I picked up a bottle of Mammoth right after their closing announcement from the local hydro shop. It was marked down from $75 to $5. Seems to work on making nutes more available. Probably why I overfed my Lemon Z unintentionally. That said, if you have any sort of microbiology background you can keep a bottle of this type of thing going forever. Just need some powdered peptone, distilled water, and beef extract powder. Pretty easy to DIY. But be careful and don't expose yourself to the microbes. They can and will make you sick. DO NOT TASTE.
If you google the MSDS sheet for Mammoth P, you will see that the ingredients in that product are Nutrient Culture, 1%, Alfalfa Pellets, 2%, and Water, 97%.
You can also use agar and put a few drops into it. But I hate agar.
Aight so this is just lab quality culture broth. Introduce your "microbes" - aka Mammoth P sample and you are now involved in.......
Microbial Innoculant Manufacturing
Things you need
1) Peptone: Bacteriological, 100g
2) Beef Extract Powder, High Purity Grade 50g
3) Distilled Water
4) An Autoclave OR an Insta-Pot OR Mason Jars, a stove, and a pot of water.
1) Add 5g peptone to 850ml of distilled water and dissolve it
2) Dissolve 3g of the beef extract powder into the solution
3) adjust pH to 7.0
4) Add distilled water until it's 1000ml
5) Call me to take it to work and autoclave it for you. Or wait till the end.....****
6) Add your bacterial sample into a cooled but still warm broth and seal it. Hence, mason jars are great!
****No autoclave? Insta-Pot! Run it for one minute on steam. Let it heat up, and cool off the slow way. Do not add the microbes while the jar is still in the insta-pot. You do not want to contaminate your food. Just heat the broth, let it cool, and remove the jar before adding the microbes.
Or do it the way you do for canning: you can put your fluid into a mason jar, no lid on it, inside of a pot of boiling water, and let it heat up for a while. Then cool and add your stuff.
@Fermented_Fruitz - I know you got family that does canning. You could be making a killing at the farmers markets with home grown bacteria samples.
Seal, wait, and voila - You have manufactured Mammoth P or whatever else you wanna "clone."
You need to keep the jar warm and wait a few days. The bacteria will multiply and fill their new home. I can't say whether it will be more or less potent. Part of what you were paying for is the guaranteed dose per ml. I suspect this homebrew will be more potent but you will have to test & tune a bit. Waiting longer means more bacteria/ml but it shouldn't need more than 3-4 days to be effective.
I'm going to make a new batch once the bottle gets low so I could potentially mail out samples to people. Again no idea the potency and perhaps mailing biological warfare agents is slightly dangerous. Ah well, I put the lid on tight and a piece of scotch tape!
