All Answers

Rainbow,

Did you add 10x the milk to the volume of rice water you let ferment 7 days before? What kind of milk did you use. Did you leave it ferment in a cool/dark place? What is the temp in the room you let your culture sit?

PF,

You can always apply the maintenance solution to any plant/tree/flower, in any stage.

That is: BRV 500:1, FPJ 500:1 and OHN 1000:1.

FPJ are minerals/vitamins the plant you fermented.

BRV (brown rice vinegar) is the catalyst “lowers the pH of your solution to be more acidic”.

OHN (oriental health nutrient) which is (1p garlic or turmeric – you pick), 1p ginger, 1p cinnamon, 1pm licorice root, 2p angelica root that the dry ingredients are soaked in a beer/lager and then everything is fermented in brown sugar and tinctured in vodka(40%).

You just need to worry about FAA and LAB, it can cause overgrowth and smaller yields when used on mature plants.

BRV+FPJ+OHM is very safe and universal and a good defense against pathogens.

-Jay

Gagardner84,

Once you make FPJ and ferment it with brown sugar (my favorite is broadleaf plantain and dandelions) it will keep for 1 year, even longer sometimes. If you see mold, add more brown sugar. Store in a cool 65-70F place or keep in your fridge, with a cheese cloth lid to breath.

It should smell sweet, sometimes like BBQ even.

-Jay

I know that because of religious reasons, alcohol can be forbidden, but there is no way to tincture without an alcohol greater than 35%. Some folks have suggested using highly concentrated vinegar, but this does not operate the same way to extract the compounds you seek, nor does evaporating the alcohol before use, because the alcohol actually is necessary to deliver the compounds through the cell wall.

With this said, there may be a way to obtain and use denatured alcohol that is not fit for human consumption? I do not know the specific rules and guidelines for what is tolerable, only that the 35% or greater alcohol is a necessity for this solution.

To address your question specifically: The first alcohol (rice wine) is just to rehydrate dehydrated herbs. This can be avoided by using fresh herbs, assuming those can be obtained (it can be difficult for me). If fresh (wet) herbs are used, then just follow the KNF Food recipe by adding 1/3 the weight by sugar and fermenting for a few days before beginning the tincturing process.

You can not use less than 35% alcohol to create a tincture because it will not have enough chemical reaction to pull the compounds you want into solution. Here, we typically use 40% because that is what is commercially available, though technically it could be diluted slightly, so same goes if you can get a higher percentage, dilute it to 35% before tincturing.

Did you let the rice wash water develop the “sweet” change in the smell?

In master Cho’s book it does state that a small amount of “bad guys” will be outcompeted by the “good guys”. You will know when you get to the IMO 3 stage for sure.

I remember master Cho stressing that a true FPJ is from new growth from live plants only. This insures you are getting plant growth hormones and active enzymes. If you are trying to capture the minerals from the sea, you could probably add some wild harvested sea weed to an IMO 4 pile to replace the SEA water you are lacking.

Hi both. Thanks for your responses. I’ve heard that the general rule is that if the collection is 80% nice white fluffy mould then the collection should be ok. Is this correct?

Going back to my collection, I found that it wasn’t a tie die collection, it only had a few pink spots and no other colours. These pink spots were on less than 20% of the rice.

I’ve still got it but, as I understand, we are looking for microbial diversity so I’m going to follow master cho’s process (via Chris trump) and try to get great collections (just white fluffy mould) from different seasons and this pink/fluffy mould collection could be added in a mix of collections as opposed to being used as the only collection.

Also thanks drake for the advice on cooking the rice. Will use less water next time as I think this was the problem.