tutorial Beginner's guide to AACT/Compost Tea

     Whew! Just read the whole thread. Most informative 12 minutes of my life!  :liar: (But seriously, I did read the whole thread.) 
     An outbreak of BLS has hastened my venture in to brewing tea. It was always something I wanted to get started in, but now it's kinda urgent. I came up with a bunch of thoughts, questions, observations and downright impractical, harebrained delusions along the way. So please bear with me as I reflect on 37 pages of awesome.
 
1.) Has anyone tried / thought about / read about adding sawdust to their teabags? Microbes only produce enzymes to digest what they can detect in their immediate surroundings. If there's none of a certain nutrient/foodsource near them, they won't waste their energy producing the enzymes necessary to catabolize it. So, might adding a little sawdust (or other cellulose + lignin containing substrate) prompt the fungi in your AACT to be ready to break down organic matter in your soil?
     Maybe use forest duff with mycelium to pitch a batch of sawdust tea and spray that on top of your wood mulch? Probably have to brew for a long time...
 
2.) Same thing ^ with chitin. Feed your bacteria lots of chitin so they are geared up to eat fungi. I used to work in a research lab studying the use of biointensive IPM against soil-borne plant pathogens. We did a few field trials using a commercial preparation of water soluble chitin. I wish I could remember the name of that stuff...
 
3.) I had some ideas about the role that additives (guano, kelp, fish, etc…) might play in the ol' AACT bucket. I understand there are purists who scoff at anything that deviates from what they see as holy, and some will argue semantics 'till they're blue in the face. They have a point, though. Technically compost tea is just tea steeped in water, possibly with some additional carbon source (sugars) added to hasten microbial growth. IMO that's fine if it works for you and you aren't very curious about what could be done to improve your results.
     Maybe I need to call my idea AANT (nutrient tea) to distinguish it from compost tea but, whatever. Here's my thinking. When you take on the task of culturing a microbe on media (that's what AACT is), the specific requirements of the target microbe must be met. It's my experience and understanding that it is unrealistic to expect a microbial ecosystem as diverse as soil to grow as strong as it can in culture by simply feeding it one sugar and some micronutrients. Anyone who's ever worked in a microbiology lab can confirm you just can't grow everything in tryptic soy broth, let alone Kool-aid. 
     It just make sense that if you want to grow the most vigorous AACT you can, you would want to at least try to make sure you have a very chemically diverse source of nutrients and energy molecules available to your minions. I seems like if you limit the diversity of the food you give them, some might be outcompeted, and your final product would be similarly limited in diversity.
     When I start brewing (I can't wait until my pump and ingredients get here), I'm going to try to figure out how many microbes will likely be cultured in a 5 gallon batch of tea and do some calcumalatin' to estimate the nutrient demand of said population. The goal will be to simply feed my inoculant population just the right amount of a very diverse diet so every microbe species present can find something to eat, but at the same time, not just load it up so my AACT turns into a liquid fertilizer.
 
4.) Anybody have experience using AACT on plants with BLS?
 
     Again, awesome thread folks. I've learned a lot here thanks to everyone who contributed.

Celtic67 said:
but most of the polysaccharides will be probably end up as either mannose, glucose, and oligosaccharides of these (derived from the laminarin) gluronate, mannuronate and oligosaccharides of these (from the alginate) and fucose, gluronic acids and oligosaccharides of these (from fucoidan) - Basically lots of lovely substrates for bacterial and fungi growth!!
Click to expand...
 
     Word, yo. Why feed a kid (microbe population) a Snickers bar (molasses), when you could feed him steak, sweet potatoes and a spinach salad (a diverse diet) and have him grow up to be Superman (good, diverse AACT)? WORK those enzymes, boy!
 
dash 2 said:
     Whew! Just read the whole thread. Most informative 12 minutes of my life!  :liar: (But seriously, I did read the whole thread.) 
     An outbreak of BLS has hastened my venture in to brewing tea. It was always something I wanted to get started in, but now it's kinda urgent. I came up with a bunch of thoughts, questions, observations and downright impractical, harebrained delusions along the way. So please bear with me as I reflect on 37 pages of awesome.
 
1.) Has anyone tried / thought about / read about adding sawdust to their teabags? Microbes only produce enzymes to digest what they can detect in their immediate surroundings. If there's none of a certain nutrient/foodsource near them, they won't waste their energy producing the enzymes necessary to catabolize it. So, might adding a little sawdust (or other cellulose + lignin containing substrate) prompt the fungi in your AACT to be ready to break down organic matter in your soil?
     Maybe use forest duff with mycelium to pitch a batch of sawdust tea and spray that on top of your wood mulch? Probably have to brew for a long time...
 
