Homemade Lactobacillus Serum

This is a wonderful recipe, I use it daily in my own gut, in fermented foods, on the garden, in the animals water, it really has a million uses.

I did not write the following article, all credit goes to the author, but I am posting it here so people have a reference, the link will be at the bottom of the page.



Lactobacillus Serum

This is the workhorse of the beneficial bacteria we’ll be discussing here. We use it for everything! Foul odors, clogged drains, cheaper pig/chicken/etc farming, aquaculture, the applications are amazingly diverse. Learn how to make and use this and you will have a powerful tool in your farming arsenal.

How to Make:

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 don’t have rice, as long as it is complex (don’t 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 don’t 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 “rennet”). 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
Get a new container, larger than the first. Take the extracted serum from the last step and mix it with 10 parts milk. By saturating with milk (lactose), we dissuade other microbes from proliferating, leaving L. bacilli. E.G. if you have 1cup of the serum, mix it with 10cups milk.

TIP: The best milk to use in unpasteurized natural milk. However, any milk will do, even powdered milk. In our experience, the best is unpasteurized natural but just use what is available. We just want to saturate with lactose to promote L. bacilli bacteria.

You want to keep this stage anaerobic as much as possible. You can use something like rice bran, barley bran, wheat bran, etc sprinkled on top of the milk. I use a sealed container with a one-way valve. Note: Beware of bubbling during this phase. It can lead to overflows if you filled to near the top. It can go through the one-way valves so keep an eye on it and don’t do this step around nice things.
After about 1 week (temp dependent), you’ll see curds (made of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) on top of the milk. The water below will be yellow colored – this is whey, enriched with lactic acid bacteria from the fermentation of the milk.

NOTE: Microbes like L. bacilli are more active in warmer temperatures. The curds you see are a byproduct of the fermentation process. Fermentation is generally associated with microbial processes under anaerobic(no oxygen) conditions. Now, L. bacilli is a facultative anaerobe, that is it can live and work with or without oxygen, but less competition in anaerobic conditions.

The water below(whey+lacto) is the good stuff. You want to extract this. You can either skim the curds off the top, pour through a strainer, or whatever other methods to accomplish that

NOTE: Remember the curds, or byproduct of milk fermentation by L. bacilli, are great food. They are full of beneficial microbes like L. bacilli. Feed the curds to the soil, compost pile, plants, animals, humans – whoever wants them! They are full of good nutrients/microbes. No waste in natural farming.

To preserve at room temperature, add an equal part sugar/molasses to the serum. So, if you have 1L of serum, add 1kilo sugar or 1L molasses. Otherwise store in fridge to keep.

Example Recipe:

1 L rice wash
add 10L Milk
After rice wash and milk remove curds – around 1L
Left with 10L pure LAB (lactic acid bacteria)
add 10kg sugar or 10L molasses
= 20 L stabilized lactic acid bacteria serum



What to Use it for and How

Before using, first mix 1:20 with water. 1 part serum to 20 parts water. Then follow instructions below:

Odor Reducer:
Add mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L. You can mix it more or less, there are no rules here, just how we typically do it.

Apply to places where there is odor buildup. The harmless bacteria “eat” the odor causing germs and the smell is gone!
Indoors: reduces foul odors, including animals like cats, dogs, mice, other pets. Stinky shoes? Wet clothes from being outside? Gym clothes that haven’t made it to the wash yet? Smoker in the house? Kill these nasty smells!
Outside: use to control odor in pens – pigs, cows, chickens. In barns, around the yard, etc



Household use:

Clear clogged drains: dump mixture into drain to clear clogs. Exact amount depends on the clog, haha. A few tbsp to 1L works well. For semi-clogged drains (like kitchen sink draining progressively slower), use at night and allow at least the night for microbes to work.
Keep septic clear. Tired of having your septic system drained? Add lacto! Depending on size of your system, pour a few tbsp. to a few L into the toilet every few months.
Houseplants: Mix 2-3tbsp per 1L water and use that to water them.



