Noble Vs Tudei Kava - Megathread

[CactusKava]

Finally, to suggest that I be banned for continuing to raise these questions seems to be the final frontier in selling this idea. I find that to be quite disturbing.

I've already commented in other areas about everything you've mentioned, but I wanted to raise one particular point. You've been a respected member of the community for quite some time, and as such have a bit of clout. The issue most of us have with you, is your usage of that clout, which we feel primarily hurts newbies.

I'm a libertarian at heart, and as such remain about as capitalistic as you can possibly be. While not necessarily on the "ban tudei" front, I'm definitely on the "only drink noble kava" front. TK and Kavassuer actually have very similar missions these days; Test kavas, and label them appropriately. Instead of attacking TK for only allowing noble kavas to be sold, use your clout to convince non-TK vendors that they need to test their kavas and label them appropriately.

I hope you know I don't mean this to sound like an attack; it's more about helping you focus on areas that might be more beneficial to our cause.

-Morgan

 

[Kojo Douglas]

I've already commented in other areas about everything you've mentioned, but I wanted to raise one particular point. You've been a respected member of the community for quite some time, and as such have a bit of clout. The issue most of us have with you, is your usage of that clout, which we feel primarily hurts newbies.

I'm a libertarian at heart, and as such remain about as capitalistic as you can possibly be. While not necessarily on the "ban tudei" front, I'm definitely on the "only drink noble kava" front. TK and Kavassuer actually have very similar missions these days; Test kavas, and label them appropriately. Instead of attacking TK for only allowing noble kavas to be sold, use your clout to convince non-TK vendors that they need to test their kavas and label them appropriately.

I hope you know I don't mean this to sound like an attack; it's more about helping you focus on areas that might be more beneficial to our cause.

-Morgan

That is as far from an attack as one can get

I totally agree with you that in reality TK shares 90% of the same goals as I do. I guess the only differences are small, but tough to reconcile. I'd love to see TK label all Kavas that are Noble, regardless of what else a vendor sells (provided it is procured legally). I'd also like to see TK grow into an organization that doesn't have only 3 or 4 vendors, but I also realize that some historical issues exist that might prevent certain vendors from working with TK at this point.

Thanks for the nice post, @CactusKava . You're a class act

 

[Deleted User01]

@Kavasseur, sorry if I jumped on your case but the initial remark you made about TK were pretty harsh but I too have said things in haste so I understand. I agree that vendors should not be black listed because 1 kava tested badly but name a vendor that is black listed? The more recent Acetone tests are proving that the vendors are toeing the line. Perhaps a kava or 2 has a bad reputation but that is easily fixed. Get a better kava or ditch the one with the bad rap. Over the past few weeks it sounded to me like you were discrediting the Acetone test because one of the vendors was not happy with his test results and he claimed it was noble. I want to say that it was a vendor that you recently reviewed. Can you please help clear this up for me? Thanks.

 

[Gourmet Hawaiian Kava]

Just wanted to add some thoughts on this, as I wrote them in another thread. I'll be steering away from this conversation until the impending updates come along. But as this concerns my thoughts on the Noble vrs. Tudei controversy, I thought I'd post it here:

My intent was two-fold:

1) I wanted to apologize for some knee-jerk insults I had lobbed, such as "True Kava is a scam."

2) I wanted to clarify that the current comments are not an isolated event, but rather part of a long unfolding story. My assertions remain that, a) Piper Methysticum is safe, whether it is Noble or Tudei, b) People deserve to know whether they are buying Noble or Tudei, c) Testing Kava should be encouraged to monitor the quality of Kava being sold, but the process of "certifying" it should be improved and more transparent, d) Vendors should not be blacklisted across the board for selling properly labeled Tudei, e) there are still big questions about how the testing is done (is one batch tested? is that batch always from the same farm(ers)? how does True Kava know that the sample they are sent represents all the Kava being sold with that label/name?) and f) very few vendors have benefitted from the True Kava labeling project, calling into question the fairness of the enterprise.

Basically, the sentiment behind some of my admittedly immature insults is couched in a long back-and-forth that started around 2012. So if people jump on to the forums and just see me post "True Kava is a scam" and then watch Chris, Deleted User01, and others lambast me, then they are not getting the whole story. And I think that's probably more or less how this has been playing out every time this comes up. Add on to that odd "new members" who ask very specific questions about 11 year waka or "where can I buy Tudei" and the whole thing becomes infuriating - which I suppose is the intention.

Finally, to suggest that I be banned for continuing to raise these questions seems to be the final frontier in selling this idea. I find that to be quite disturbing. But again, I am committed to not using any more immature language, and I also think it would be healthy for me to stay away from this issue until all these impending developments are realized.

