So I made myself some CalPhos...

Joomby said:

Haha I will have to check out the interview I bet it's a laugh. I use a 15ltr drum with a lid,fish tank heater set at 32 Celsius, fish tank air pump "no stone".I use more leaf moulds and very fungal dominant compost and use only 1 tbl spoon of molasses or 2 tea spoons of raw sugar ,fish hydrolyse or fish emulsion and brew for no more than 24 hrs. I also just put the compost straight in the bucket I don't use a stocking I just strain when I'm finished

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DonTesla said:

why the short brew if going for fungal, amigo?! although I do like short brews too, I aint hatin!

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DonTesla said:

kudos for the honesty mate

just curious because fungi don't multiply like bacteria, by the millions and billions super fast, they grow one long cell at a time, in long single celled strands, connected together, less exponentially

but you know, your wayyyyy ahead when you make your own humus.

I like to sprinkle fungus food on soil and get a population booming over time, then use that, I too use short brews, shorter than I perhaps should for peak peak populations, but it still works wonders especially when boosting the humics, and quality of the inputs..

I'll brew a 36 hour one too, for the good ol fungi's sake.. cheers

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Joomby said:

Haha I will have to check out the interview I bet it's a laugh. I use a 15ltr drum with a lid,fish tank heater set at 32 Celsius, fish tank air pump "no stone".I use more leaf moulds and very fungal dominant compost and use only 1 tbl spoon of molasses or 2 tea spoons of raw sugar ,fish hydrolyse or fish emulsion and brew for no more than 24 hrs. I also just put the compost straight in the bucket I don't use a stocking I just strain when I'm finished

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DonTesla said:

why the short brew if going for fungal, amigo?! although I do like short brews too, I aint hatin!

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Joomby said:

To be honest i haven't tried longer I gues it worked well the first time so I stuck to it .I am a creature of habit haha. Also I forgot to add that I use aquarium water and add my own home made humus and bubble for a few hours before adding the rest of the ingredients. I might brake the cycle and try a 30-35 hour brew

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calliandra said:

And what material is your drum made of?
Have you been using it for long?

I like that you're not using much food, I've been going easier and easier on that too, and wasn't the problem


yeah but careful, not sure how that heightened temperature you're running your teas at will impact microbial development - probably accelerate, and acceleration alsways means additional heat, less oxygen, more chances of the anaerobics to break through..

What's been happening with my teas (though I admit I haven't been observing minutely, as in checking them every 2-3 hrs under the microscope), is that at around 30 hours, just when I start getting some really good fungal population, boom, in come the ciliates, not always preceded by lactobacilli or large actinomyces clumps either...
But then again, I haven't really found the cause for that

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Joomby said:

Yeah I find using the heater speeds it up a bit gets it smelling slightly sweet and yeasty. I have let one go by accident for 2 days and it smelt like rotten road kill that a skunk farted on.i gues if I removed the heater and let it go for longer I shouldn't have an issue or the other option is keep the heater but drop the temp. Do you check your teas with a microscope?

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DonTesla said:

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Very interesting findings @calliandra

wonder if a vortex would negate those nasties from showing up?

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calliandra said:

Eeeeeeew hahaa - your description makes it easy to imagine, yeah I was thinking of something like that happening

Yes I do check my compost and teas with the microscope.
But lately, I've just been taking a sample at around 24hrs, then again around 30-36hrs.
I just don't have the focus to really monitor it, which probably I should, to get a more exact idea of the progression from a diluted version of my vermicompost, which is beautiful, to the increasingly unusable stuff I'm getting out.

