Aerated Compost Tea Recipes Help

I've done this on occasion, where I'll have a tea brewing that I used some of, added some additional ingredients and then let that brew another 12-20 hours. Say I had a brew for vegging plants with a lot of high N or Peruvian seabird guano: I would use some of it, top off with some more water, add a little more humus, molasses and some high P guano, let that brew and then use it on my flowering plants.

However, I wouldn't continuously top off and keep adding more ingredients. If not because it is good to start fresh, with fresh ingredients; then due to the fact that the air-stone, tubing and receptacle can become encased in bio-slime and organic matter. This stuff is a pain to clean off of everything if not done as soon as possible.

So far as I am concerned you can know that your tea is full of life by smell and appearance. With all the organic matter and nutrition that is put into tea brewing, if the aerobes weren't thriving the anaerobes would be and you can certainly smell when a tea or compost has gone anaerobic.

Nullis said:

So far as I am concerned you can know that your tea is full of life by smell and appearance. With all the organic matter and nutrition that is put into tea brewing, if the aerobes weren't thriving the anaerobes would be and you can certainly smell when a tea or compost has gone anaerobic.

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But wouldn't you agree that just cause it smells ok......that does not mean that the tea is BOOMING with life?Sure it may smell good...but i would think by this we can only guess that it hasn't gone bad,not that it is thriving.

Not sayin your wrong....your probably correct,i just feel that without a scope we only guess that the tea is thriving at full potential.

And a ?.....if i somehow totally forgot to clean up after a brew,what would i want to use to clean up my bucket and stones?Bleach,peroxide,regular dish soap?

i figure that after each brew i would put a couple gallons of straight tap water and a slash of h2o2 and let that bubble for 12-24 hours. between the h2o2 and chlorine it should sterilize every thing. then just rinse and dump, and start fresh.

Hey dank it seems like you and i are on the same mission to find a good recipe for a solid thriving tea, theres a thread on the farmer I'll link for you it got a ton of good info.
also what are you useing in your brew now?

http://www.thcfarmer.com/forums/f31/whats-your-favorite-organic-tea-brew-recipe-757/ this is a good read has lots of info about fungus teas too

mrduke said:

Hey dank it seems like you and i are on the same mission to find a good recipe for a solid thriving tea, theres a thread on the farmer I'll link for you it got a ton of good info.
also what are you useing in your brew now?

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To be honest i like to keep the teas as basic as possible.EWC and molasses is my normal watering routine.When i say "watering my plants" this is what it consist of.I cut molasses down a bit after 3-4 weeks flower as it helps aid in fungal growth in tea....aiming for more fungi=less molasses.More molasses and your bacterias will feed like mad and can out produce fungi.

None of my teas are the same each brew,i like to mix it up ya dig.

2 days ago veg got.....

4 gallons well water
1 cp EWC
1 cp crushed and the livin shit beat out of alfalfa
4 tbsp grandmas molasses.
1 tbsp humic acid(humega)

Bubbled for 28 hrs at 78 degrees.

Thanks for the link.fungi based teas really have my interest at the moment.

Posted this in another thread but figured it would be useful here.

My tea recipe

For a 5 gallon brew:

Start with distilled, rain, or RO water. Chlorine/chloramine will kill the microlife.
1 cup bird or bat guano
1 tbl liquid seaweed
1 tsp unsulphured blackstrap molasses
then brew for 24 hours

next day i add
1 cup earthworm castings
1/2 cup all-purpose 5-5-5 (happy frog organic fert)
1 tsp unsulphured blackstrap molasses
brew for another 24 hours

Foliar spray and soil drench.

If you are making teas with EWC you should have all the fungi and bacteria you need.

Dankster4Life said:

But wouldn't you agree that just cause it smells ok......that does not mean that the tea is BOOMING with life?Sure it may smell good...but i would think by this we can only guess that it hasn't gone bad,not that it is thriving.

Not sayin your wrong....your probably correct,i just feel that without a scope we only guess that the tea is thriving at full potential.