2.) Same thing ^ with chitin. Feed your bacteria lots of chitin so they are geared up to eat fungi. I used to work in a research lab studying the use of biointensive IPM against soil-borne plant pathogens. We did a few field trials using a commercial preparation of water soluble chitin. I wish I could remember the name of that stuff...
 
3.) I had some ideas about the role that additives (guano, kelp, fish, etc…) might play in the ol' AACT bucket. I understand there are purists who scoff at anything that deviates from what they see as holy, and some will argue semantics 'till they're blue in the face. They have a point, though. Technically compost tea is just tea steeped in water, possibly with some additional carbon source (sugars) added to hasten microbial growth. IMO that's fine if it works for you and you aren't very curious about what could be done to improve your results.
     Maybe I need to call my idea AANT (nutrient tea) to distinguish it from compost tea but, whatever. Here's my thinking. When you take on the task of culturing a microbe on media (that's what AACT is), the specific requirements of the target microbe must be met. It's my experience and understanding that it is unrealistic to expect a microbial ecosystem as diverse as soil to grow as strong as it can in culture by simply feeding it one sugar and some micronutrients. Anyone who's ever worked in a microbiology lab can confirm you just can't grow everything in tryptic soy broth, let alone Kool-aid. 
     It just make sense that if you want to grow the most vigorous AACT you can, you would want to at least try to make sure you have a very chemically diverse source of nutrients and energy molecules available to your minions. I seems like if you limit the diversity of the food you give them, some might be outcompeted, and your final product would be similarly limited in diversity.
     When I start brewing (I can't wait until my pump and ingredients get here), I'm going to try to figure out how many microbes will likely be cultured in a 5 gallon batch of tea and do some calcumalatin' to estimate the nutrient demand of said population. The goal will be to simply feed my inoculant population just the right amount of a very diverse diet so every microbe species present can find something to eat, but at the same time, not just load it up so my AACT turns into a liquid fertilizer.
 
4.) Anybody have experience using AACT on plants with BLS?
 
     Again, awesome thread folks. I've learned a lot here thanks to everyone who contributed.

 
     Word, yo. Why feed a kid (microbe population) a Snickers bar (molasses), when you could feed him steak, sweet potatoes and a spinach salad (a diverse diet) and have him grow up to be Superman (good, diverse AACT)? WORK those enzymes, boy!
Click to expand...
 
I think that the media would contain a diverse range of nutrients as it is, not to mention that a huge amount of cross feeding will occur (i.e. microbes feeding on the metabolites of other microbes). The problem with adding in new substrates is rather than "switching on" the enzymes that can breakdown the new substrates of beneficial microbes - you could just be creating a niche for a potentially harmful species to proliferate. As we don't know the correct bacterial composition of the optimum AACT, the only way the find out is good ole trial and error. Have fun!!
 
edit - I think something like Tween-20 might be worth a try. It will promote bacterial production as a substrate for membrane synthesis. Any non fermented Tween will act as a wetting agent and I think plants can break down tween to produce medium chain fatty acids which can stimulate plant pathogen defence mechanisms. It has plausibility, so you never know!! 
 
Celtic67 said:
 
If you added the honey in the same ratio as the molasses then would it not be well below that concentration range i.e. 0.2mg/ml? So should be OK?
 
I know kelp (Laminaria digitata) has various antibacterial compounds such as polyphenols, in addition it contains fucoidan a heavily sulphated polysaccharide, which is believed to be antimicrobial as well - hence why low amounts might give better results - but most of the polysaccharides will be probably end up as either mannose, glucose, and oligosaccharides of these (derived from the laminarin) gluronate, mannuronate and oligosaccharides of these (from the alginate) and fucose, gluronic acids and oligosaccharides of these (from fucoidan) - Basically lots of lovely substrates for bacterial and fungi growth!!
 
A worry for me is, it seems to me to be a rather simplified distinction between good and bad microbes i.e. aerobic good/ anaerobic bad - which is rarely the case in other applications/microbiomes
 
An immediate concern would be the risk of producing pathogens from the spores within the manure or other environmental sources. I would recommend using gloves and washing well after using it!!!
 
I carry out a lot of bacterial fermentations and lots of things can go wrong, and that is using sophisticated laboratory equipment costing 100,000's of dollars, never mind a home made fermenter!! So, I would expect a huge variation between people's AACT even from AACT's brewed in the same town using the same ingredients.
 
But it is a interesting topic for me, which I will be giving a go. I might try to alter some of the conditions using my knowledge from my work, but the question remains other than seeing how the plants grow - we do not know what the ideal microbial composition is and even if we did I doubt anyone would be forking out 75,000 odd dollars to sequence the bacteria in your AACT to find out whether the bacterial composition is beneficial or not.  :P
Click to expand...
 