Animal Bedding:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water. Mix with animal bedding to reduce smell and increase longevity. In natural pig farming we use at least 1 yard deep of bedding so there is plenty of space for microbes to work. Bedding consists of organic substrate like rice hulls, wood chips, sawdust, wood shavings, shredded corn cob, any other high cellulose, high lignin material. Natural pig farming is a future topic on this site. Spray until bedding is slightly damp but not wet. How much you spray really depends on your climate. If you are in a very dry climate you can spray a little more and mix in evenly. Wetter (more humid) climates use a bit less. Mix into the bedding evenly where necessary (in many cases, like with pigs and chickens, they’ll mix it themselves). How much you use is all relative. These guidelines are for pigs and chickens. More extreme smells, just use more! Want to spray less often, use more! As we notice a smell we spray. Thus, as pigs grow bigger, make more poop, we spray more often! Dosage/frequency is relative and will depend on your situation.



Animals – Digestive/Growth Aid:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water, then add that mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L(so the animal’s water contains little less than a quarter tsp/L of lacto serum). But this is very flexible. The Lacto serum is not harmful, so its just about adding enough to be effective, without wasting it.

Improve digestive efficiency in humans and animals alike:
Improves how you feel after meals, particularly meals rich in meats. It’s awesome. After eating, mix 1-2tbsp lacto with a cup of water and drink that. Makes you feel so much better after! Lessens that afternoon lull, gives you more energy!
Aids digestion in animals. This is critical. You can raise animals on less food, and see the same and greater growth rates. Amazing results in pigs . The principal is that the microorganisms help digest the food coming in – better digestibility means better nutrient absorption. Save on feeds, better feed to growth conversion ratio!

TIP: If you really want to boost growth, mix 2tbsp to 1L water and soak the food in this solution for a few hours to a few days. Food is pre-digested when animals eat it, AWESOME!

Great results in livestock and poultry.



Plants – Growth Aid:
When added to water for plants, nutrient uptake efficiency is increased, which increases growth!

Improves growth of plants when applied as foliar spray and soil drench. Improves their efficiency in uptaking nutrients so naturally, growth is enhanced. With the use of these microorganisms, the nutrients you spray or drench to feed your plants become more bio-available and easily absorbable by the plants. Technically, you can say that plants do not use organic nutrients directly. Microorganisms convert organic nutrients to their inorganic constituents which the plants utilize. Utilizing microbes, you will notice better plant growth and health.



Disease Resistance:

This is a consequence of the increased efficiency of nutrients. More nutrients available at smaller metabolic cost.
Lacto suppresses harmful bacteria in food/water that animals consume, enhances their gut flora so that line of defense is working optimally, etc.


Aid Compost:

Mix 2tbsp/L and spray on compost pile to improve decomposition. This is a huge topic that will be expanded upon in another post.



Aid Organic Fertilizer:
Add 1-2tbsp per gallon water-nutrient solution. Lacto consumes organic nutrients making them bio-available to plant roots.

Plants don’t use organic fertilizer! Microbes break it down to inorganic constituents, and plants take those up. This product makes that process more efficient.



Aquaculture:
Lacto works in aquaculture just fine if you don’t have BIM available. Add lacto at roughly 1L per 700m3 of fish-containing water. Example: you have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 1L of BIM or Lacto

Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups

Original website

Thank you for sharing!

A hidden gem.

I've had an experience where I had to travel from home for a around a month and I had some of this just finishing up from 2 gallons of milk.  I didn't think the cheese would keep in the fridge the whole time, "first time making it", so I fed some of it to my dog and the rest was just tossed out on the ground in the food forest I was starting.  I went back to loading up my truck and overlooked the fact that I just threw out a heaping stinky cheese curd that was going to attract my dog.  I finished loading my truck, realized what I had done, and yup, he gobbled the rest of it up.  So off we go on a 14 hour drive.  Around 10 hours in, my dog began dry heaving/gagging.  I pull over and we walk around a little bit in a field and I turn around to see him hacking up something stringy....he hacked up a tapeworm.  I've never tried it again to see what would happen if he ate that much of the fermented curd.  But I also wonder if the drive/movement had an additional effect on what had just happened.?

When I was learning about this I read of urban communities in asia where they have polluted canals running down the middle of the streets/walkways.  The community learned of making this and began dumping it into the canals in front of their homes, and the canals cleared up.

I've read that it will keep for a long time in the fridge.  I still have a half gallon that I made early spring, I didn't add any food source for the microbes, I put it in the fridge.  I don't have a microscope to verify that there are still living microbes in there but it looks and smells the same.  The cheese curds are in a separate jar and they look/smell the same as well.

