I had my first attempt at trying to brew chaliponga yesterday. So far I've only done the one 1 hour boil with a few pinches of citric acid which has yielded me around 500ml of dark brown liquid from 25g chali. I'm just a little concerned as it doesn't taste very bitter, if anything it just has a hint of citric acid flavour that dominates.

I understand I'm probably going to have to do a few more boils to get the goods out, then reduce it to 250ml for 5 entry level servings, by which time it will probably have more of a bitter flavour, but I at least thought there'd be a hint of that bitterness in the first boil which is more than likely the strongest.

I have realised that the upper side of the leaf seems to have its thick wax layer still very much intact, which is likely to be holding onto the contents of the leaf and was wondering maybe this is why the boil wasn't as potent in flavour as I'd hoped. Obviously grinding the leaf to a dust would be a pretty efficent way of getting round that problem, but I like to avoid powdering, as it makes filtering a total pain.

So what's the score here? Is my chali no good or am I missing something?

I know you said you don't want to, but I powderize my chali and use a cotton sleeve from a t-shirt to filter it and it's very effective. I believe Acolon has posted around on several of the Aya discussions that chali really doesn't need more than a 30minute acid boil to get all the goodies (that's why he always does it separate from the vine, if I remember correctly). Short of grinding it, I don't know what to suggest, that's always worked like a charm for me.

I do the good old 3x3 hours with whole leaves (might as well, if Caapi is there anyway )... and the taste is puketastic. Like burnt hairspray. It works... if you can keep it down.

Some people say three cooks of ten minutes are enough.

Instead of powdering, you could freeze and thaw the leaves a few times as well.

Well, I kind of thought about grinding it, but it's a bit of a pain now that all the leaf is soaking wet. Now it's kind of been manually ripped and shredded. A second boil was performed for 1 hour and this liquid seems a lot darker.

Freezing is something I can do!

I am starting to wonder if this is just a quality issue. The most noticable flavour is still citric acid even though the brew is now a lot darker and there wasn't even that much citric acid in the mix. I didn't get this stuff from a well known reliable vendor and it arrived wrapped in paper rather than a good ol' zip-lock, so if this stuff doesn't get bitter after much boiling and freezing I'm going to call shenanigans.

The taste is IMPOSSIBLE to miss. Moreso than Aya!

Hmm... I think it's more than possible this is a bad batch. It's a very dark shade now, but yet still no real promising flavour.

I guess I'll use maya next time, unless some kind regular chali user can point me in the direction of something better?

Seconded; I like the taste of Aya made with chacruna. Chaliponga brews are much harder to get down and keep down for the proper duration. I find that I have to be much more careful about brewing chali. If I carmelize any of it, I tend to purge prematurely, as that pushes the flavor/texture over the edge.