Elaine Ingram and Clackamas Coot have both recently stated that topdressing with quality compost adds significantly more biology to your soil than compost tea. I have an air lift brewer and no longer use it. If you want biology, make your own compost and mulch with organic straw (non-organic straw is often sprayed with round up to prevent weeds). Mulching is key! Malibu's Bu Blend is a high quality commercial compost.
Keep in mind that when top dressing amendments, it takes a couple of weeks for the raw amendments to completely break down and become plant available. It also takes a little practice learning to read your plants and knowing when and how much to top dress with. Very easy to get the soil out of balance by over top dressing. If you're going to top dress for flower, adding the amendments a week prior to flip usually works well. Mixing the amendments with a little compost or worm castings is even better.
I am a no-till grower, building my own soils, using homemade compost. The bigger the pots, the more biology. I can't emphasize the importance enough of large pots for soil biology and healthy plants. I'm in 25 gallon pots and will be going bigger in the future. They are actually much easier on my back then the 10 gallon pots I used to lug around because I don't have to move them at all with no- till. Mofo is starting his 20th cycle in the same no-till pot, it just keeps getting better. I top dress once, at the beginning of the cycle with two tablespoons each of Neem/Karanja seed meal and kelp meal per container. That's it! The key is to leave the rootball and chop up all the leftover leaves and stems, then top dress them back into the same pot.
Heres a great Mofo recipe:
1/3 peat moss
1/3 pumice
1/3 compost
Per cu/ft:
1/2 cup crab meal
1/2 cup neem seed or Karanja meal
1/2 cup Kelp meal
6 cups basalt
1/2 cup gypsum
1 cup malted barley (freshly ground)
Edit: Another benefit to large no-till pots is pests. Pests are not usually a problem in no-till.
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