Disease Resistance:

This is a consequence of the increased efficiency of nutrients. More nutrients available at smaller metabolic cost.
Lacto suppresses harmful bacteria

It also suppresses harmful bacteria and fungus like mildew on leaves. I have found that spraying the leaves prevents and suppresses downy and powdery mildew on the leaves  

If I am understanding the recipe correctly, if I started with 1 cup rice wash, I would end up with 200 cups of the final product (1cup rice wash X 10 cups milk X 20 cups water dilution). That is 200 cups, which is 12.5 gallons of the final product that one would use in the sink drain, in the animal water or feed, as an air freshener spray (maybe?), etc. ! Is that right? That would be incredible!
Another question: Does anyone happen to know if essential oils were added to the final dilution, would that kill the beneficial bacteria in the product? My sense is that it would being that essential oils are incredibly powerful, but in case anyone knows for sure either way, I thought I would ask.

Please disregard my question about essential oils and the lacto bacteria. I readily found the answer (and should have done my own research before asking).

Inputs - Section 1 - LAB or Lactic acid bacteria

http://culturalhealingandlife.com.www413.your-server.de/index.php?/topic/35-inputs-section-1-lab-or-lactic-acid-bacteria/

If you use it on plants what dilution are you using? How much per m2?

What I use is whey that separates from the yogurt I make, usually about 1/4 cup. I put it in a quart or liter spray bottle and fill with water. I spray that on as a fine mist until damp but not dripping. Leaves will vary as to how much they will hold so area covered will vary. Observe what the results are in the next few days. If some leaves shrivel and die but others get green and healthy thtn some leaves may have been infected with a pathogenic agent but the colonization with lacto bacillus has protected other leaves from infestation.

I make one or two gallons of yogurt a week, so for me another easy way to get lactobacillus serum is to pour off some of the whey that separates, mix it with brown sugar and let it ferment a few days. Just dilute it and use it the same as the rice-wash kind.

Travis Schulert wrote:This is a wonderful recipe, I use it daily in my own gut, in fermented foods, on the garden, in the animals water, it really has a million uses.

I did not write the following article, all credit goes to the author, but I am posting it here so people have a reference, the link will be at the bottom of the page.



Lactobacillus Serum

This is the workhorse of the beneficial bacteria we’ll be discussing here. We use it for everything! Foul odors, clogged drains, cheaper pig/chicken/etc farming, aquaculture, the applications are amazingly diverse. Learn how to make and use this and you will have a powerful tool in your farming arsenal.

How to Make:

   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 don’t have rice, as long as it is complex (don’t 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 don’t 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 “rennet”). 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
   Get a new container, larger than the first. Take the extracted serum from the last step and mix it with 10 parts milk. By saturating with milk (lactose), we dissuade other microbes from proliferating, leaving L. bacilli. E.G. if you have 1cup of the serum, mix it with 10cups milk.

       TIP: The best milk to use in unpasteurized natural milk. However, any milk will do, even powdered milk. In our experience, the best is unpasteurized natural but just use what is available. We just want to saturate with lactose to promote L. bacilli bacteria.

   You want to keep this stage anaerobic as much as possible. You can use something like rice bran, barley bran, wheat bran, etc sprinkled on top of the milk. I use a sealed container with a one-way valve. Note: Beware of bubbling during this phase. It can lead to overflows if you filled to near the top. It can go through the one-way valves so keep an eye on it and don’t do this step around nice things.
   After about 1 week (temp dependent), you’ll see curds (made of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) on top of the milk. The water below will be yellow colored – this is whey, enriched with lactic acid bacteria from the fermentation of the milk.

       NOTE: Microbes like L. bacilli are more active in warmer temperatures. The curds you see are a byproduct of the fermentation process. Fermentation is generally associated with microbial processes under anaerobic(no oxygen) conditions. Now, L. bacilli is a facultative anaerobe, that is it can live and work with or without oxygen, but less competition in anaerobic conditions.

   The water below(whey+lacto) is the good stuff. You want to extract this. You can either skim the curds off the top, pour through a strainer, or whatever other methods to accomplish that

       NOTE: Remember the curds, or byproduct of milk fermentation by L. bacilli, are great food. They are full of beneficial microbes like L. bacilli. Feed the curds to the soil, compost pile, plants, animals, humans – whoever wants them! They are full of good nutrients/microbes. No waste in natural farming.

