I don't know where Peter got his information about using oat bran, because I thought that was a secret. Oat bran, and regular oat meal, has been used to prefortify compost for compost tea, but I've never read about it in public before.

If you have access to water from a pond, stream, or even an outside dog bowl, that will be good to spike the tea with more microbes. Letting the chlorine 'blow off' first is a good idea. When you have made the tea and are going to use it, you might use chlorinated tap water to dilute it. I have heard from some local compost tea professionals that their testing indicates they lose about 1/2 the microbes by doing that. Still, that's a lot more microbes than they started with.

Don't use water from an inside aquarium because the chemical used to dechlorinate aquarium water is a fungicide. Even at half strength it is a fungicide.

Have you ever noticed that stagnant water will be clear in the winter but covered with slimy mold in the summer? That's because the warmer water cannot hold any oxygen. The aerobic microbes have died and the only microbes left are anaerobic.

Another example is carbonated beverages. Warm beverages do not stay carbonated as long as cold ones. It has to do with gas pressures - severe scientific principles.

organicpepper_grower said, I have a 5 gallon bucket with semi-fresh cow manure in it, how long should I leave it sit?

If you have been listening to Bruce, you should already know that the use of raw manure is highly discouraged by the people who have been making compost tea for many years. Let the manure compost until it smells like fresh soil and then you can use it in tea.

1) humic acid - less than half a cup per 1000 litres
2) fish hydrolysate (an essential fungal food)
3) fish emulsion (a bacterial food)
4) organic molasses (if sweetness is required)
5) liquid kelp (always check for salinity and preservative levels)
6) pure water
7) protozoa foods (carefully netted).

The only use for manure is to make compost. Then when it's finished composting, you can make compost tea.

Compost is composted manure.
Manure is raw animal dung.

Compost should smell very fresh and have no diseases or pathogens left in it.
Manure smells like manure and is teeming with disease and pathogenic microbes.

Compost is never a problem assuming it was finished composting.
Manure is seldom a problem even though your intuition (and your nose) tells you otherwise. When it is a problem, though, it's a big problem. Cholera, for example, can kill you before it gets diagnosed. Dysentery used to be a killer but is now just thought of as an upset stomach. Still it needs to be treated.

So yes, you can use manure to make a tea. Would I? No, because it stinks and could cause a disease. That's just my preference.

Please, people, ... just because Harvard (and now Berkeley) buy snake oil it's not transmogrified into science. Middle America would be better served by using compost as a mulch and letting nature make the tea.