Lactobacillus fail?

Hey hey. So y'all have provided me with so much information and helpful advice for many years. Thank you.

Can anyone tell me if my batch of LABs failed? It's been a scattered month and I lost track of the process. Here's what happened. I washed some basmati rice, strained and collected the wash into a jar. Then I covered it with a paper towel and rubber band and let it sit in my dark basement for way too long. It ended up sitting for like two weeks. It still looked right though. Mold on top, liquid in the middle and starchy stuff on the bottom. So when I finally got to mixing the culture with milk is where I went wrong. I accidently added a half bottle of blackstrap molasses before I realized what I was doing. Is this a big oops or is it ok? I mixed it anyway (2 gallons of milk, about a half quart of rice wash, and half bottle of molasses). It sat for a couple weeks too long (shoulder surgery). I opened it and it smelled sour but not overwhelming. The curds rose to the top and were a pain to get out. The whey is brownish colored (due to the molasses?). After a day of sitting in the jars, the "LABs" has two layers, one dark brown and one thicker light brown. Did this fail? Is it safe to use? Thanks for helping a new guy.

Never heard of adding the molasses in with the milk at that step... I’d start over, it’s easy enough to do. What you have might be workable but personally I’d rather not spend anymore time on that batch and start over.

I’ve made LABS a couple of times now and the rice wash after sitting a week should smell slightly sweet/sour. Then you mix 1:10 with milk and that sits about a week until fully separated. Then take the liquid and that’s ur LABS. Mine has a cheese smell when it’s just like that in the jar - I’ve heard that’s how it’s supposed to smell. That has to be kept cold, or you stabilize it with molasses so it can sit on a shelf and then you have EM1 (activated LABS). The molasses doesn’t come into play until you decide to do the last step.

Read the stickied ROLS page... tons of info in even just the first 10 pages, touches on LABS as well.