   To preserve at room temperature, add an equal part sugar/molasses to the serum. So, if you have 1L of serum, add 1kilo sugar or 1L molasses. Otherwise store in fridge to keep.

Example Recipe:

   1 L rice wash
   add 10L Milk
   After rice wash and milk remove curds – around 1L
   Left with 10L pure LAB (lactic acid bacteria)
   add 10kg sugar or 10L molasses
   = 20 L stabilized lactic acid bacteria serum



What to Use it for and How

Before using, first mix 1:20 with water. 1 part serum to 20 parts water. Then follow instructions below:

Odor Reducer:
Add mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L. You can mix it more or less, there are no rules here, just how we typically do it.

   Apply to places where there is odor buildup. The harmless bacteria “eat” the odor causing germs and the smell is gone!
       Indoors: reduces foul odors, including animals like cats, dogs, mice, other pets. Stinky shoes? Wet clothes from being outside? Gym clothes that haven’t made it to the wash yet? Smoker in the house? Kill these nasty smells!
       Outside: use to control odor in pens – pigs, cows, chickens. In barns, around the yard, etc



Household use:

   Clear clogged drains: dump mixture into drain to clear clogs. Exact amount depends on the clog, haha. A few tbsp to 1L works well. For semi-clogged drains (like kitchen sink draining progressively slower), use at night and allow at least the night for microbes to work.
   Keep septic clear. Tired of having your septic system drained? Add lacto! Depending on size of your system, pour a few tbsp. to a few L into the toilet every few months.
   Houseplants: Mix 2-3tbsp per 1L water and use that to water them.



Animal Bedding:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water. Mix with animal bedding to reduce smell and increase longevity. In natural pig farming we use at least 1 yard deep of bedding so there is plenty of space for microbes to work. Bedding consists of organic substrate like rice hulls, wood chips, sawdust, wood shavings, shredded corn cob, any other high cellulose, high lignin material. Natural pig farming is a future topic on this site. Spray until bedding is slightly damp but not wet. How much you spray really depends on your climate. If you are in a very dry climate you can spray a little more and mix in evenly. Wetter (more humid) climates use a bit less. Mix into the bedding evenly where necessary (in many cases, like with pigs and chickens, they’ll mix it themselves). How much you use is all relative. These guidelines are for pigs and chickens. More extreme smells, just use more! Want to spray less often, use more! As we notice a smell we spray. Thus, as pigs grow bigger, make more poop, we spray more often! Dosage/frequency is relative and will depend on your situation.



Animals – Digestive/Growth Aid:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water, then add that mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L(so the animal’s water contains little less than a quarter tsp/L of lacto serum). But this is very flexible. The Lacto serum is not harmful, so its just about adding enough to be effective, without wasting it.

   Improve digestive efficiency in humans and animals alike:
       Improves how you feel after meals, particularly meals rich in meats. It’s awesome. After eating, mix 1-2tbsp lacto with a cup of water and drink that. Makes you feel so much better after! Lessens that afternoon lull, gives you more energy!
       Aids digestion in animals. This is critical. You can raise animals on less food, and see the same and greater growth rates. Amazing results in pigs . The principal is that the microorganisms help digest the food coming in – better digestibility means better nutrient absorption. Save on feeds, better feed to growth conversion ratio!

           TIP: If you really want to boost growth, mix 2tbsp to 1L water and soak the food in this solution for a few hours to a few days. Food is pre-digested when animals eat it, AWESOME!

       Great results in livestock and poultry.



Plants – Growth Aid:
When added to water for plants, nutrient uptake efficiency is increased, which increases growth!

   Improves growth of plants when applied as foliar spray and soil drench. Improves their efficiency in uptaking nutrients so naturally, growth is enhanced. With the use of these microorganisms, the nutrients you spray or drench to feed your plants become more bio-available and easily absorbable by the plants. Technically, you can say that plants do not use organic nutrients directly. Microorganisms convert organic nutrients to their inorganic constituents which the plants utilize. Utilizing microbes, you will notice better plant growth and health.



Disease Resistance:

   This is a consequence of the increased efficiency of nutrients. More nutrients available at smaller metabolic cost.
   Lacto suppresses harmful bacteria in food/water that animals consume, enhances their gut flora so that line of defense is working optimally, etc.


