July 20 Day 22
20:00 Mixed by Joel: before mix temp 26, PH 10.25, after mix, temp 25.2, PH 10.12, room temp 27
July 19 Day 21
Mika is away for the next 3 weeks and Madlen is in charge of the vat.
Late afternoon: Room temperature 31, ph 10.5 before mixing, 10.8 after mixing. Vat temperature 23.4. Vat2 smells better than vat 1.
July 18, Day 20
17:00 No more wax or wood pieces on the surface but I see another “something” on the surface. I think it is the bubbles from the last day. PH is 10.79 vat temperature 20.7. The photo looks a bit strange, but there are no color on color test. After mixing, PH goes up to 11.
July 17, Day 19
10:00 Surface is flat with some wood/wax pieces. I removed them with shieb. PH 11.05 before mixing, 11.2 after. Temp 17.5. It seems like vat is too cold. I forgot to bring a blanket. no color on color test.
July 15, Day 17
19:30 mixed by Madlen: Less floating material and definitely mroe bubbles. The 2nd photo is after 5-10 min after mixing.
July 14, Day 16
17:30. The floating things are gone and surface is flat this time. PH is 11.95 before mixing. finally under 12. As Vat1 had a drastic drop and change (see the vat 1 doc) we decided to add warm water (PH 7.8) into the vat. We cooked with electric kettle for 2L of hot water, mixed with room temp water and made 7L of warm (~45 degrees) water. This was slowly added to the vat. Right after adding, PH was 11.5 but when we mixed the vat, it went up to 11.8. not sure if this had a big impact. We did not mix very hard this time either. Just a gentle mix.
July 13, Day 15
16:30 Room temp 24, PH 12.03 before mixing, 12.16 after. temp 20. a lot of floating things. no color on color test. no smell.
July 11, Day 13
11:00 PH 12.22 temperature 18.6. no color on the color test. Again, there are a lot of things floating on the surface. Maybe this is left over wheat bran?? PH stays high, not much smell.
July 10, Day 12
9:30 PH 12.26, vat temperate 19. no color on the color test. It looked like the baby vomited last night. A lot of floating things. I made a color check, and maybe it shows a slight hit of blue?! Some ammonia smell.
19:50 mixed by Madlen. She says “in real life it does not seem blue to me… but nice chocolaty bubbly 🙂
July 9, Day 11
9:00 Room temperature 18, vat temperature 18.6, PH 12.37. there is a lot of brown things floating on the surface. Unlike other days the surface does not look flat. Smells ammonia when mixing.
18:30 mixed by Joel
July 8, Day 10
9:00 PH 12.28, vat temperature 20, room temperature 18. A lot of bubbles are staying after mixing. it resembles early state o the vat (when it is going good).. so I guess it is a good sign?
20:00 mixed by Madlen
July 7, Day 9
10:00 wax again. I hope this is the last bits in this vat. PH 12.22, after mixing 12.24. seems not changing much.
20:00 after the strong thunder storm. Madlen is there to mix. “Younger Sibling, also felt like more bubbles but small ones. The other one(vat) has bigger eyes”
July 6, Day 8
10:30 Again the wax chunks are floating. It always gathers in one spot. I wonder if something is moving them?? PH 12.33 before mixing, 12.3 after mixing.
July 5, Day 7
10:30 PH 12.3, temp 24, A lot of dust like thing on the surface and chunks of wax is floating. I removed the wax chunks with a spoon.
July 4, Day 6
11:00 PH 12.5, temp 23.7
Like the vat 1, I replace ~10L of vat water with ash water. The ash water I added is ph 10.3, 50 degrees. It looked like it lowered it, but after mixing, it is back to 12.23.
19:00 no PH check. Sarah and I mixed the vat, then we fed them with wheat bran. 50g of wheat bran porridge per vat. After that we closed the lid and said “Guten Nacht” to the vats.
July 3, Day 5
9:00 Room temp 24, PH 12.44, vat temp 25.7. It is very dark to check the surface so I used the flash light… and it looks strange. It has a lot of small particles floating on the surface. Maybe it is the kinako particle? not sure.
20:00 mixed by Madlen
July 2, Day 4
11:00 Mixed by Madlen. PH 12.92, 13.37 after mixing (measured with old PH meter), vat temp 27.6
20:00 PH 12.37, vat temp 30. Very sharp ammonia smell. When mixed, it makes bubbles but it disappears quite quickly. I also see some wax floating (which probably came out from the surface of the wooden barrel) so I scoop it out with a spoon and removed it.
July 1, Day 3:
9:00 PH 12.7, very thick and can not really mix. I see some activities, though PH is not dropping as for the first days. Very strong sharp ammonia smell.
Then I prepared the holzfass/wood barrel that was filled with water over night. It seems to not leak water at all. It was emptied and I painted 20g lime mixed with water to the surface. This is to prevent bacteria on the wood surface to interfere with the vat bacteria. Then I migrated the vat we started on Sunday in a bucket to the holzfass using small pot (~2L?) to scoop out from the bucket and slowly releasing to the holzfass. Then I added 50 degrees ash water that I newly made this morning. It was ~PH11. Maybe 10L of it went into the fass. After everything, I mixed it and PH was 12.1, Vat temp was up to 38.
20:00 mixed by Sarah, PH 12.56 (with new PH meter), vat temp 33.9
June 30, Day 2:
17:00 PH 12.66, very thick, I can not really mix it, although I did 30 x 30 x 30 moves