My main suspicion at the moment is that the bucket I brew in is corroded (why I was curious as to your setup too!) - it's PP, and I've been using it for aaaalll sorts of stuff these past years (But James Sotilo in New York has mobile plastic tanks he makes his teas in, to treat whole park landscapes - question is, which type of plastic?).
OR that there are pockets in there not getting bubbled through, where anaerobic things then flourish whilst general ppm is still high enough to allow compost worms to survive 50hr brews (I was stunned to see that lmao).
And the slim chance that the house I live in now is making my teas go bad?!? I used to live in a high humidity, very fungal leaning house. Now I live in a shitty passively heated house that is so bone dry it makes my skin hurt and feels very unhealthy...
LOL I think that's probably taking influences too far, but hey, you never know! And the tea does tend to evaporate by the liter, so I'm having to fill up on water alot now...



Actually, having the rate of dissolved oxygen at or above 6 parts per million would make it uncomfortable enough - no matter the brewer.
But thinking of a vortex brewer is very attractive to my mind too -- mainly because it makes me think of the stainless steel I've seen them made of - so easy to keep clean!
And then there's the added perk of that vortex, which is said to do positive energetic things to the water, ah and there'S a readymade one, that is simply a beautiful object lol

What kind of brewer are you using?!

Maybe I need to stop trying to build something for small-scale home use.
The intention is valiant - to find simple, sturdy and cheap components, easily sourceable locally, to build an effective brewer, because EVERYONE needs good microbial herds!!!!!
But if I want to be doing this professionally, I'm going to need something larger, my clients are going to need something larger, because small-scale home users won't be able to afford my services anyway, just by virtue of covering costs and taxation etc etc.
So I might as well get something strong and accurate pumpwise, possibly a dissolved-oxygen-measurer, and since Joomby's brought it more to my attention , a digital thermometer to record variance in temps during the brewing....

Cheers to you both for helping me think this through! your already doing miles more than me if your using a microscope that's awesome. I really should buy one. I just assume bacteria and fungi would be slightly affected by temps so keeping the brew at a constant temp makes sense as we all know mold,fungi, bacteria thrive in humid warm temps(as you stated about your last house) and I brew outside in a shadey area so during the night or winters the temp will drop.i use food grade plastic drums..have you thought about designing a completely new set up and getting a plastic fabrication/moulding company to do a proto type? It can be expensive for the first mold and as always you will want to change things as you find small flaws but once you have the prototype sorted and design complete it actually isn't that expensive to have your product made in bulk. And if your making a large agriculture brewer you can kill 2 birds with one stone by using a venturi on a power head pump to create flow and bulk oxygen just the same as an aquarium venturi just much larger.

And your house sounds like a dehydrator. No one likes scaley flakey skin! haha

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Joomby said:

I don't know what happend there^ I blame my new phone

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Joomby said:

your already doing miles more than me if your using a microscope that's awesome. I really should buy one. I just assume bacteria and fungi would be slightly affected by temps so keeping the brew at a constant temp makes sense as we all know mold,fungi, bacteria thrive in humid warm temps(as you stated about your last house) and I brew outside in a shadey area so during the night or winters the temp will drop.i use food grade plastic drums..have you thought about designing a completely new set up and getting a plastic fabrication/moulding company to do a proto type? It can be expensive for the first mold and as always you will want to change things as you find small flaws but once you have the prototype sorted and design complete it actually isn't that expensive to have your product made in bulk. And if your making a large agriculture brewer you can kill 2 birds with one stone by using a venturi on a power head pump to create flow and bulk oxygen just the same as an aquarium venturi just much larger.

And your house sounds like a dehydrator. No one likes scaley flakey skin! haha

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calliandra said:

Here we are, Sour Stomper day 32, standing at 55 cm
she got her 4 first branches LSTed out and sideways a bit more today, so the canopy becomes more rectangular in shape than square - no more space for square!

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I like
I hope she realizes she only has a max of 15 more cm height in that closet before she starts getting supercropped? hope I don't have to!

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Squatch69 said:

What size pot is this?!? I don't recall you ever stating pot size...

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Joomby said:

I have heard about taking compost and outing into a container and adding fungus foods a few days before adding to the brew.is fungus foods things like Oates and rice?

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