Aid Compost:

   Mix 2tbsp/L and spray on compost pile to improve decomposition. This is a huge topic that will be expanded upon in another post.



Aid Organic Fertilizer:
Add 1-2tbsp per gallon water-nutrient solution. Lacto consumes organic nutrients making them bio-available to plant roots.

   Plants don’t use organic fertilizer! Microbes break it down to inorganic constituents, and plants take those up. This product makes that process more efficient.



Aquaculture:
Lacto works in aquaculture just fine if you don’t have BIM available. Add lacto at roughly 1L per 700m3 of fish-containing water. Example: you have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 1L of BIM or Lacto

   Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
   Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
   Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups

Original website

Doggone, you beat me to it! :)

Hans Quistorff wrote:What I use is whey that separates from the yogurt I make, usually about 1/4 cup. I put it in a quart or liter spray bottle and fill with water. I spray that on as a fine mist until damp but not dripping. Leaves will vary as to how much they will hold so area covered will vary. Observe what the results are in the next few days. If some leaves shrivel and die but others get green and healthy thtn some leaves may have been infected with a pathogenic agent but the colonization with lacto bacillus has protected other leaves from infestation.

May i request fir a summarized version please .
i.e.. ratio of cultured lactid acid to milk, waiting days, etc

Nan Narz wrote:May i request fir a summarized version please .
i.e.. ratio of cultured lactid acid to milk, waiting days, etc

You are working with live organisms in variable environments therefor exact formulas are not practical.  The general rules are: to cold reproduction will be slow; to hot will kill; body temperature rapid growth.  Too little starter may be slow to get started or allow other organisms to dominate; to much starter may inhibit reproduction by the acid content.  Looking at what you have make an estimate and apply the permaculture principle of recording and observing the results.

There is a lot of truth to this as I have experienced. It seems that this process, as described in the initial post, is like making a big bucket of kefir. While I'm not sure if that is technically true, it seems to me like it is.

Here is what happened to me.

So I had decided that I wanted to stop buying the over sweetened, expensive, store bought kefir and to start making my own. I found a source and purchased the "grains" to do so.
While researching the techniques of making kefir you invariably learn of its many benefits. Adding the whey to your plant soils, adding to animal water etc etc.

My wife was gifted some kind of small plant that was potted in a small decorative  pail about the size of a very large soup mug . It was A scraggly little thing that we had no idea of what it was. Anyway, she watered it for a year or better and while it grew slightly bigger (and I mean slightly), it really never did anything.

Fast forward to When I started making kefir. Because it was winter, I was saving a small portion of the whey to consume and I was just dumping the rest down the drain. Then I remembered that you could feed it to plants.
I didn't dilute it as instructed above but just put a teaspoon of straight whey onto the soil of that little plant. I can't believe it didn't kill it.  I forget now how long it took to notice a difference but I would guess a week or two. Well that little plant took off. It started growing like mad and shortly thereafter started putting on these tiny little red flowers. We were amazed and could only think that it was the kefir whey that did it.

During the start of Covid, when NY state decided to experiment in overreach, shut down our economy and cause the loss of thousands of jobs, my wife became a victim. Anyway, She had a spider plant that she brought, from her lost job, with her. While it was alive, it wasn't really doing that well. It was very thin with only a few babies. I started adding the kefir whey to it as well and sure enough it responded the same as that other tiny plant. It became full and really started dropping babies. What once was a plant that only required a little watering became a plant that we now had to continually prune to keep it under control.

Since then I realized that while making kefir was easy it became burdensome to care for EVERY day and I also could not consume it fast enough. Then my wife started complaining about all of the jars sitting in the back of the fridge. I made the easy decision to stop making it.

That little plant in the little pail went back to its scraggly little self.
The spider plant, while still in better shape than when it arrived,  stopped growing profusely and sending out as many babies.

So that's my little story that kind of adds a little validation to the original post.

LAB is not quite the same as Yogurt whey, but using yogurt whey in the garden is not a bad idea

The organisms in LAB do not come from the air to feed on the carbs from the wash.

The organisms in LAB come from what ever grain you use. These are beneficial endophytes that live on and in the seeds and in he plant tissue.