Yours,

Kavasseur

I feel compelled to respond to this.
You said---
1) I wanted to apologize for some knee-jerk insults I had lobbed, such as "True Kava is a scam."
Thank you for that, I am impressed and I think that is big of you.

Everything in #2 is great too. Thanks for clarifying that for us. I do have to disagree with this part---
"very few vendors have benefited from the True Kava labeling project, calling into question the fairness of the enterprise." It is clear you still do not fully understand the mission and purpose of TK labs.
I will give you an example. I started selling CO2 extract recently and then I decided to discontinue it because of my own reasons, those reasons being that I am all for the traditional use not for other uses like extracts, even CO2 and I am not nor have I ever said that a CO2 kava extract is bad but it is my choice to stick with the traditional stuff to sell. This is kind of what TK labs is all about, just good noble kava that has a long history of safe use. Tudei does not have that same history so that is why TK labs does not want it involved with there business.
And the last part that needs to be clarified is this---
"Finally, to suggest that I be banned for continuing to raise these questions seems to be the final frontier in selling this idea. I find that to be quite disturbing."
Nobody ever suggested you get banned for raising these questions about noble or tudei, it was for your attacks at Deleted User and TK labs, like when you said TK Labs is a scam and other things like that, it was your derogatory remarks in a lot of posts.

Chris

 

[verticity]

just saw this, any idea how lebot's spectro's were performed(so I can duplicate)?

I think he just used a regular UV-VIS spectrophotometer with at least a range of 200-700 nm. Something like this:
UV-5200 UV/VIS Spectrophotometer Ultraviolet Visible Spectrophotometer 190-1100nm Wavelength Range 2nm Bandwidth by M&A INSTRUMENTS INC
Amazon product

 

[verticity]

just saw this, any idea how lebot's spectro's were performed(so I can duplicate)?

You need to use fused quartz cuvettes for UV, which are a bit pricey.

 

[HeadHodge]

You need to use fused quartz cuvettes for UV, which are a bit pricey.

guess I was more looking for the way the test samples are prepared (not so much the equipment used). Like did he just dump some medium grind into some acetone, shake for a few minutes then run the test on the resulting liquid?

 

[verticity]

guess I was more looking for the way the test samples are prepared (not so much the equipment used). Like did he just dump some medium grind into some acetone, shake for a few minutes then run the test on the resulting liquid?

It's probably an ethyl alcohol or methanol extract, not acetone, because acetone cuts off in the UV at 330 nm.
http://macro.lsu.edu/HowTo/solvents/UV Cutoff.htm
So yes, probably sonicate in ethanol (spectroscopic grade, not Everclear which would have too much moisture and impurities). Centrifuge and decant.

 

[verticity]

guess I was more looking for the way the test samples are prepared (not so much the equipment used). Like did he just dump some medium grind into some acetone, shake for a few minutes then run the test on the resulting liquid?

Those UV spectra are actually pure chemicals; they are not extracted from kava. If you are thinking of trying to get chemotypes from UV spectra of kava, it might be pretty difficult, because all those things, plus more things like alkaloids, would all be mixed together, resulting in a giant blob, with some spikes if you're lucky. You might be able to get something from it, but it certainly wouldn't be as accurate as HPLC. UV might be useful for measuring total FK to total KL ratio, though, since the FKs appear to be fairly well separated from the KLs. But, again, there would be all kinds of crap in an extract that is not shown above, and almost all organic molecules absorb in the UV..

 

[verticity]

What would be ideal is to actually not use any solvent. Just heat up the kava in a cell and measure the gas phase absorption. Then the peaks would be much narrower. For instance, in the visible spectrum of iodine vapor you can see lots of beautiful structure:

This isn't a really esoteric technique or anything. We did this in a Physical Chemistry lab that I taught. But in the case of kavalactones, heating would likely be necessary, which makes the spectrum more blobby and complicated.

 

[verticity]

Quartz cuvettes are only necessary in UV spectroscopy, where the refractive index of glass or plastic would interfere with measurement in the UV range. The qualitative test uses the visible light range (400-700nm), so round glass tubes work fine. ...

Right, but I think @HeadHodge was asking about the UV spectra of kavalactones and flavokavains from Lebot's paper...