The high end of the spectrum I highlighted, 5mg/ml is a common rate for molasses, and I assume would have some anti-microbial properties. Whether this is enough to completely disrupt or just temporarily dampen the brew process, I don't know, but at 0.2mg/ml, the effect would be reduced.
 
Kelps antibacterial properties, as mentioned, probably causes the initial delay in microbe growth, as has been observed through microscopy.
 
There are applications for anaerobes, anaerobic teas are reputed to work better against some pathogens, FPE and its use of lactobacillus, bokashi and whatever the deuce EM-1 is, etc. Perhaps it is an inherant bias that leads AACT to be the most common form of tea.
 
I don't think it takes laboratory equipment to brew AACT, but for tinkering a microscope would be handy, to atleast observe large scale reactions to differing techniques/ingredients. Or like I do, blindly following someone that has done that :P
 
As for the ideal composition of microbes (bacteria, protozoa, fungi, nematodes), that is the idea behind brewing times, but in the end, the soil composition and root exudates are going to control the final make up after tea has been applied. At least, to my understanding.

dash 2 said:
1.) Has anyone tried / thought about / read about adding sawdust to their teabags? Microbes only produce enzymes to digest what they can detect in their immediate surroundings. If there's none of a certain nutrient/foodsource near them, they won't waste their energy producing the enzymes necessary to catabolize it. So, might adding a little sawdust (or other cellulose + lignin containing substrate) prompt the fungi in your AACT to be ready to break down organic matter in your soil?
     Maybe use forest duff with mycelium to pitch a batch of sawdust tea and spray that on top of your wood mulch? Probably have to brew for a long time...
 
2.) Same thing ^ with chitin. Feed your bacteria lots of chitin so they are geared up to eat fungi. I used to work in a research lab studying the use of biointensive IPM against soil-borne plant pathogens. We did a few field trials using a commercial preparation of water soluble chitin. I wish I could remember the name of that stuff...
 
3.) I had some ideas about the role that additives (guano, kelp, fish, etc…) might play in the ol' AACT bucket. I understand there are purists who scoff at anything that deviates from what they see as holy, and some will argue semantics 'till they're blue in the face. They have a point, though. Technically compost tea is just tea steeped in water, possibly with some additional carbon source (sugars) added to hasten microbial growth. IMO that's fine if it works for you and you aren't very curious about what could be done to improve your results.
     Maybe I need to call my idea AANT (nutrient tea) to distinguish it from compost tea but, whatever. Here's my thinking. When you take on the task of culturing a microbe on media (that's what AACT is), the specific requirements of the target microbe must be met. It's my experience and understanding that it is unrealistic to expect a microbial ecosystem as diverse as soil to grow as strong as it can in culture by simply feeding it one sugar and some micronutrients. Anyone who's ever worked in a microbiology lab can confirm you just can't grow everything in tryptic soy broth, let alone Kool-aid. 
     It just make sense that if you want to grow the most vigorous AACT you can, you would want to at least try to make sure you have a very chemically diverse source of nutrients and energy molecules available to your minions. I seems like if you limit the diversity of the food you give them, some might be outcompeted, and your final product would be similarly limited in diversity.
     When I start brewing (I can't wait until my pump and ingredients get here), I'm going to try to figure out how many microbes will likely be cultured in a 5 gallon batch of tea and do some calcumalatin' to estimate the nutrient demand of said population. The goal will be to simply feed my inoculant population just the right amount of a very diverse diet so every microbe species present can find something to eat, but at the same time, not just load it up so my AACT turns into a liquid fertilizer.
Click to expand...
 
1. That's the idea behind adding small amounts of oatmeal. Forest duff is a great ingredient, I try to mix some in with the compost element of AACT.
 
2. Castings?
 
3. Oh for Christ's sake, burn the heathen already!
 
I advocate starting simple, learning, and adapting it to your situation. Much as if you were going to take up yeast baking or vegetable fermenting, other microbe rich activities, walk before you run. If I started my first kraut with every ingredient and recipe change under the sun, I'm probably walking right into failure. Following instructions from someone that has made those mistakes will save a lot of redundant work. Tim Wilson and Tad Hussey are a good place to start.
 
The brew I use today certainly isn't as simple as molasses and compost, but I have made changes conservatively and based them on something other than whim or fancy. I find it simpler to change up the "compost" component (mixing compost, castings, duff, garden soil, etc.) to provide a wider range of nutrients/microbe variety, but I still add a bit of meal, fish hydrosylate or such to mix it up.
 
