Richie_asg1
Junior Member
Bokashi composting of food waste is a method developed in Japan and is basically an anaerobic fermentation method to compost food waste.
It relies mostly on lactobacillus to do the work so it is usual to use a "Bokashi Bran" as an activator and inoculant. In use you add food waste to a sealed bucket, sprinkle on some of the bran and press it down.
It ferments out in about 3 weeks in the warm, and basically speeds up the composting process. The next stage is to bury the waste in a trench like trench composting.
The main benefit is that you can compost nearly all kitchen waste - cooked or raw meat, some fat, some vegetable oils, chicken carcases & bones that would normally be bad for an outdoor bin due to attracting vermin. By the time you bury the Bokashi bin contents these products are already broken down and are of no interest to vermin at that stage.
What I noticed is that to use it you need to add bran regularly - and this costs money! What I recently found out is that you can easily make your own - Using spent beer grains!
All you need is to wash some rice before you cook it, save the rice water then add that to some milk to breed the useful bacteria, but I recently read you can use your sourdough starters as well.
Once you add more sugar to the spent grains you can add the bacteria mix to get things going then the bran is ready for use.
There is a ready market for this product if you decide to sell any as Bokashi bran as you are likely to make more than you need yourself.
I regularly cook potato peelings till crispy to destroy viruses before composting and have been using this powder as the bran, but next brew day will be making Bokashi bran with spent grains instead.
So you can turn spent grains into a useful compost activator rather than just tipping it in there.
It relies mostly on lactobacillus to do the work so it is usual to use a "Bokashi Bran" as an activator and inoculant. In use you add food waste to a sealed bucket, sprinkle on some of the bran and press it down.
It ferments out in about 3 weeks in the warm, and basically speeds up the composting process. The next stage is to bury the waste in a trench like trench composting.
The main benefit is that you can compost nearly all kitchen waste - cooked or raw meat, some fat, some vegetable oils, chicken carcases & bones that would normally be bad for an outdoor bin due to attracting vermin. By the time you bury the Bokashi bin contents these products are already broken down and are of no interest to vermin at that stage.
What I noticed is that to use it you need to add bran regularly - and this costs money! What I recently found out is that you can easily make your own - Using spent beer grains!
All you need is to wash some rice before you cook it, save the rice water then add that to some milk to breed the useful bacteria, but I recently read you can use your sourdough starters as well.
Once you add more sugar to the spent grains you can add the bacteria mix to get things going then the bran is ready for use.
There is a ready market for this product if you decide to sell any as Bokashi bran as you are likely to make more than you need yourself.
I regularly cook potato peelings till crispy to destroy viruses before composting and have been using this powder as the bran, but next brew day will be making Bokashi bran with spent grains instead.
So you can turn spent grains into a useful compost activator rather than just tipping it in there.