 

[drbinxy]

I'll just go ahead and throw in my uneducated subjective experience on the subject. I've had good, but different results from drinking tudei vs noble kavas. I will say that I agree they should be labelled as such. The only reason for this is in the name tudei (two-day) itself. I want to know if a kava I'm drinking will have lingering effects the next day. Every tudei kava I've drank has had this effect. Sometimes it felt more like a hangover, sometimes more like an afterglow, sometimes just some lingering sedation. Sometimes this effect is desired, like say, when I have nothing to do the next day. However, when it isn't, I'd like to know that the kava I'm drinking is noble and therefore won't have any lingering effect.

 

[sɥɐʞɐs]

I'll just go ahead and throw in my uneducated subjective experience on the subject. I've had good, but different results from drinking tudei vs noble kavas. I will say that I agree they should be labelled as such. The only reason for this is in the name tudei (two-day) itself. I want to know if a kava I'm drinking will have lingering effects the next day. Every tudei kava I've drank has had this effect. Sometimes it felt more like a hangover, sometimes more like an afterglow, sometimes just some lingering sedation. Sometimes this effect is desired, like say, when I have nothing to do the next day. However, when it isn't, I'd like to know that the kava I'm drinking is noble and therefore won't have any lingering effect.

I'm curious, how long have you been drinking kava and is the tudei you've consumed labeled as such, if not, how have you determined that it's tudei ?

 

[drbinxy]

I'm curious, how long have you been drinking kava and is the tudei you've consumed labeled as such, if not, how have you determined that it's tudei ?

You know......I'm not really sure. I started off with kona kava farm the first time I tried kava. It had zero discernible effect. Maybe it was bad product, maybe it was bad preparation, maybe it was reverse tolerance. I can't be sure. I then moved on to Nakamal at home, who doesn't bother labeling their kavas at noble or not. I remember having lingering effects the next day from stone, wow, and solomon. This could just attest to the strength of their kava though, and not necessarily them being tudei, but I doubt it. Everything I've tried that has been labelled noble has left no lingering effects the next day even if I went way overboard and got way krunk on it. This hasn't always been the case with kavas that weren't labelled noble.

That being said, I've got some stone coming in sometime soon. So I'll re-test this theory. I'm probably wrong and it's just that NAH's kavas are strong as hell.

Oh and I've been drinking kava for about 5 years.

 

[thekavaboss]

If you have a question or want to discuss the Noble/Tudei issue, please post it here. We've got quite a few little side threads going that have managed to veer off to this type of discussion instead of the one the original poster had submitted. It happens. Not a big deal at all. It just seems that we should at least have a megathread where members can converse (respectfully) about the issue.

So....
Edit: I'll be moving over discussions located in other threads.
Post your noble/tudei discussions here

Im new to kava and not quite sure what certified noble means can someone explain it? Ive been getting my kava at but there isnt a ton of information

 

[sɥɐʞɐs]

Im new to kava and not quite sure what certified noble means can someone explain it? Ive been getting my kava at but there isnt a ton of information

checked the site...the extracts/instant are questionable, the Wakaya should be legit, assuming they actually send Wakaya's kava...the rest look like a re-sell of Vanuatu Kava Store's line-up--which should be legit as well.

 

[Kalm with Kava]

checked the site...the extracts/instant are questionable, the Wakaya should be legit, assuming they actually send Wakaya's kava...the rest look like a re-sell of Vanuatu Kava Store's line-up--which should be legit as well.

Hmmm, From their website:
Premium Borogu description "We recently went down to hawaii where our premium borogu blend kava kava comes from. The trip was joyous beyond belief and very informative. Our kava farmer welcomed us to his home with opened arms and was more than accommodating. It was a beautiful piece of land and his family was so welcoming. It was a quick visit but memorable none the least. The first night we joined them in a traditional feast and celebration of his childs birthday. Needless to say the kava was flowing like wine and everyone was enjoying eachothers company. We laughed and engaged in conversations that will not be forgotten.

The next day he showed us the process of harvesting the premium borogu blend kava kava. The joy that comes from drinking kava is derived from the love that the farmers put into making it. Every step was done with precision and passion, making sure the final product came out perfect. Afterwards he showed us the lab he uses to test all the products, always making sure they are perfect before being shipped out.

We got to enjoy some premium borogu blend kava kava at this one little beach town while enjoying a beautiful sunset."

Borogu 100% Lateral roots description:
"When we visited the island of Vanuatu we got to experience an authentic meal and birthday celebration there and it was beautiful. They used Vanuatu borogu kava kava root to bake the birthday cake and some cookies, as well as mixing up a traditional style brew that was truly blissful. The cake tasted similar to a sweet carrot cake and had a mild and smooth hint of kava to it, really giving you a nice kick. It was like the scene out of a fairy tale."

 

[Crunked]

"It was like the scene out of a fairy tale."

That part certainly rings true.