mivanqua wrote:acejestyr15 wrote:Dave7x wrote:Are the true maylaysian strains sold out? I don't see them on the menue..
They are only available certain parts of the year....
i.e. they don't even TRY to sell bullshit rainy leaf I'm guessing...just a thought.
Kind of true - kind of not. I only know of 3 sources to get Malaysian kratom, all three of them are in the northern half of Peninsular Malaysia (West Mainland). They actually have a much different rainfall pattern, January, February, and March are actually ideal conditions in one of the specific locations. We took a stab at with two varieties in late January and it just didnt come close to what we would consider for the menu... nothing we got would be worthy of the "True-Malay" designation. I think we jumped the gun, we are going to try again in March week 3 if the weather plays to our plan.
I do have a stockpile of some "Red True-Malay" that I have been sitting on for a while, but I haven't even tried it. The person I got it from was not very transparent in their practice, so I am hesitant to try it myself. After learning what I have learned about kratom production - I am extremely particular with how kratom is produced. I won't be doing anything with it until I can get all the labs run on it - I just haven't gotten around to it. (No - I will not let anyone be a "guinea pig"... please dont ask, lol)
Regarding the "rainy season" in general - you can still get a good leaf, it's just on average no going to be as good. What this means is if you have a certain threshold of quality that needs to be met, you can expect that a lower percentage of batches are going to meet that standard. We call this KPI our "clearance rate". With our January harvest, we had an extremely unusually high clearance rate, which means more batches than normal scored high enough to make our menu. This is actually what led to our Double M open-order event! We have many more products that qualified for the menu than we forecasted - so who better to share it with? In a perfect world, we would be open to the entire Double M community all the time, but we aren't there yet. Our hope is to eventually get there, but our core mission will not be sacrificed to make it happen. I, fortunately, have a sure-fire career to fall back on if TFH doesn't work out - a man with options is a man with who can stick to his guns.
The volume and frequency of rainfall play a heavy role in the tree's production of secondary metabolites, but there are some specific situations in which rainfall will improve kratom. Hands down - the best batches of kratom we can make happen with the help of rainfall - but that only applies during a very specific weather pattern. Outside of that, the constant rainfall generally works against the desired production of secondary metabolites. There is also a whole different set of challenges with rainfall and those pertain to the drying process. The humidity can put a wrinkle in ideal drying conditions. While there are methods to offset it somewhat - most producers simply dont implement them.
We have been working all year on different techniques that could replicate the conditions I mention above, but we just haven't come up with a practical solution. As time went on we accepted that we would need to stockpile during the dry season to offset the lower clearance rate we expect during the rainy season. We have a huge assortment of the product on hand right now - our plan is to slowly release batches over the next several months. However, we are still very much going to produce batches all year - we just expect a lower percentage of those will make the menu. The ones that do make the menu will be every bit as good as you would expect from us any other time. With that, if you are TFH member and are buying a ton of kratom right now during this event because you think this is the last shot of high-quality - dont. I mean we love to have your business, but it's not necessary... our leaf will be the same quality year-round. If you are not a TFH member, we plan to probably do another event around July/August/September... you will get more opportunities in the future.
What I know is people could care less of when a leaf was harvested.... they only care about the overall quality. That is ultimately the premise in which we are operating by
.
. We really, really, wanted to do one, but we just don't have the bandwidth to manage it. My two little ones and I got sick this week leaving Angie to run both operations (home and business)... she is one amazing lady! At any rate, holding any kind of open event it requires a lot of work on the front end to prepare or else it will be an unmitigated disaster. 