Some o the bacteria found in yogurt are lactic acid bacteria but they are the kind that thrive in hot milk, but not as much in the soil or in plants.

If you have a yogurt culture, the environment and conditions those organisms have been selected in is milk that is about 110°F which is very different than plant tissue, or soil.

So whenever you run out of LAB do not use starter from your batch to make more. Start from scratch every time.

However, You can use your LAB to make yogurt.

Another reason to make it from scratch each time is to use different grains to increase the biodiversity in your garden or on he farm.

What I do is do a grain wash to make lactic acid bacteria serum. The serum is specifically the fermented wash water.

Then I take the washed grains and place them in a mason jar with sugar water, hen screw the lid on tight.

The LAB serum takes 3-4 days, but the wild plant beneficial yeast endophytes in the grains in the mason jar become active much sooner.

I culture the yeast in this way for a few days. When the sugar is spent and it's done the har will have a thick layer o. Yeast cells on the bottom of he jar. This can be used as starter to make more. They can also be used for n brewing. I use them on plants and in soil.

Another plant beneficial endophyte found on/in grains is bacillus subtilis.

To get a culture of Bacilus subtilis load the grains I to a pot, fill with water and boil on high. Do not pre rinse the grains for this.

Boil the grains until some of them are bursting open.

Once they are so over hydrated that they are begining to burst open strain the grains and load into jars about 2/3 full and put the kids on loose, OR secure a coffee filter/cheese cloth/paper bag etc over the jar mouth with a rubber band

Bacillus are a species of bacteria that have many uses on agriculture. It is a soil organism but can also be used as fungicide.

They are an endospore producing bacteria which is how they can survive the boiling temps.

The grains are rendered more or less sterile by the extreme heat but the endospores survive. Upon cooling the spores germinate Onto a substrate that has no other competition so the bacillus quickly colonize the grains.

You can do it hat with a few types of grains, or one type of grain that came from different sources to select a potent strain.

If the jar goes to mold it's not a potent strain. Select a strai. From a jar that does not go to mold; that's your fungicide.

B.subtilis, like LAB, and the wild yeast promote plant growth and soil development, and are all also probiotic for humans.

Hi you can send the details recipie for bacillus subtilis with quantites  ?
regards

Cool old post!

I just made some fish hydrosolate (sp?) and I used lacto bacillus / asodophulous pills. (Can you tell I don't buy them often?). I assume that making and using this would keep me from having to buy a super expensive bottle of gel caps from the health food store, right? Of course I would try to scale waaaay down, hopefully only getting a pint of so of lacto-B solution to add to my bucket of nasty pulped fish remains.

Anyways, if the OP somehow sees this, THANKS!!!

tenuta di iorio wrote:Hi you can send the details recipie for bacillus subtilis with quantites  ?
regards

I'm not sure what you mean by quantities, but by following the instructions I left here you will end up with a product that has a much higher cfu density than any product on store shelves.

It's pretty simple. The concept being that B. Subtilis is an endospore forming bacteria, and wheat berries are full of the endo spores.

Boiling the wheat berries kills everything except the endo spores.

Not rinsing, not soaking, and boiling until the wheat berries are over saturated produces ideal condition for the bacteria to thrive.

The bacteria being a plant Allie will not decompose the wheat unless the wheat is cooked dead. It's internal motivation is to benefit the plant until it dies.

Dan Fish wrote:Cool old post!

I just made some fish hydrosolate (sp?) and I used lacto bacillus / asodophulous pills. (Can you tell I don't buy them often?). I assume that making and using this would keep me from having to buy a super expensive bottle of gel caps from the health food store, right? Of course I would try to scale waaaay down, hopefully only getting a pint of so of lacto-B solution to add to my bucket of nasty pulped fish remains.

Anyways, if the OP somehow sees this, THANKS!!!

Research has shown that probiotic pills/supplements are inferior to probiotic foods and beverages. With that said you can and should drink homade LAB.

Whenever I make a new batch of LAB from a new grain source(frequently) I add add roughly a tablespoon of the LAB to my kombucha starter to assimilate the LAB to my kombucha Tea.

While I'm on that subject you can make your very own kombucha at home without ANY starter to begin with. I've made kombucha analogs twice.