And a ?.....if i somehow totally forgot to clean up after a brew,what would i want to use to clean up my bucket and stones?Bleach,peroxide,regular dish soap?

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We can be quite confident the tea is active and aerobic when it smells fresh and earthy (also foaming over), otherwise [if it had gone bad/anaerobic] it would smell like sewage. The earthy smell itself is the result of microbes, particularly actinobacteria, which produce the geosmin that causes the odor. Same deal with the earthy smell outside after it rains. Metabolic activity may also cause the temperature of the tea itself to rise several degrees.

As for cleaning up baking soda works well. Hydrogen peroxide also helps.

If you're after a fungi-dominated tea you need to give the fungi a head start. A good way to do this is to mix the inoculant with some good fungi food. They like simple proteins and complex carbohydrates (cellulose): good things to use are oatmeal or bran, flax or soybean meal. Powdered oatmeal works very well; 3 or 4 tablespoons mixed into the compost or humus, moisten just enough and leave somewhere warm for several days.

After five or six days it will look something like this:


At which point it can be put into the tea brewer, along with other pro-fungi stuff such as kelp, humic acids, rock phosphate, fruit pulp, yucca extract, aloe vera, fish hydrolysate, etc.

Nullis said:

We can be quite confident the tea is active and aerobic when it smells fresh and earthy (also foaming over), otherwise [if it had gone bad/anaerobic] it would smell like sewage. The earthy smell itself is the result of microbes, particularly actinobacteria, which produce the geosmin that causes the odor. Same deal with the earthy smell outside after it rains. Metabolic activity may also cause the temperature of the tea itself to rise several degrees.

As for cleaning up baking soda works well. Hydrogen peroxide also helps.



















































































































































































































If you're after a fungi-dominated tea you need to give the fungi a head start. A good way to do this is to mix the inoculant with some good fungi food. They like simple proteins and complex carbohydrates (cellulose): good things to use are oatmeal or bran, flax or soybean meal. Powdered oatmeal works very well; 3 or 4 tablespoons mixed into the compost or humus, moisten just enough and leave somewhere warm for several days.

After five or six days it will look something like this:
View attachment 1580588

At which point it can be put into the tea brewer, along with other pro-fungi stuff such as kelp, humic acids, rock phosphate, fruit pulp, yucca extract, aloe vera, fish hydrolysate, etc.

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I got ya nullis.......i guess i just so stuck on having a microscope.It would be great to ACTUALLY see what i'm growing in my teas........fascinated....can't help it.

Nice pic.Now how many different products was in that inoculation?Should i stick to just using oatmeal or am i ok to toss in 3 or 4 different things?And am i correct in that more molasses can slow down fungal growth in a tea?

You say 3-4 tbsp........do i want the same amount with my compost or humus?

Sorry for all the Q's....but thats why i'm here.

That is just Alaskan forest humus, with powdered oatmeal mixed in. About a cup of humus to 3 or 4 tbsp powdered oatmeal and left in a warm place for several days to let the mycelial networks grow. What I used exactly was a 5 grain oatmeal hit with coffee grinder, but regular oatmeal or oat bran should work fine. Compost should also work, if there are fungal spores or hyphae present. Bacteria like the simple sugars in molasses, and they can proliferate at a much faster rate than fungi. Most bacteria lack the enzymes necessary to digest the more complex compounds in the oatmeal.

The humus has around 5,000 species of fungi (and several more thousand bacteria) and is an excellent inoculant in my experience, probably the best. Good compost should also work though, same amount of fungi food.

hello mrduke, right on for this thread good idea! So i have 9 veggin mothers, So my teas are going to be tailored to the vegg cycle.

