compost tea, last how long!

i know compost tea is live.. how long will it last.. i been brewing some tea for about 2 days.. fed my plants yesterday with it.. it is in 5 gal bucket with air stone.. (alfalfa meal, wc, kelp, ) i only used half then filled it back up with water.. should i add some more molasses to it ... or will it just got bad and creates bacteria (e-coli)

Reklaw said:

i know compost tea is live.. how long will it last.. i been brewing some tea for about 2 days.. fed my plants yesterday with it.. it is in 5 gal bucket with air stone.. (alfalfa meal, wc, kelp, ) i only used half then filled it back up with water.. should i add some more molasses to it ... or will it just got bad and creates bacteria (e-coli)

Click to expand...

An air stone in a 5 gallon is far from adequate dissolved oxygen, brew time affect's the current microbial life in the tea. Most tea's start out fungal dominant and by +24 the bacteria begin taking over. Essentially, you want a stronger bacterial tea in veg, a stronger fungal tea in flower to make more phosphorous available. With that being said...nothing beats a soil with large amounts of both. Brew a new tea..

Check out microbeorganics.com

All your questions and more are answered in epic detail by microbeman himself. Also with epic microscope photography and videos!

It is my understanding that during the AACT brew bacteria multiply much more readily than fungi. A longer brew will result in a fungal dominant tea, shorter brews will yield bacterial dominant tea. Just like plant ecosystem succession after a fire in the woods, the system starts bacterial Dom (grasses) then progresses toward fungal Dom (old growth, think Pacific Northwest woods).

It is important to give fungi a head start. This can be achieved by pre-replicating the fungi before brewing (santas beard, etc. ) and also by bubbling the tea WITHOUT food sources (molasses, fish HYDROLYSATE) added (no food for an hour+ of bubbling then begin full brew, start the timer when food is added). Fungal hyphae only extend during the brew, fungi do not replicate in AACT. I usually brew 36 plus hours to get a "balanced" tea every time. Tea time!

Brewing tea is a religion not a science, if it smells bad don't apply it to important plants! Get a scope (and an education on how to find what you are looking for) if you really want to continually brew and add food. Otherwise it's good to use any excess on some soil and brew a fresh tea. It's cheap and easy; just get a calendar and become a religious brewer, that's how the best beer is created!

Kalyx said:

Check out microbeorganics.com

All your questions and more are answered in epic detail by microbeman himself. Also with epic microscope photography and videos!

It is my understanding that during the AACT brew bacteria multiply much more readily than fungi. A longer brew will result in a fungal dominant tea, shorter brews will yield bacterial dominant tea. Just like plant ecosystem succession after a fire in the woods, the system starts bacterial Dom (grasses) then progresses toward fungal Dom (old growth, think Pacific Northwest woods).

It is important to give fungi a head start. This can be achieved by pre-replicating the fungi before brewing (santas beard, etc. ) and also by bubbling the tea WITHOUT food sources (molasses, fish HYDROLYSATE) added (no food for an hour+ of bubbling then begin full brew, start the timer when food is added). Fungal hyphae only extend during the brew, fungi do not replicate in AACT. I usually brew 36 plus hours to get a "balanced" tea every time. Tea time!

Brewing tea is a religion not a science, if it smells bad don't apply it to important plants! Get a scope (and an education on how to find what you are looking for) if you really want to continually brew and add food. Otherwise it's good to use any excess on some soil and brew a fresh tea. It's cheap and easy; just get a calendar and become a religious brewer, that's how the best beer is created!

Click to expand...

You've got those a little flip-flopped my friend, bacteria do replicate extremely fast thus a shorter brew means more hyphae. Tim is definitely the world's authority on AACT, support the man by buying a brewer ^_^. If you wanna boost your fungal count, its best to go back even further and ensure you've good a count in your compost by adding some oat or wheat. You can also add a little rock dust as an anchor

Actually you do. I don't know if you are including the actions of protozoa in your understanding of dominance and balance in AACT.

From Teaming with Microbes pp 155:
"...it can be difficult to grow fungi in quantities sufficient enough to make a balanced tea, much less a fungally dominated one. This is because bacteria not only grow but multiply rapidly in tea given adequate nutrition; whereas the brew time is almost never long enough for fungi to multiply in tea-they only grow bigger. The better way is to activate fungi in the compost prior to making the tea allowing populations to multiply before they are teased out of the compost and into the tea brew."

(italics added after by me, withhold adequate nutrition at first = slow down bacterial bloom, hypae only grow bigger = given time and bacterial predation by protozoa they will "dominate" vs bacteria , santas beard, etc = activate fungi)

Keep in mind that tea talk about bacteria and fungi falls very short of the whole picture. Protozoa are the real key to a balanced tea. They are the organisms responsible for processing the surging bacterial populations into a more balanced system (the bacteria bloom rapidly but are also prey for protozoa during the brew, not dominating further and further and eating the fungi) that resembles a soil food web, one composed of soil organisms in a aerated liquid with many islands of compost, dusts, etc to anchor to and release from.

from microbeorganics.com
"...a large population of protozoa, usually mostly flagellates. If you have a good quality compost or vermicompost, protozoa will already be present, often in a resting cyst. If you have an efficient aerated brewer you can pretty much count on having a high flagellate (protozoa) population combined with bacteria/archaea and fungal hyphae (not mycorrhizal) at 36 to 44 hours brew time (65 to 72 degrees F)."

Tim is quite an experienced based authority which is why I take his advice and brew longer for balanced teas. In AACT and many other avenues, I think balanced is a more ideal goal as opposed to dominance.