Kavalactone chemotype changes after the first wash.

[verticity]

This is exactly what I was thinking, but, of course, I had no evidence. Do you know how the solubility predictor predicts solubility? Mainly, I'm wondering whether or not the structure of Kavalactones gives hints as to how soluble it is in water, or if it's something else.

The ChemAxon predictor is commercial software. You input a chemical structure, and it calculates various physical properties. But you can register for the online version for free, and you then get a limited number of free uses, which is what I did:

https://chemicalize.com/

The documentation here explains a bit how the solubility prediction works:

https://docs.chemaxon.com/display/docs/Solubility+Predictor

You are exactly right that the structure of KL gives hints to solubility. How it works is it takes the chemical structure, breaks it down in to small parts, and calculates a combined solubility of the parts based on a database of the known solubilities of thousands of reference chemicals. Gory details in this article:

Hou, T. J., et al. "ADME evaluation in drug discovery. 4. Prediction of aqueous solubility based on atom contribution approach." Journal of chemical information and computer sciences 44.1 (2004): 266-275.

You can find the notation to use for the chemical structure at the PubChem site:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
For example if you go to pub chem and search for kavain, you find the "smiles structure" which is a way of completely describing the molecular structure in a line of text:
COC1=CC(=O)OC(C1)C=CC2=CC=CC=C2
and use the above text as input to the ChemAxon predictor.

 

[Kalm with Kava]

If I ran a nak, people would be able to order different washes, 1 through 6, but equally potent.

I would also make special blends geared to taste and effect. I would be a rootista, get to know my regulars and make special kava for each person after quick reference interviews to gauge their moods, needs, and ability to respond. And I would have 30 or 40 different grinds to build with, including rare and top shelf and even exclusive items. I would charge a lot, maybe even by subscription. It would be like a great Italian restaurant, they wouldn’t order, just quaff what I gave them, beg for the privilege, pay through the nose, and get amazing results and lots of randomly reinforcing freebies and specials. It would be class, but chill. You’d have to submit tax returns for me to determine pricing, which would be based on ability to pay, so pensioners, students, etc could come, too. Of course, a wealthy and progressive benefactor would have to subsidize any shortfalls.

This. This is what kava needs

 

[yiki]

According to this prediction, DHM is somewhat more water soluble than kavain, and DHK is significantly more soluble. So maybe more of the "heavy" KLs--DHK and DHM--are removed in the earlier washes whereas more kavain remains because it's less soluble in water?

So if you want to maximize the effects of a heady Kava, it would make sense to do a first wash with a minimum of Water, since it saturates more easily with the heavy lactones. After that you can wash out the remaining kavain with the bulk of the total liquid. The idea is, that you have to minimize the amount of liquid if you want to ingest the drink as quickly as possible and therefore, making the effects stronger.