Nānā i ke kumu.Look to the source.
Most of what you've heard about kava is about something else.
Six things people say, and what's actually true.
Three different plants. One shelf.
Almost every myth starts here — with kava being mistaken for something it isn't.
Kava
Piper methysticum. A pepper relative from the Pacific. The root is prepared as a drink. Traditional across Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Hawai‘i.
Kratom
A different plant, a different family, a different part of the world. Frequently sold on the same shelf, frequently confused, not related.
Alcohol
Kava is non-alcoholic. It shares an occasion — a circle, an evening, a toast — and nothing else.
“Kava’s some new wellness trend.”
Kava has been prepared and shared across the Pacific for roughly three thousand years — a ceremonial and social drink long before it was a product. What's new is the shelf it sits on in North America, not the plant.
“Kava is kava. It’s all the same.”
It isn't, and the difference has names. Cultivar matters — noble varieties are the ones with centuries of traditional use behind them. So does the part of the plant: lateral root is the prized material; stems and stump are cheaper and are where corner-cutting shows up.
“There’s no way to know what you’re getting.”
There is. We send our resin and gummies to an independent, third-party laboratory that checks identity and kavalactones, heavy metals and microbial safety. A small maker should be able to show the work, so we do.
“Cheap kava and good kava are the same kava.”
Price tracks what's in the bag. Lateral root costs more than stems. Verified cultivar costs more than unverified. Independent lab testing costs more than no testing. You are not paying for a label.
What we test for
We send our products to an independent, third-party laboratory. These are the things it checks for.
| Test | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| Identity and kavalactones | It is kava, with its kavalactone profile confirmed by HPLC |
| Heavy metals | Arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury -- what the soil gave it |
| Microbiological | Aerobic count, coliforms, yeast and mold, E. coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus -- how it was handled |
“It’s just a drink, right?”
It’s a drink the way tea in a Japanese tearoom is a drink. In the Pacific, kava is served in a shell, passed in an order, and drunk in a circle — for welcome, for settling matters, for marking an occasion. We sell the root. The circle is the part we’d rather you inherited than bought.