If you have a significant amount of coffee grounds, you might have far too much greens. Coffee grounds are useful directly as a fertilizer. It seems a waste to dump them into compost, but there's nothing wrong with it.

Juicy fruit or veggies is where the "tea" comes from. Some relatively dry fruits become very wet after they start to decompose. The stuff leaking out is not really tea, but it's useful. The main purpose of the drain is to keep the compost from being soggy, not to make tea.

I don't worry about flies, fruit flies, maggots, ants, worms, cockroaches, or mosquitoes. They all have a role in decomposition.

If I understand you correctly, you are thinking coffee grounds are a brown (carbon). They aren't. So from your list of items the shredded newspaper is the only carbon source in your bin. 1/2 browns and 1/2 greens will work. But 2 parts browns to 1 part of greens is even better. So if you have lots of kitchen scraps and coffee grounds then you may need even more newspaper.

Dave

PS: I prefer adding my UCG to the compost too but as already mentioned you can use them straight if you wish.

Anytime there is a liquid flowing out of a compost bin, no matter which, that is an indication that the material is too wet and is not composting properly. Too much moisture excludes air which the aerobic bacteria that will digest the material in a compost bin need to function and then that compost enters an anaeriobic (the absence of air) which allows disease pathogens to grow and should be something you would not want to happen.

Hi Khristle!

It sounds like things were going well if your pile was heating up and you could not recognize the stuff you had put in there. I gather from your post that you know UCGs work as a green.

How moist is the stuff you have in there with the shredded newspaper? Perhaps it needs more moisture after adding all that paper. Was the paper and coffee added to the previous stuff that had heated up before?

Have you tried going a few days between spinning the tumbler? I have never used a tumbler but maybe you could try waiting a couple days between spins.

If liquid comes off your stuff, I think that would be called a "leach" type fluid. It might contain coffee, veggie and fruit juices if you have just added wet greens. For "compost tea" I believe you use actual finished compost with it's beneficial micro-organisms and add some to (dechlorinated) water and then aerate the solution with device such as an aquarium pump or other air pump or circulator to keep the stuff from going anaerobic. I have never made tea but there are many discussion on this to be found - I am thinking of trying this someday when I have time for a new project!

Personally I have not had success scoring spoiled produce from stores "sorry miss, we are not allowed to give this stuff away...", but some of my friends save kitchen scraps in an ice cream bucket and give to me since they are not composting their own stuff. (I have no idea why they have not caught the composting bug, but I still love 'em!)

Good luck! It sounds like you have fun with that tumbler and will have some good stuff out of it one day!

Rachel