This is the list with amounts

5 TableSpoons Barbados unsulphured molasses

1/4 cup AN's humic acid

1/4c fulvic acid

2c EWC in a 1g paint can strainer

1/2c General organics Bio marine

5grams AN's piranha(to help the fungi count)

5grams of tennessee rock phosphate

Just made it up, all organic and at the most 5 bucks is all it cost me to make 5 gallons
i will you know how it works out for me and hope it helps you out too. also any one who has any incite on the products im using let me know.
happy growing
ooo yea then mixed 3to1

Wanted to contribute: This is a recipe I got out of Urban Garden Magazine.
I adjust the dosage depending on plant maturity and manufacturers directions, but it's a great skeleton list to work with. I put the products I've been testing in bold.
The nutrients I use have yucca extract in them, and they usually end up in one of my brewers. Some even come with pro-biotics that add micros to the brew.

Also, I add soluble bacteria and fungus. Usually 1ml/gallon of Mayan Micro, 1/4tsp/gal of White Widow or Sub M+B or Green Gro cultures... been testing as many out as I can.

Three Simple AACT Recipes (All for 5 Gallon (19L) brewers)
Bacterial Dominant Tea
1.5 pounds (700g) bacterial compost or vermicompost [EWC]
3-4 tablespoons (45-60ml) liquid black strap molasses [Honey ES / Plantation Organic Molasses]
4 teaspoons (23g) dry soluble kelp or 2 tablespoons of liquid kelp [BioWeed]
3-4 teaspoons (15-20ml) fish emulsion [BioMarine]

Equal Ratio – Fungi : Bacteria Tea
1.5 pounds (700g) 1:1 fungi to bacteria compost [Ancient Forest/EWC]
3-4 tablespoons (45-60ml) humic acids [Diamond Black]
4 teaspoons (23g) dry soluble kelp or 2 tablespoons of liquid kelp [BioWeed]
3-4 teaspoons (15-20ml) fish hydrolysate [BioMarine]

Fungal Dominant Tea
2 pounds (900g) fungal compost [Ancient Forest]
3-4 tablespoons (50ml) humic acids [Diamond Black]
2 teaspoons (10ml) yucca extract
4 teaspoons (23g) dry soluble kelp or 2 tablespoons of liquid kelp [BioWeed]
4-5 teaspoons (20-25ml) fish hydrolysate [BioMarine]

Recipes from ‘The Compost Tea Brewing Manual’, 5th Edition by Dr Elaine Ingham.

This is from GH: I don't know how you could use an ounce of Flora+.... It's super concentrated and directions suggest 1ml/gallon....

Randall’s Recipe for Actively Aerated Compost Tea

(5) Gallons of good water
(3-5) cups of Ancient Forest
(1-3) oz of Floralicous Plus {OR(1-3) oz of FloraNectar OR (1-3) oz of organic Molasses OR(1-3) oz of BioWeed (Kelp)}
Good Air Pump
Brew it for 24 hours.
You can mix and match those food sources, if you do, always be conservative with dilutions (less is more!). If you add fertilizers like GO BioThrive and or GO BioBud to the AACT, use LESS than the suggested recommended dosage.

A light foliar spray of the AACT is great during vegetative growth

Kelp as a food source for AACT will culture a fungal dominated Tea.

Molasses and Sugars as a food source for AACT will culture a bacterially dominated Tea.

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How important is it to add alfalfa to teas ? I have Ewc and seaweed extract and moleasses do I really need it?

not sure if you'll are fimillar with all of AN's supplaments but I'm tring to replace as many as i can useing teas heres the ones i think can be replaced
nervana , tarantula, paranha, and maybe even voodoo juice and sensizym. not sure if tea will be making much in the way of enzymes, so what do you think? last cycle i ran the entire grandmaster feeding lineup, but at over 600 bucks i really want to cut it way back

Alfalfa isn't an absolute necessity, though it stimulates the activity of protozoa. Earthworm castings also feature protozoa; these along with nematodes are what feast on smaller microbes including bacteria and fungi thereby releasing the nutrients contained within the organism. But, I would recommend some guano if you really want to see results.

I don't know much about AN nutrients/supplements except that there are too many of them and they cost too much. I also know that various products of theirs feature synthetic chelating agents of the more novel variety (ie: DTPA, EDDHA) which is probably one of the things that makes them so expensive. If a product has EDDHA I would assume it also had other synthetic salts as well, and that would make the products largely incompatible with soil biota.