Just loaded up my first bin of bokashi

This looks like a more practical way to handle the food scraps that we make, I just loaded up the bin with all sorts of stuff, interested to see it go to work.

Found a cool article on making EM-1 style inoculant and then making your own bokashi bran from it. New project!

http://www.hawaiihealingtree.org/how-to-make-your-own-em-1-inoculant-and-bokashi/

This is a really great idea! Many people make sauerkraut/kim chi, and have to skim off the yeast and lactobacillus from the top. I think I've found a source for this. Great experimentation. We need to share how this works out for each of us.
John S
PDX OR

yes curious to see how it works, ill post my findings. I loaded my bucket with a lot of misc food scraps but also a lot of crispy fat from rendering tallow. Interested to see how the bran breaks oily fat type materials back down into soil.

If you're doing that outside, meat fat will often attract raccoons, opposums, rats, mice and other rodents, which are often considered undesirable.
But you may have another plan.
John S
PDX OR

We have composted meat and bones using bokashi as well as fatty stuff and the bokashi stuff once the fermentation starts seems to be gross to raccoons or something. They left it alone and they leave almost nothing alone in my garden. I don't think they would leave it alone the first few days but once the fermenting starts it smells really gross and the raccoons nut have felt it smelled gross as well.

Good call, ill make sure wherever I go next with this buckets contents that critters cant get at it. Maybe ill build a box or put a pallet over the area so they cant dig it up.

So far the jar of fermented rice water smells putrid after a week of fermenting, I looked at the comments below the article and he describes it as smelling like old dishwater. Sounds about right.

Going to try the next step with some raw milk I have here. sifting off the slime perhaps through an old chunk of rag and fermenting in a loosely sealed jar. 80 oz is about 2/3 gallon.

after another week my raw milk looks just like in the photo, layers of curd and a big pocket of whey. I used butter muslin to strain the curd from the whey and threw the curd in my compost. The whey went into a jar with 1 tbsp. molasses to feed the culture. I boiled and let cool 12 c water, mixed the 4 tbsp. molasses into the water until dissolved. added 4 tbsp. of the serum culture and took it out into the garage. I weighed out 10 lbs wheat bran (I found a 50 lb bag for $14 at my local feed mill) and put it in a big plastic tote for mixing. Poured the water/molasses/culture into the bin and mixed by hand. I would describe the mix as slightly tacky... put two garbage bags inside each other and packed the bran tightly as I went, tied off each bag and put the lid on. Will keep you posted in two weeks when I pull off the lid and see if it smells good.

After two weeks it indeed smelled sweet and looks like the culturing went well. I made a big drum of plant trimmings and some food scraps and so far it looks like they are composting down. I may try to dry the homemade bokashi bran if we get a couple warm dry days otherwise I see no reason it cant stay moist for awhile.

Had a nice warm calm day in august so I spread it all around on the driveway and dried it out, not sure if it was necessary but it stores nicely now.

Done a few bins with the new homemade bran and it smells like it should.

This was advertised as food back into soil in 30 days, I would say it's going to take much longer but still seems like the perfect system for my climate, going to be nice to keep a nice smelling bin in the basement all winter long and not have to manage food scraps outside in the winter.