All the equipment you need to start brewing high-quality actively aerated compost tea (AACT) at home or in the garden. This brewing setup gives you the pump, airstones, hoses, and brew bag to get going, just add your ingredients and water. Built for small-batch brewers who want to maximize microbial activity, it's ideal for beginners and experienced growers alike, pairing powerful aeration with durable, easy-to-use components.
What's Included
- Small Mesh Tea Bag – Fine 400-micron mesh with zipper and clip for easy brewing and cleanup. Perfectly sized for 5-gallon brews.
- 20-Watt Commercial Air Pump – Strong, consistent 713 GPH output to keep your brew fully oxygenated.
- 2 x 5 ft Airline Hoses – Flexible silicone tubing for an easy, leak-free setup.
- 2 Small Airstones – Disperse fine bubbles for high dissolved oxygen and a healthy aerobic brew.
Choose your kit with or without a food-grade 5 gallon brew pail. Already have a clean bucket? Go with the no-pail option. Starting from scratch? Add the pail for a complete ready-to-brew setup.
Already Have Some Gear? Want to Buy Components Individually?
If you already have part of a setup, you don't need the full kit. You can grab any piece on its own to fill the gap:
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Active Aqua Commercial Air Pumps for strong, reliable aeration
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Reusable Compost Tea Brew Bags in four sizes to fit your brew
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Air Stones to diffuse fine, oxygen-rich bubbles
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Silicone Air Line Tubing to connect your pump to your stones
Buying the kit together saves you the hassle of sourcing each part separately, but if you just need to replace a worn airstone or add a second bag, the individual components are all here.
Why Brew Your Own Compost Tea
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Boosts microbial life in your soil
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Improves nutrient cycling and overall plant health
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Helps build resilience to pests and disease
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Gentle enough to use throughout the entire growing season
Compost tea is one of the most powerful tools for building living soil. By delivering a fresh infusion of active microbes, it helps unlock nutrients, outcompete harmful pathogens, and support vigorous, balanced plant growth. Whether you're growing vegetables, fruit trees, berry bushes, flowers, houseplants, or cannabis, or tending an orchard or vineyard, compost tea encourages strong roots, healthier foliage, and more robust harvests, all without synthetic inputs. It can also be strained and foliar sprayed to help protect leaves from fungal issues and disease pressure, acting as a natural shield for your plant's above-ground growth.
Why This Setup Works
Strong, constant aeration is the single most important part of a good compost tea, and it's where most failed brews go wrong. This kit is sized for a 5 gallon pail brew, and its commercial 793 GPH pump and twin airstones keep the entire batch in active, rolling motion, holding the dissolved oxygen high so beneficial aerobic microbes multiply instead of going anaerobic and turning sour. The 400-micron brew bag is fine enough to keep your compost contained while still letting biology flow freely into the water, and it rinses clean for reuse.
Scaling up? Match your pump to your batch size. For a barrel, step up to our 112 Watt / 1750 GPH Commercial Air Pump with additional airstones. For a full IBC tote, a Regenerative Centrifugal Ring Blower delivers the high air volume needed to keep that much water properly oxygenated.
Setup Tip: Protect Your Pump
Always set your air pump on a ledge, shelf, or table above the water line of your brew. Air pumps don't stop water from traveling back up the airline, so if the power goes out, water can siphon backward and flood the pump, ruining it and draining your brew. Keeping it elevated prevents this entirely. It also helps to secure the pump in place, since they can vibrate and slowly creep across a surface, so screwing it down or anchoring it keeps it where you want it.
Cleaning and Care Between Brews
A clean setup is the difference between a healthy brew and one that breeds the wrong biology. After every brew:
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Rinse and wash your brew bag thoroughly, then let it dry completely before storing. Drying it in direct sun is ideal, as the UV helps kill off any lingering organisms so nothing turns rancid or grows harmful microbes between uses.
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Clean your airstones well, as leftover organic residue clogs the pores and feeds unwanted biology. Every so often, soak them in a hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) solution to deep-sanitize, then rinse thoroughly before your next brew so no residue carries over into your living tea.
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Flush your hoses and pump fittings of any residue, and let everything dry before storing.
Taking a few minutes to clean up keeps your equipment lasting longer and ensures every brew starts with only the beneficial biology you want.
Complete Your Setup
This kit gives you the gear. To brew, pair it with our Compost Tea Ingredient Kit, which includes everything you add to the water: Compost & Castings Blend, Microbe Multiplier, Wild Fish Hydrolysate, and Blackstrap Molasses, along with a full brewing chart. Freshly brewed compost tea is one of the most effective ways to build thriving soil biology.