Kombucha is basically a synergy of three types of microorganisms. These organisms produce compounds that generally kill off other microbes and viruses, but as it happens these subjectively antibiotic compounds potentiate the growth of the other organisms in the kombucha.

Those organisms are WY(wild yeasts), AAB(acetic acid bacterias), and LAB (lactic acid bacterias).

This is the basic trio that creates the synergy in a sweat black tea environment that is known as Kombucha.

Starting your own K-tea(kombucha) is as simple as making a batch of sweat black tea and adding  some live/raw ACV(apple cider vinegar), WY, & LAB.

If you culture yeasts, and LAB as outlined in previous post in this thread you combine them all together with ACV and you will have created your own personal version, or analogue of K-tea.

K-tea can also contain certain bacillus species such as those found in yogurt, as well as B.subtillus.

The last batch I started has grown and developed over the last few months to contain many microbes as well as whatever local varieties that it has assimilated from the air.

I started it with ACV, some of my WY, and whey from yogurt, sour cream, and kefir.

Since then I've added LAB more WY and a splash of every single kombucha brand I came across so at this point it does contain "authentic" kombucha organisms but also so much more.

hi, how many grams of wheat should I use in how much water?
Can the boiling liquid, after being filtered, be used immediately or must it stop?
What are the dilutions of b.subtillis for spray use?
How to conserve ?

tenuta di iorio wrote:hi, how many grams of wheat should I use in how much water?
Can the boiling liquid, after being filtered, be used immediately or must it stop?
What are the dilutions of b.subtillis for spray use?
How to conserve ?

The liquid is discarded.

Since you're not trying to make perfectly cooked grains for food, like you would with rice it doesn't really matter what ratio you use except that you want it to be excessively wet so you'll want to use alot more water than wheat.

What i do is use an excessive amount of water, more like I'm preparing soup than rice.

Let's say that you have a 1 gallon of boiling water. Add about 1 gt of wheat berries to that. Boil that iluntil the wheat berries are bursting open. Strain the water and discard however you see fit, dump in compost for example.

Take the saturated grains and load them into a jar, but don't let them sit dry or anything like that.

Cover the jar with a coffee filter or something to keep bugs and funk out. The bacteria can germinate and colonize pretty quickly sometimes you'll see signs of activity within 24 hours.

My suggestion is to watch it for about a week to see if any mold appears. If mold appears it can still be used but it won't have the same fungal inhibiting effects as some strains might. So you may want to get wheat from a different source.

You can use that jar as starter to get more going or just make a larger batch to begin with.

The dilution amounts I would recommend is no more than a table spoon bee gallon of water, and as little as a teaspoon per gallon.

It works well to put about 3 table spoons in a cup or more of water, stir that up and then pour that through some sort of screen or filter to filter out the actual grain, then use the liquid filtrate to make a five gallon solution.

Or you could put a quart of the B. Subtilis grains in a 1 gallon container with a cup of solved sugar and filled with water that  you use similarly..

Hopefully that makes sense. I'm feeling less inclined to put much energy into this website and do a major write up that includes pics after being censored by the mods a couple of times now because of not stating the findings of scientific research papers as "my opinion". In college I was taught to write sting statements but apparently that is against the sites posting guidelines.

If you use a milk jug or whatever to hold the product to not fully close the lid. You want gas exchange going on.

I make keffir in a tea cup with stainless steel strainer and lid made for loose leaf teas. Grains go in the stainless steel bit, pour in the milk, let it ferment to you like it then pop in the fridge. Consume the keffir over the next while and when you are running out either add more milk or if need be put aside the grains and clean the cup/strainer/lid and then restart. One cup solution and no waste. Agreed, keffir is very similar to LAB, but easier in many ways because you have grains that are reusable. I drink it and use left over keffir for predigesting fruit and veg scraps in a bucket of non chlorinated water , feed to the dog and tip the odd bit down the sink to keep the plumbing clear.

With the LAB serum and molasses mixture, as it is being used off, can you add more molasses to feed the bacteria and to keep it growing? It is kind of like feeding the sourdough starter with flour or kumbucha with sugared tea. Can you keep the potency by continuingly feed the mixture with molasses? Or do you have to keep making new batches from scratch?

Thanks for 'bumping' this old thread. I'm intrigued by  Seth Gardeners idea of creating your own kombucha starter from scratch. I'd love to have a go at a water kefir starter!