[compost_tea] Testing procedures for various brewers

From: Mike Bosko <mjbosko_at_jmtsystems.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 17:59:58 -0700

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




Received on Thu Jul 17 2003 - 01:00:30 EDT

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