Re: [compost_tea] Testing procedures for various brewers

From: Robert Norsen <bnbrew_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 11:12:57 -0700 (PDT)

Mike Bosko - good that you are following up on the conference. Your conclusion that there is much to learn is the tip of the berg. And, yes Mike I agree that compost and nutrients are key. Just with my brewer and my research to find how to get good results I have been only moderatly successful.
 
I try to get fungi in the 5 to 15 range. Depending entirely on what I did I got that or less. But look at what Paul Sachs got. The same BobOLator brewer running similar cycles, Paul got tests of 42, 48.8, 63 total fungi with proportionatly high active fungi in the 30 - 40 ranges..
and what did we say about high fungal / low bacterial? With those high fungal numbers Paul is getting bacteria way up in the 2,000 - 3,000 numbers.
 
Mike The brewer is important for mechanical reasons such as ease of purchase, ease of operation, ease of moving it from place to place, ease of cleaning it and getting it ready to go again. But the skill of the operator in doing a simple task right, most of all the right cleanliness, good water, compost, nutrients has everything to do with the quality of the TEA. Paul has used his compost, his standard nutrient package, managed the input of the package nutrients and temperature. Paul is still working to maximize and standardize the operation. ( Paul Sachs has a well established organics business North Country Organics and is a researcher and writer. Paul is a distributor for Bob's Brewers. How is he getting such good results? His attention to nutrient feeding. www.norganics.com
 
Yes the brewer must keep the brew aerobic. And deliver a TEA that can be applied. Part of that is knowing how much nurtient the brewer can handle at a given temp. .We are all learning about this infinitely complex natural wonder called ACT. Fun ain't it? Keep your messages coming, Mike, Bob

Mike Bosko <mjbosko_at_jmtsystems.com> wrote:


Ok, I’m at it again. After the past week’s seminar I have many questions building, or better, brewing. Being a science enthusiast (not a scientist by any means), I know that to get properly developed results from a test for a given ‘item’, you need controls. What controls are in place to test the given brewers out there? Seems to me that a given test of a given brewer depends also on the given compost used. Compost has all those different organisms w/in it, and the amount of each different type of organism depends, probably, on what type of materials that went into the making of the compost.

 

So… when I see test results of a given brewer, I question – are we seeing the results of the materials extracted from the compost, the brewers capability to grow aerobic colonies or a mixture of both? I’m making my own judgment that it’s the latter. In that case, how can we say a certain brewer is better or worse than another by looking at the test results? Are there not too many variables?

 

Being that we don’t yet know most of the bacteria out there yet, we probably don’t know what environments each needs to grow. Right? So, can we yet say that the brewer manufacturer gets it compost from a given source each time, so thus its brewer is always going to put out the same test results if you always use the same qty of the same batch of compost?

 

I can see how one brewer’s design can let a given brew go anaerobic – and that would be a reason to step away from that brewer. But couldn’t a certain brewer’s numbers be high with one batch of compost, and then low with another? Even if it were made with the same components? Maybe it was hotter during the given pile’s life, or cooler, wetter, ??? Could it not also rate high in aerobic microbs with a certain amount of additive ‘feed’, but then high on anaerobic microbs with a batch using another amount of feed?

 

My question is this, when we are looking at ‘the numbers’ for the different brewers, are we really looking at apples to apples or, as the saying goes - apples to oranges? In other words, have tests been performed using controls to let us know that ‘this’ brewer’s design is actually better than ‘that’ brewer’s design? Or are we looking at the combination of so many variables that its hard to make a sound judgment decision on any given brewer?

 

Still, I realize so much potential to compost tea brewing, and to think even with all of Dr. Elaine’s work, we are just at the tip of the ‘berg – its exciting, very exciting, to know there is so much more learning ahead of us!

 

Thanks,

 

Mike


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Received on Thu Jul 17 2003 - 14:30:46 EDT

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