maximize the attraction of the water, but I didn't expect this to be the case for hydrophobic compounds. Perhaps there's something missing in my reasoning. Are kavalactones so hydrophobic and insoluble in water?
Pure kavalactones are quite hydrophobic, however most are still bound up in the tiny root particles, which is what we're after. No matter which kava you make, if you let it sit long enough it will all settle out. Essentially we're more making an suspension rather than an extraction.
KavaTasteGood
Kava Curious
So even with pure suspension, clean water seems to have a better extracting pull effect than water already containing kavalactones.
I do believe you're correct there. We've always held the hypothesis that there is a certain MAX in terms of waters ability to suspend kava particles and further kneading wouldn't necessarily pick up any extra particulate matter. We're not sure where this level resides, but it would make sense that clean water had a higher propensity of suspension as the concentration gradient would be greater.
kavakarma
Kava Enthusiast
Do they dunk the strainer in the bowl and then squeeze it after or is it fully brewed after this technique? It is interesting. It makes me want to squeeze the strainer cloth to get all the juices out, then rehydrate it in the kava and keep going for a few minutes, this is really cool!
Looks like a very nice strainer.
Looks like a very nice strainer.
KavaTasteGood
Kava Curious
That makes perfect sense, thanks Kaptain. It makes me want to do a simulation of some kavalactones to see how they behave in a pure H2O environment, or in an environment with a H2O/lipid mixture, with increasing concentrations of kavalactones. This may give us some insight into the extraction process on an atomic scale, but it's far from the systems I'm used to, so I'm not sure how to interpret the results. Plus, I suppose there are a bunch of other molecules like strach and so on that have an impact on the process, the complexity of which would be pretty hard to model. In any case, you only have to look at the kavain molecule to see that it's not totally hydrophobic. Part of this molecule could interact with water, and this may be enough for kavalactones to become soluble by agglomerating in water and showing their hydrophilic part outside the conglomerate to some extent (non-expert guessing here haha).
That looks cool, I seldom change my prep method and I opt for the laziest way possible. I barely knead the kava for 5 minutes as it is and as it turns out, it works all the same.
Then again my body is 60% kavalactones at this point, so it doesn't take much...
KavaTasteGood
Kava Curious
With these infos Krunky, it appear clear to me that the best way to extract most kavalactones of all techniques would be to knead YOU directly in some water for two minutes xD