Hi Everyone, yes I have seen that study that you were talking about Deleted User01. Skip Bittrnbender was one of the people who wrote it, he is a friend of mine and he sends me all the studies that he does or comes across, I know most all the guys in the kava circle, from scientists to processors, to Chris Kilham, Dr Lebot, Dr Nelson, CS Tang to other farmers, but I find that it is very interesting to learn about the users, like all of is here. When reading the posts I am justified in my thinking of certain things that I notice about kava and things like that and I have noticed that you guys like to describe how each kind of kava works, like the knogyak (spelling?) The thing is that for the Hawaiian varieties I can say that they are hard to do that to, they rely a lot on how they are grown, I have noticed that the kava from the other kava producing areas is different and for the most part can be relied upon.
Hawaiian is different, you can get a Hawaiian 'Awa and it is a 5 year old plant but it is not strong and when you harvest it and cut into it, it is white not yellow like it should be, the more the yellow the more the kavalactones.
It depends on how it is grown and if you take care of it, to give you an idea, when I was teaching at a Hawaiian immersion school about 'Awa (They only speak Hawaiian there) we did a project called the Lepo 'Ola project, we made the soil and we did it all naturally the way the Hawaiians did, the 'awa we planted there was 'Awa Nene and in 1 year it was bigger than a 5 year old plant, there are ways of growing that will increase the size and the kavalactone content, some of these ways I have developed and perfected.
That being said When Skip was over here during the last Kava symposium we had talked about this paper he wrote and I told him that I boil mine and how much I boil it, sometimes I go more than in the video but not much, you just got to make sure there is enough water or the starch will thicken like gravy.
The melting point of most kavalactones is about 130 degrees and there boiling point is a lot higher than boiling water, so the boiling method is just another way of doing it, I still use cold and boiling, it depends on how I feel and how I want to feel, I am sure most of you have noticed that it does change the effect of the kava. So I guess it is like this----Does heat destroy kavalactones? Well yes if the heat is way high and for a long time, if you put your hands next to a fire to warm them up that is fine but if you get too close or heat them up too long then your hands will be hurt or in the case of the kavalactones, destroyed.
I had a friend in Waipio Valley, there is a lot of 'Awa down in the back of the valley, anyway this old timer was boiling some 1/2 inch sized chunks of 'awa root, he was boiling it for over 1 hr and I tried some and WOW, it was very strong, but you do not need to boil it that long, just till it starts to coagulate the starch is fine or even for 10 min is fine.
I have tried baking kava and having it tested and I baked it and tested it at 3 different intervals, it takes a lot to make the kava noticeably weaker but it will happen in the oven a lot quicker than boiling it. You can not bake with it, if you make kava bread it will just be bad tasting bread and have no effect, I knew one guy that would dry his kava in a dry box he made and it got too hot and it would make the kava taste bad, it tasted baked or roasted and it was not good.
So far after years of testing the cold water extraction and the boiling method is what I use, that is all, I also use a set amount so that I know if a kava is strong normal or weak.
I will be harvesting some Hawaiian Mo'i in the next week or so and it will be on my website for sale along with some other kava.
When you try some real good Hawaiian you will see what I mean, it is just some real good stuff.
Aloha to all.
Chris
