Raw sugar sometimes comes in large granules and has a hard time getting close enough to the plant’s surface to create the desired osmotic pressure. This can be overcome by grinding the sugar in some sort of contraption such as a coffee grinder without too much hassle to get the fine texture. A vitamix (or comparable) blender is also probably powerful enough and can be done in a large batch that can also reduce the tedious nature of smaller blending apparatuses.
Here is what the textbook has to say on sugars:
- drake answered 7 years ago
The process of fermentation eliminates many of the pesticide type functions when making KNF Food. In fact, many things that are known poisons are made edible after fermentation has elapsed, so I am very skeptical of the papaya leaf KNF Food being an effective pesticide.
You may find it works, but in my best understanding, it acts as a food to stimulate good biology rather than killing or inhibiting something you want to eliminate. I have made KNF Food from papaya leaves and it was quite tasty, though I prefer to make it from the fruits for my purposes.
If you are looking for an effective way to get the proteolytic enzyme from papaya leaves, perhaps consider putting them in a pressure cooker with water and cooking them for many hours until the water reduces in half. This dark slurry is then strained and combined with liquid soap to become an effective pesticide.
- drake answered 7 years ago
Here’s my personal view on it and this could be wrong but I believe that an FFJ is basically just a FPJ and that the type of FPJ you feed is dependent upon plant cycle. Fast growing tips for the leaf cycle, unripe fruit for changeover, ripe fruit for fruit/flower…
- Paulie answered 6 years ago
You don’t want to store the mother with the final solution. Also if the vinegar isn’t pasteurized, it will continue to grow more scoby.
- yarogoret answered 5 years ago
It doesn’t matter if you’re using FPJ or FFJ leftover, both work just fine. But it does take some time, guive it a couple months, or add to it a little bit of some vinegar wich is alive to jump start it.
- Hugo Matos answered 5 years ago
Pinks and reds are not good. I want to be encouraging here, and I think you did your best with limited information to just move to the next step, so that is good, but sounds like you could get a better collection in the future.
Most likely those certain pink microbes that you collected will be outcompeted when you move on to further steps in the IMO process.
My hunch here is that there were also other colors and that the batch looked more like a tiedie shirt? If this is the case, most likely there was too much moisture present in the collection. There are several solutions, the simplest being to add less water to the rice when cooking it, and to wait until it is completely cool before putting it in the collection box.
Collecting IMO can be challenging, so try again!
- drake answered 4 years ago
no – if super saturated it can be stored in a cool dark place all KNF solutions are shelf stable – if unsaturated with brown sugar then yes store in fridge
KNF is about global natural farming and not all places have access to refrigeration so Master Cho developed his process so that it would work anywhere on the planet so that it could be available for everyone to use
i store all my solutions in a tote on a closed front porch yr around i live in the NE USA we can get highs of 98f in the summer and lows of -15f in winter, Drake is in Hawaii i believe he keeps all his in a poll barn shed thing outside
Happy Experimenting
- dagoofman answered 3 years ago
i’d avoid iodized sea salt. the less it has been processed or heated the better.
- drake answered 3 years ago
Great use of the toss away you could just throw everything in a bucket and layer with sugar as you go fill 2/3 full could add a rock to help hold everything down add a airtight lid put it in a cool dark place and forget about it for 6-8 months or longer (the longer it sits the better it will be) ….i would not recommend ingesting raw chicken so refrain from tasting it and use your nose for testing (the nose knows)
Happy Experimenting
- dagoofman answered 3 years ago
As said in the Office Hour, I do not believe that calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 can be used because it will not dissolve the same way in vinegar, and may be hazardous to eat. However, the limestone crumbles can be used directly or used in the Water Soluble Calcium (KNF Reproduction) recipe because it is calcium carbonate CaCO3, which is non hazardous to digest and will dissolve in vinegar.
- drake answered 2 years ago