All you need is a nice wide mouth quart jar, and a glass bowl with some plastic wrap. And a small screen for when they are in the jar. I use a stainless steel drain screen works great.
For alfalfa I soak for 24 hours, for the 2 of us I use 1/4 cup seeds. Soak in the jar with the jar pretty full of water and use the screen to change out the water at least twice during the 24 hours. Then I leave it sit on the kitchen counter for a few days, rinsing it twice a day. The concave drain screen keeps the tiny sprouts in the jar easily.The sprout roots come out first.
When you see the leaves I transfer to the glass bowl. Shake out everything into the bowl and rinse well, using your hand to gently break up any clumps. By then any seeds that won't germinate can sink to the bottom. I use a wide splatter screen to put handfuls on temporarily while I rinse then dump the seeds that did not germinate. Keep in the glass bowl after that, and cover almost completely with plastic wrap. That's when I put them on the sunny windowsill. Rinse every day, sometimes twice a day. They want to grow together into a clump so gently break them apart in the water to clean them. Set handfuls on the big screen to drain and you can clean out the seed hulls that way. Your sprouts will be really clean that way, and taste great. From the time they good on the glass bowl it is about 3-4 days. The last day I do a final rinse and leave in the sun all day without disturbing them. the tops all have a chance to grow up and get really green.
Thanks for the tips. Getting the hulls out and drying is my least favorite bit of the process. They need to make a small, very fine-mesh salad spinner for that.
I’ve recently bought a hemp bag for drying, which I want to try - I once saw someone swing it around outside to dry the sprouts.
Have you ever had any trouble with sprouts growing in your kitchen drain? I’ve heard it can happen, so we’re very careful about not letting seeds go down; but I’m not sure it’s a real problem, if you have a disposal to run.
-JT