The 40 liter Fermentation Vat

We started the 40liter vat in response to several requests for directions on how to make a small natural fermentation vat, and as a kind of challenge to the notion held by several lovely indigo teachers I know that you cannot give a successful 'recipe' for making an aigame because there are too many outside factors which influence the outcome and that only experience can teach how much of what to add and when. I feel you need to start somewhere and if there is not an expert indigo dye teacher in the neighborhood you can apprentice yourself to why not try a 40 liter vat 'recipe' that reads like my mom's directions to the store; way too many landmark descriptions and a lot of  'if you see that you've gone too far' type of warnings.

The vat I am currently showcasing in this blog is my first test of this idea and I already noticed a small mistake in calculating, discovered a flaw in what I thought was a brilliant idea for not making the liquid in such a small container too sludgy, and realized that square is hard to stir. (More on these things in upcoming posts.)

So, saying that, I have a small number of 'kits' available (basically for the price of supplies and shipping) that I would love for some anal indigo challengers to test and keep track of with daily records so we can check this out.

The 'ingredients' are packaged in such a way that you don't need to do any measuring or weighing. The theory is one can just add the ingredients in order (they are numbered) when the condition of the pot looks (compared to photos), tests (ph & temp), and smells (by apt descriptions) the way it should at a given stage.

The above pic shows the basic kit idea;

-Tskumo, or composted indigo leaves (center), hard wood ash (between 3 & 6 o'clock) and then 4 small packs containing appropriate measures of lime and red wheat bran for the 3 stages of 'Beginning, Middle and Stop' plus enough for general maintenance that should fully cover the life of your vat. (Sounds better than the guarantee on my new drill.)

Next up; Making the alkili solution and why you need to