diff --git a/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModel.java b/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModel.java
index b6bc42c..5c6a90b 100644
--- a/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModel.java
+++ b/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModel.java
@@ -1,8 +1,12 @@
 package querqy.embeddings;
 
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.type.TypeReference;
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonNode;
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
 import querqy.solr.utils.JsonUtil;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.InputStream;
 import java.io.OutputStream;
 import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
 import java.net.MalformedURLException;
@@ -17,6 +21,8 @@ public class ChorusEmbeddingModel implements EmbeddingModel {
 
     private static final String CONTENT_TYPE_JSON = "application/json";
 
+    private static final ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
+
     private URL url;
 
     private boolean normalize = true;
@@ -65,14 +71,23 @@ public Embedding getEmbedding(final String text) {
                 os.write(input, 0, input.length);
             }
 
-            embedding = Embedding.of((List<Double>) JsonUtil.readJson(con.getInputStream(), Map.class).get("embedding"));
+            embedding = parseEmbeddingFromResponse(con.getInputStream());
             embeddingsCache.putEmbedding(cacheKey, embedding);
             return embedding;
 
         } catch (final IOException e) {
             throw new RuntimeException(e);
         }
+    }
 
+    public Embedding parseEmbeddingFromResponse(InputStream is) {
+        try {
+            JsonNode responseTree = objectMapper.readTree(is);
+            List<Double> embedding = objectMapper.convertValue(responseTree.path("embedding"), new TypeReference<>() {});
+            return Embedding.of(embedding);
+        } catch (IOException e) {
+            throw new RuntimeException(e);
+        }
     }
 
     protected String toJsonString(final String text) {
@@ -86,4 +101,5 @@ protected String toJsonString(final String text) {
 
                 )));
     }
+
 }
diff --git a/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/EmbeddingsRewriter.java b/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/EmbeddingsRewriter.java
index fbe4cd0..de3558d 100644
--- a/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/EmbeddingsRewriter.java
+++ b/src/main/java/querqy/embeddings/EmbeddingsRewriter.java
@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@
 import querqy.model.Node;
 import querqy.model.QuerqyQuery;
 import querqy.model.Query;
-import querqy.model.StringRawQuery;
 import querqy.model.Term;
 import querqy.rewrite.QueryRewriter;
 import querqy.rewrite.RewriterOutput;
@@ -77,65 +76,23 @@ public RewriterOutput rewrite(final ExpandedQuery query,
     }
 
     protected ExpandedQuery applyEmbedding(final Embedding embedding, final ExpandedQuery inputQuery) {
-
+        KnnVectorQuery knnVectorQuery = new KnnVectorQuery(vectorField, embedding.asVector(), topK);
+        LuceneRawQuery luceneRawQuery = new LuceneRawQuery(null, Clause.Occur.MUST,true, knnVectorQuery);
 
         switch (queryMode) {
             case BOOST:
-                inputQuery.addBoostUpQuery(new BoostQuery(new StringRawQuery(null, makeEmbeddingQueryString(embedding),
-                        Clause.Occur.SHOULD, true), boost));
+                inputQuery.addBoostUpQuery(new BoostQuery(luceneRawQuery, boost));
                 break;
             case MAIN_QUERY:
-                // this is a workaround to avoid changing Querqy's query object model for now:
-                // as we cant set a StringRawQuery as the userQuery, we use a match all for that, add a vector query
-                // as a filter query (retrieve only knn) and a boost query (rank by distance)
-                //inputQuery.setUserQuery(new MatchAllQuery());
-                inputQuery.setUserQuery(new LuceneRawQuery(null, Clause.Occur.MUST,
-                        true, new KnnVectorQuery(vectorField, embedding.asVector(), topK)));
+                inputQuery.setUserQuery(luceneRawQuery);
                 break;
             default:
                 throw new IllegalStateException("Unknown query mode: " + queryMode);
-
         }
 
         return inputQuery;
     }
 
-    protected String makeEmbeddingQueryString(final Embedding embedding) {
-        return "{!func}sum(100,query({!knn f=" + vectorField + " topK=" + topK + " v='[" + embedding.asCommaSeparatedString() + "]'}))";
-    }
-
-    protected String embeddingToString(final float[] embedding) {
-        final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(embedding.length * 16);
-        for (int i = 0; i < embedding.length; i++) {
-            if (i > 0) {
-                sb.append(", ");
-            }
-            sb.append(embedding[i]);
-        }
-        return sb.toString();
-    }
-
-    protected ExpandedQuery applyVectorQuery(final String embeddingQueryString, final ExpandedQuery inputQuery) {
-
-
-        final StringRawQuery embeddingsQuery = new StringRawQuery(null, embeddingQueryString, Clause.Occur.SHOULD, true);
-        switch (queryMode) {
-            case BOOST:
-                inputQuery.addBoostUpQuery(new BoostQuery(embeddingsQuery, boost));
-                break;
-            case MAIN_QUERY:
-                // this is a workaround to avoid changing Querqy's query object model for now:
-                // as we cant set a StringRawQuery as the userQuery, we use a match all for that, add a vector query
-                // as a filter query (retrieve only knn) and a boost query (rank by distance)
-                inputQuery.setUserQuery(new StringRawQuery(null, embeddingQueryString, Clause.Occur.MUST, true));
-                break;
-            default:
-                throw new IllegalStateException("Unknown query mode: " + queryMode);
-
-        }
-
-        return inputQuery;
-    }
     /**
      * Traverse the query graph, collect all the terms and join them into a string
      */
diff --git a/src/test/java/querqy/solr/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModelTest.java b/src/test/java/querqy/solr/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModelTest.java
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f87e0fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/test/java/querqy/solr/embeddings/ChorusEmbeddingModelTest.java
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+package querqy.solr.embeddings;
+
+import org.junit.Assert;
+import org.junit.Test;
+import querqy.embeddings.ChorusEmbeddingModel;
+import querqy.embeddings.Embedding;
+
+import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
+import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
+
+public class ChorusEmbeddingModelTest {
+
+    @Test
+    public void testParseJson() {
+        String embeddingJson = "{ \"embedding\": [0.3, 1, 5] }";
+        Embedding e = new ChorusEmbeddingModel().parseEmbeddingFromResponse(new ByteArrayInputStream(embeddingJson.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8)));
+        Assert.assertArrayEquals(e.asVector(), new float[] { 0.3f, 1f, 5f}, 0f);
+    }
+}