Last year I made lactic acid out of milk using a technique I learned from Korean Natural Farming. I credit it for the great tomato results we had this year. I also note that many farmers and authors have recommended it so I want to continue using it. However, as I have been taking the online new farmers course and learning about cross-contamination, one issue has come to mind. I am worried about milk-related allergies when I use my lactic acid spray. So, here are some questions I have:
Has anyone heard of any issues with milk allergies when using milk-derived lactic acid as an ecological spray?
Does anyone have a recommendation for a non-milk source that can be used to make the lactic acid? I read that industrial lactic acid can be made from vegetarian sources and even just molasses and water.
If anyone has any experience with this, I’d love to hear what you have to say.
That’s a good reference article: Thanks! I’ll have to study it more. It seems to focus on producing lactic acid bacteria from these foods instead of using lactic acid bacteria to make lactic acid. I already use rice wash water to generate the initial lactic acid bacteria. I then add it to milk to start the lactic acid formation. Then, I siphon the lactic acid from the container after the fermentation time is up.
That’s a winner! Thanks, @Erik_Landry. Okay, so you can use any kind of sugar source then. That’s great and will be much less expensive (and stinky!) than using milk.
My experience is that it should not ‘stink’. Cheesy/whey smell sure🤣
Based on the previous link I suspect your substrate would select for bacterial strain/species. Temperature, time, osmoticum/salt are all key too. I have a labs grown on barley malt and there is no objectionable odor after a month of room temp fermentation and ph of 3-4. If you want to start a probiotic tread I’ll post my witches brews as they come available🤓