A Celtic mentioned, there is going to be a variety of food available to the microbes in the "compost" addition to a tea. That's why they're there in the first place, one would think.
 
 
Crap, now I'm all blue in the face.
 
solid7 said:
 
Funny... I always thought that it was the same phenomena that occured when skimming proteins from a fish tank or water treatment plant.
Click to expand...
 
I will help confirm it is from Saponins. So no it's not a sign of microbial life per say, however it is a sign of carbohydrates. This is still a good thing because carbohydrates are the food source for said microbes.
 
 
Help me out guys, 6 more likes and I am a "legend."

Celtic67 said:
 
 
Most likely a biofilm
Click to expand...
 
 
You sir are awesome! Thanks for making me a Legend!
 
Ok quick question (apologies if it has been answered here before.  I couldn't see it so here goes...)
 
When making AACT is it necessary to have solids added to the brew chamber?
 
Let me clarify - I have two liquid products - One is a dormant Aerobic brewed pro-biotic for your garden and the other is liquid worm tea 
 
If I was to add these two products into a aeration system along with some Molasses would this be enough to proliferate the microbes?  Or do I need solids in the mix for any reason? (Conversely would it be better to soak some Rolled oats with the two products and molasses for an hour or two before adding to a cloth bag?)
 
Sorry Might sound like a dumb question however I literally have zero storage or ability to garner live organic grass clippings or compost (apartment living) so would like an easy alternative if possible and these liquids are easy to store inside.
 
Trippa said:
Ok quick question (apologies if it has been answered here before.  I couldn't see it so here goes...)
 
When making AACT is it necessary to have solids added to the brew chamber?
 
Let me clarify - I have two liquid products - One is a dormant Aerobic brewed pro-biotic for your garden and the other is liquid worm tea 
 
If I was to add these two products into a aeration system along with some Molasses would this be enough to proliferate the microbes?  Or do I need solids in the mix for any reason? (Conversely would it be better to soak some Rolled oats with the two products and molasses for an hour or two before adding to a cloth bag?)
 
Sorry Might sound like a dumb question however I literally have zero storage or ability to garner live organic grass clippings or compost (apartment living) so would like an easy alternative if possible and these liquids are easy to store inside.
Click to expand...
 
N.B. I have never made an AACT.. :confused:
 
I think oats and molasses would provide enough of a carbon source for a 48 hr fermentation - I think that the grass is added to provide a wider range of substrates to allow other species to proliferate e.g. to feed on the cellulose and lignan - the oats should provide enough lignan, perhaps add some fresh leafy greens to the mix?
 
The grass may also be added as a source of microbes, again I am not sure.
 
Both your liquid additives should provide plenty of beneficial micro-organisms so you should be good with respect to that, although I am unsure how viable they would be as stored in a liquid form at room temperature for any decent length of time....
 
But as I said I have never made one before, so probably wait for someone who has to give their opinion....  
 
Trippa said:
Based on?
Click to expand...
 
 
I fail to understand how a bottled liquid can be Aerobic. "The point of AACT"  Actively Aerated Compost Tea
 
That's mainly what its based on.
 
The types of microbes that we are trying to produce are aerobic in nature.
 
You will have better results with plain old compost and grass clippings.
 
 
 
I think oats and molasses would provide enough of a carbon source for a 48 hr fermentation - I think that the grass is added to provide a wider range of substrates to allow other species to proliferate e.g. to feed on the cellulose and lignan - the oats should provide enough lignan, perhaps add some fresh leafy greens to the mix?
 
The grass may also be added as a source of microbes, again I am not sure.
Click to expand...
 
The reason some of us use grass, is because it has loads of microbes in it.
 
Cayennemist said:
 
 
I fail to understand how a bottled liquid can be Aerobic. "The point of AACT"  Actively Aerated Compost Tea
 
That's mainly what its based on.
 
The types of microbes that we are trying to produce are aerobic in nature.
 
You will have better results with plain old compost and grass clippings.
 
I think that the worm tea does contain aerobic bacteria as it says they require oxygen to survive. I think they have induced dormancy in the bacteria and when they are revived with an addition of a food source (they recommend fish emulsion and kelp powder) then they spring back to life. I have my doubts on how many will be viable as many have struggled with this in probiotics in food stuff. I guess it wouldn't matter if you used them in an AACT because as long as there was a reasonably amount left viable to seed the tea then by the end of the brewing there should be plenty for your plants.
 
 
The reason some of us use grass, is because it has loads of microbes in it.
Click to expand...
 
Ah Thanks, I was wondering that myself. If you were a regular AACT user, would using a bit of your conditioned soil as a starter culture as well as the grass be a good idea? As presumably the maintained soil should have high amounts of beneficial bacteria.
 
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