Using a compost tea brewer allows you to make compost tea from the comfort of your grow. Investing in your own tea brewing kit allows you to save money in the long term, and you can brew as much and as often as you need!
Compost tea is a concentrated organic fertilizer, brewed by mixing biologically active compost with aerated water. Compost itself has a number of known benefits, such as the ability to fight pathogens and pests found in soil, while acting as an extremely effective source of nutrients for plants. Compost tea also has the added benefit of enhancing the soil, which leads to healthier and higher-yielding plants in the future.
Here at Hydrobuilder, we carry a wide range of compost tea brewers from your favorite brands, such as Vermicrop Organics, Titan Controls, Cutting Edge Solutions, Growing Solutions Inc, and ORganic Bountea.
What is a compost tea brewer?
In order to turn your compost into a usable fertilizer, you need to brew it into a tea. Using one of the brewers we offer here at Hydrobuilder makes this a breeze. Mixing one volume of compost with several volumes of water in the brewer makes for a properly concentrated tea, which will be suitable for spraying on the plant or putting directly into the soil.
For those uninterested in brewing their own tea, we offer pre-brewed compost tea!
How do you clean a compost tea brewer?
Every so often, you'll need to clean your compost tea brewer to prevent anaerobic bacteria from infiltrating your next tea. Plus, the organic nutrients you use in your brewer are super thick and can easily gunk up your system.
We recommend cleaning your brewer immediately after removing all the tea from it. This prevents any gunk from accumulating on the walls and hardening. Then, you can simply "brew" with plain water, which should remove most of it. To sterilize, add in some hydrogen peroxide and swirl it around, scraping the walls.
If you just do a bit of maintenance on your compost tea brewer every so often, it should never get so dirty that it causes any problems.
How to build a DIY compost tea brewer
We understand not everyone want to buy a compost tea brewer. Some of the Macgyver's out there prefer to build their own DIY compost tea brewers on a budget.
This doesn't have to be fancy or complicated. Your homemade brewer can be as simple as a large bucket or reservoir, an air pump & air diffuser, tubing, and a clamp. You can configure the system however you want, but it's just a matter of connecting your stone and pump, placing the stone in the bucket, and finding a recipe!
If you are interested in learning more about brewing compost tea, check out this article in our learning center where we go in-depth on this form of composting! If you still have questions, feel free to give our experienced growers a call at 888-815-9763!
