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The week my bokashi bin turned into a science project
About two years back, I had a bokashi setup in my old studio in Queens. It was going fine until a heat wave hit in July and I got lazy with adding the bran. I opened the bucket after maybe five days and the smell hit me like a wall. It wasn't the usual pickled smell, it was straight up rotten. The whole thing was a slimy, bubbling mess. I had to carry the sealed bucket down three flights to the dumpster in the middle of the night, feeling like a biohazard criminal. That week taught me that even 'no smell' methods have strict rules you can't skip, especially in a small space with no AC. Has anyone else had a bokashi batch go really bad from just a couple of missed steps?
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kareng273mo ago
Ugh, I feel that! Honestly, my attempt went so wrong it makes @matthew864's balcony horror show look tame. Tbh, skipping the bran for a few days in a hot apartment is basically asking for a new life form. I still get nervous around buckets.
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charlie_allen1mo ago
Figure out what went wrong first before you blame it just on skipping bran. The real issue is that heat wave slowed down the good bacteria and let the bad stuff take over. Even if you added bran every day, a bucket sitting at 90+ degrees inside with no airflow will go sideways fast. You probably needed to drain the liquid more often too, because that slimy mess sounds like it got too wet.
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