Mahakea Kava: The Happy Kava

It’s been a long time, but several years of patience as we moved and then replanted our cultivar of kava that made Kona Kava Farm a sought after brand of Kava is back in stock; our Mahakea Kava with a 4-2-6 chemotype and lateral-only root stock in our Mahakea Powdered Kava products!  Known as the “Happy Kava” because of the kavalactone lineup of 4-2-6 (high in kavain), there is maximum dopamine release in the body, causing the most pleasurable effects of any kava that we know of.

And we’ve tried all the kava commercially available.

So, although we may be biased to our kava, we can honestly say it even tastes better than anyone else’s Kava.  For the product, we use only lateral roots, making for a vastly less “dirt” flavor to the kava.  Many actually find the flavor quite pleasant, although most still say, when drinking their Mahakea Kava that “you really have to want to drink this.”

Now that our new farming fields have matured after a 5-year wait, we will have this old friend of a cultivar available for our customers for years to come.  We harvest our kava sustainably, and the harvesting of our Mahakea Kava Root is no exception.

For those who want to know a little bit more about the Mahakea cultivar of Kava, one of my favorite books on Kava has this to say:

In Hawaii, there are many other strains of kava. Some of the most popular strains are the “Mahakea,” “Mo’i,” “Hiwa” and “Nene” varieties. The Ali’i (kings) of old Hawaii coveted the special kava they called “Mo’i” that had a strong cerebral effect due to a predominant amount of the kavalactone kavain. This sacred variety was so important to them that no one but royalty could ever experience it, “lest they suffer an untimely death”. The reverence for Hiwa in old Hawai‘i is evident in this portion of a chant recorded by N.B. Emerson and quoted by Handy and Handy.

And, for those interested in a little more detail regarding the kavalactone part of Kava, I pull from the same resource to share this:

According to Vince Lebot and Dennis J. McKenna, when they did a “DNA fingerprinting” of all the current Hawaiian cultivars of Kava, there are only two plants that were distinctly different from the rest of the varieties, and Mahakea is one of them.  One variety in particular, offered only by Kona Kava Farm, possesses the chemotype of 4-2-6.  That means there is a high concentration of those “happy” lactones of kavain (4), dihydrokavain (2), and methysticin (6).  Coupled with a small concentration of yangonin, this is certainly the very definition of a happy cultivar!

We admit freely that it’s been a difficult few years for Kona Kava Farm as we’ve struggled to maintain our brand name after our crops of Mahakea were almost completely destroyed by a malicious person.  But, enough plants survived (and we always have more growing off-farm for preservation of the cultivar), and we’re stronger than we ever were in the past.  We’ve learned there are bad people in the kava world, who will actually destroy precious plants for their own financial gain, but that experience has only helped us to become even more vigilant in protecting and sharing our unique cultivar of Kava; the Mahakea Kava Kava once again proudly offered by Kona Kava Farm.

By the way, the image of the plant above is the very first new leaf that grew from our destroyed Mahakea kava fields from 5 years ago.  Although it appeared that everything had been destroyed, we knew the sturdiness and determination of our Mahakea kava plants, and within just a few weeks, from under protective black plastic in a carefully-prepared Earth Box, a perfect kava leaf appeared from a single shoot, lit up our day, and became part of the Mother plants that thrive in their new location.

Aloha no,
Makaira

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