Fermentation

Don't ask.
Originally uploaded by Jaydot

This is EM fermenting, but I don't think I'm going about this the right way...
First of all it's in a glass bottle, and from what I've been reading the past couple of days, keeping a fermenting mixture in a glass container is asking for trouble. Pressure can build up and your bottle could very well explode. Oh dear. Because simply pouring it into another container would let lots of air get into the mixture, and that might spoil the batch of activated EM.
The bottle is closed with a "waterslot" - I found out that that's fermentation lock, in english - so any pressure that does build up should be able to escape before it blows the bottle to smithereens.
The next problem is, however, that there's not much pressure building up (I check every day). I expect this is because the temperature in my kitchen is simply too low for the fermentation to really get going. When I'm at work the temperature in my house drops to around 15 or 16 C, while 20 to 25 C would be required.
I got one of those pH determining strip thingies with my EM culture, but how I'm going submerge that through the neck of the bottle I have no idea.
On the bright side: the whitish stuff forming on top of the mixture seems to be a good sign.
Ah well. I'll leave it for the time being, as the books tell me it will ferment eventually. It'll just take much longer than the 7-10 days mentioned in the leaflet.

My bokashi bucket is filling up nicely in the meantime, and I drain off a cup of liquid every evening (though I'm not sure what to do with it, so I sprinkle it over the compost heap). I'm cautiously adding some stuff that I wouldn't normally add to the compost heap (bread, cooked veggies, meat) because the dog would dig it out in no time.
The photo's below show my kitchen waste with bokashi and the brick I use to keep it sqashed down (I don't think pics like these will make it to Flickr's Explore :)).