How to make Lactic Acid Bacteria Serum - LAB

[KD]

Lactic acid bacteria - aka Lactobacillus - is known as the bacteria police force in the modern natural farming world. If you put them in a ring with other bacteria and enough food, they'll dominate the population with ease.

We can use these little guys to break down organic matter for use as food for our plants, protect from bacteria like powdery mildew and I'm not 100% sure why, bit I've noticed a lot less fungus gnats since I started using them too.

Here's how to make it.

What you need

A small jar (I use pasta sauce jars)
Rice
A litre of milk
A 2 litre jar
Kitchen roll
Elastic band
Brown sugar (use 100% natural cane sugar but it's not cheap)
Dechlorinated water

What you do

To start off with, we're going to need to collect some bacteria. To do this, fill your small jar about 1/4 full with rice. Any rice will do and exact measurements aren't necessary.

Next, fill that up to 3/4 full with dechlorinated water. It's so important to use dechlorinated water because chlorine kills bacteria and we don't want that. Leave a bucket of tap water out in the open for 24 hours and the chlorine will evaporate.

Now, put a lid on and shake the mother loving life out of it! What you're doing here, is washing the bacteria and yeast off the surface of the rice. The water will turn milky and cloudy looking. This is perfect.

Strain off the rice and keep the water. Cover the top of the jar with some kitchen roll and a rubber band and leave it somewhere out of direct sunlight, where there's air flowing by. You need to wait for the population to multiply. You'll know when this happens because a layer of bubbles/crust/yeast will grow on the surface, and it'll smell slightly sour/doughy. This takes 3 - 7 days



Once it is ready, pour your litre of milk into the 2 litre jar. Any milk will do except Lacto free. We need the Lacto to feed the Lactobacillus.

Now pour in your rice wash water and cover with kitchen roll and a rubber band. Over the next few days, the milk will separate into curds and whey. The whey is what we need to make our serum with.



You need to remove the curds on top and separate the liquid parts. I just pour it through a sieve. You can make cheese out of the curds, feed it to animals or chuck it on a compost heap.

Now to keep your new friends happy, you need to super saturate the whey with brown sugar. To do this, keep adding sugar and mixing until you have a CM deep layer of sugar that won't dissolve. This is your finished Lactic Acid Bacteria Serum (LABS)



Keep it in a fridge with a kitchen roll lid. This is gonna last you ages!

[Mafooo]

I have been dabbling with this for a little while and I have a question for you.

I was running low on LAB serum so I decided to use the last bit of LAB I had to backsplash into some fresh milk. I dont know if its just cause its winter and slightly cooler in the house or my active cell count was low but the fermentation of the milk took more than a week to finish.

The resulting whey that I extracted seemed a little whiter than I had expected and the cheese I made from the curd was awful. The cheese I made from my first batch was pretty good. My latest batch of LABs doesnt smell off but Im wondering if you have ever experienced this yourself.

Thanks for posting about this technique!

[KD]

I have been dabbling with this for a little while and I have a question for you.

I was running low on LAB serum so I decided to use the last bit of LAB I had to backsplash into some fresh milk. I dont know if its just cause its winter and slightly cooler in the house or my active cell count was low but the fermentation of the milk took more than a week to finish.

The resulting whey that I extracted seemed a little whiter than I had expected and the cheese I made from the curd was awful. The cheese I made from my first batch was pretty good. My latest batch of LABs doesnt smell off but Im wondering if you have ever experienced this yourself.

Thanks for posting about this technique!

In order to make more, all you have to do is take a mother (the last of your mix in your case here) and add it to dechlorinated water, then super saturate the water with sugar and leave for 2 weeks min. The bacteria will feed on the sugar and multiply in the water. If it smells bad though, it is bad. Always follow your nose. Vinegar/sour/dough/sweet/tasty smelling stuff is good. If it smells like death or rot it's bad

[KD]

@MafooFarms I just made more LABS by adding a litre of dechlorinated water to my jar and so much brown sugar, no more will dissolve.

Before



After



I'm not returning this to the fridge because I want the bacteria to be active and multiply rapidly.

[GMO]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought super saturation was to draw out the water from the microbe cells putting them into cyst while in storage then adding to water wakes them up for use

If that's true then I would think you need alot less sugar when expanding the culture but after its expanded youd go and super saturate for storage again?

translated from the bongo of the canna jungle

[Trippster62]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought super saturation was to draw out the water from the microbe cells putting them into cyst while in storage then adding to water wakes them up for use

If that's true then I would think you need alot less sugar when expanding the culture but after its expanded youd go and super saturate for storage again?

translated from the bongo of the canna jungle

Sounds cool and all but, could you break that down into simpler language. I think I get part of what you're saying but not sure about the rest.

I'm looking at this as something a simple old man can figure out and then you come in with all this sciencey stuff and now I'm wondering again.

[GMO]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought super saturation was to draw out the water from the microbe cells putting them into cyst while in storage then adding to water wakes them up for use

If that's true then I would think you need alot less sugar when expanding the culture but after its expanded youd go and super saturate for storage again?

translated from the bongo of the canna jungle

Sounds cool and all but, could you break that down into simpler language. I think I get part of what you're saying but not sure about the rest.

I'm looking at this as something a simple old man can figure out and then you come in with all this sciencey stuff and now I'm wondering again.

Chris trump on youtube will explain it much better than me bud. It's crazy simple process, the language ya just grow accustom to

Super saturation is when something cant hold any more of something, this time we are talking about water holding sugar. All the liquid water gets used up dissolving the sugar and draws the liquid out of the microbes

Cyst is what microbes do when the environment isnt right for them. They form a thick outer layer to protect themself from losing water and extreme conditions

A culture for this instance is the microbe or group of microbes your growing

Hopefully that clears up stuff, if not please specify and I'll try elaborate

[Trippster62]

I think it was the super saturation part that I wasn't quite getting. It's been a long time since I have been to school.
I think you cleared it up properly.
Going to check out this Chris Trump

[GMO]

I think it was the super saturation part that I wasn't quite getting. It's been a long time since I have been to school.
I think you cleared it up properly.
Going to check out this Chris Trump

Super saturation was part of the original post but I'm glad I could clear things up

translated from the bongo of the canna jungle

[Trippster62]

I think it was the super saturation part that I wasn't quite getting. It's been a long time since I have been to school.
I think you cleared it up properly.
Going to check out this Chris Trump

Super saturation was part of the original post but I'm glad I could clear things up

translated from the bongo of the canna jungle

It appears I glazed over that when reading the op. I think I thought that the sugar was to feed the bacteria.