I thought only lab can thrive in rice wash as very little food in it
Once you establish a good amount of lab , then you add the food to multiply them ie milk ?
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it is a carb source, anything that is around will get in there. It is true that LAB are better at room temp than most others but you will get it all in the wash.
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Every day is a school day
: )
Thankyou @BeagleZ
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A cut from Unconventional farmer, that they copied from Gil.
I did not add the sugar part, for long term shelf storage.
How to Make:
ā
- Get container, fill halfway with rice-wash. Rice wash is the water leftover when you rinse fresh rice. For example, go buy rice, whatever kind, bring it home, put it in a pot with warm water, swirl it a bit and then drain the [now milky colored] water. The water is now a rich source of carbohydrates. In this step, you can substitute rice with another carbohydrate source if you donāt have rice, as long as it is complex (donāt use simple carbohydrates like sugar, honey, syrup, molasses, etc). You can use wheat, barley, kinoa, other carbohydrates as the base to make your carbohydrate wash. This wash will attract microbes from the air, among them lacto bacilli.
- Cover loosely and let stand for a couple days to a week
- When is it done? When you see a light film on top (molds) and it smells a little sour and forms 3 layers. This is indicating the rice wash is infected with various microbes. This happens more quickly in warm temperatures because microbes are more active. Thus it is all relative since we donāt do this in controlled laboratory conditions.
- The layers are distinct
- Top layer: floating carbohydrates leftover from fermentation and possibly molds
- Middle layer: Lactic Acid and other bacteria (cheese buffs will recognize this as a makeshift ārennetā). We will use this layer.
- Bottom layer: Starch, byproduct of fermentation
- Extract the middle layer using a siphon. This layer contains the highest concentration of lactic acid bacteria and lowest concentration of the unneeded byproducts.
I know the dogs I care for while their family goes on vacations, go absolutely bonkers, as soon as I open the curdās container! They run right past their favorite treats, for curd chunks!
I also use very cold water for the beginning, rice wash.
All I know it lights up the organic additives I put in my medium mixā¦and itās almost free, well costās me, 10 shot glasses of milk, as I cook the rice that I wash for dinner.
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Iām glad I read this. Last batch I made I didnāt do this and it was pretty funky. I also let the rice wash sit and it got a sulphur (poop) smell 
. Now that I see I have 3 layer Iām going to inoculate the milk tonight. I was going to let it sit longer so glad i came here
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Hey seeds2weeds, Excellent!! Remember, your last shot of LABās, just add 10 parts milk, and a few days, separate from the curds.
If you do not have an Aloe Vera plant, you may want one.
I pulverize any of the leaves that need to be cut off, strain it off, keep it refrigerated, but when added to your LABās water, makes the plants very green and lush, like a big boost!!
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Whats up @webeblzr
Thanks for the tips, good think the ratio stuck in my head. Last time i made it i guess i forgot i dont want the nastys from the rice wash going into the milk and i also let it sit too long. Not this time! Everything is going smooth as butter and i am expecting to go home to a nice huge curd
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@webeblzr
What do you think? Ready to siphon or should i wait a bit longer?
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Looks good and ready to me! Do you have a plan for the curd? You going to leave it au natural or super saturate with sugar to shelf stabilize?
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I toss the curd. I would like to compost it but i have no compost pile.
Au natural and into a fridge for the next 12 months she goes after i siphon the goods
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Do you have animals? Great for their gut health. We normally eat the curd with some marmalade on a cracker or toast.
I super saturated the last batch I made, but it used sooo much sugar that Iāll just continue to keep using the raw whey serum from here on out. My wife is already accustomed to the random gallon jug of labs in the fridge. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
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Lol im lucky enough to acquire a small personal fridge but i usually hide 2 mason jars in the back of the fridge. Ive never made a huge batch since im never remembering to use it it seems like 2 qts last me 12 months lol. Im planning on using it more frequently to bring things to life in my bag soil
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yeah, Iād strain it off. The dogs I, we dogsit for go batshit crazy, as soon as I open the fridge, and just touch that storage container.
I honestly, think, I could throw down bacon, or curds, the curds would go first, every time!
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Is it possible for the LAB to become super-saturated?
I decided to give this a go, and ā since I didnāt have any large vessels readily available ā I was able to get a good, but small, batch of serum.
I used pinto beans for the wash, let that sit for a few days in a warm closet, and then added whole milk. Several days later, it had a nice, creamy layer of farmhouse cheese floating on top. I separated the curds from the whey, put the curds into the composter and the whey into the 'fridge (after adding some molasses to it), and then added MORE milk to the whey that I hadnāt removed.
The reason I added more milk was because ā with my relatively small container ā there was plenty more whole milk left over that I wasnāt going to use otherwise. A few days layer, it looks like curds are forming on the BOTTOM of the jar rather than the top.
My guess is that the whey is still good and fertile. What say those of you who have done this before? If the curds form at the bottom of the jar, is the whey still good to go?
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Interesting. I wonder how this will turn out.
Personally i would have saved the milk and created another small batch rather than add the milk to the whey.
I wonder how the rice wash bacteria interacts with the milk in order to separate the two.
If this works out in theory anybody would be able to add 10 parts milk to 1 parts labs serum to make more labs instead of rice wash.
Hope i made sense there lol
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Thatās kind of what I was thinking. I used up all of the beans on the first wash, so I couldnāt do another small batch (without getting more beans).
Everything still smells good (sweet, like mild cheese) and looks good except for the fact that the curds ā if thatās what they are ā are forming at the bottom rather than the top of the container.
I donāt know how to test it other than by adding it to plants and seeing whether they like it. Iāve just germinated a group of seeds, so itās too early to use any of it yet. But Iāll report my findings here, when the time comes.
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Yeah, I have no real clue how to tell if itās proper or not besides a nice yellow serum is the only indicator I have. I imagine you could just siphon the way out and leave the mask thatās forming on the bottom for the compost.
I am very interested to see how this turns out.
I imagine you could look at it with a microscope to see if there is bacteria thriving because I believe thatās all we are after is introducing the bacteria to our soil to help break down nutrients
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Is it because you poured the serum into the milk and not the milk into the serum ?
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Exactly what Iāve been doing since I started making and using LABās.
I also made wheat bran LABās bokashi, that I add to my medium mix, then let it rest, a month of so before I use.
I want to dry some out to keep LABās flakes in my freezer, for a back up plan of sorts.
A guy over at Bean basement, made cheese from his curds, I think he used lemon juice as the acid, to make it coagulate, into a soft cheese, that he said was really tasty.
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