Coping with Failure 2

The last post was about my third attempt at making koji. Now, what happened to my second failure?

Before talking about my second koji,　here is what I tried to do with my second attempt.

First, I tried to use my little rice cooker rather than steaming my rice. Following Mr Yamada's recipe, I thought I would be able to prepare dry enough rice by using less water in a rice cooker. Then, instead of wrapping the rice in a clean tea towel, I have directly put it into a plastic container and wrapped the container with towel to keep it warm. My first attempt failed as there was not enough moisture, so this time, I went for a lot of moisture in a full swing.

The result was koji mixed rice too soggy to become a proper dried koji. If anything, it smelled and tasted like very condensed amazake, slightly sour.

After 3 days of gazing and marveling at this,  I decided to mix the whole thing with hot water and keep it warm overnight. The result was amazake alright, which also means that my clumsy attempt at koji making did not, at least, develop wrong sort of mould on my rice.  The books tell me if I am not sure if my koji is alright, take some and make amazake. If I can make sweet amazake, without strange smell or taste, I have something edible there.

OK. I do have amazake alright. Now the question is if I would put any yeast in this hot, sweet concoction.

It is not at all like the refinement of proper sake, but I do taste something akin to junmai sake (pure rice sake) in this failure no.2 amazake.

36 hours later

With much trepidation, I opened my pot. Koji has grown well--- at least in parts. I could see in some parts, the rice grains are covered by velvety white fur. In other parts, they are white, but still retained some opaque texture. The rice seemed to be mostly stuck together and in one place, overgrown koji was beginning to turn yellow-- when that happens, it will become unsuitable for making sake, though suitable for miso paste. While it is still 'young' with white fur, koji is full of amylase and thus has more power to change starch into sweetness. When koji turns yellow, it starts to have more protease , thus acquiring the smell not desirable in sake but ability to change protein into  what we recognise as 'nice taste'.
As I used brown rice koji, the result had a little brown rice here and there.

Now, I am ready to try what Yoichi Yamada had taught us in his How to Make Doburoku a la Champagne in your Kitchen (in Japanese).

I cooked 3 cups of rice with water for 2 cups of rice as he suggested. When the rice was ready, I added a liter of chilled boiled tap water, which brought down the temperature.　I boiled tap water as chlorine is supposed to interfere with fermentation.

Then I mixed 200g of my own home made koji.

After adding some wine yeast, I wondered--- I am supposed to give some lactic acid bacteria so that harmful bacteria would not grow in my brew. That's what the book says but I don't have any.

Well, in goes two table spoon full of ASDA's Greek yogurt.

Now it's sealed again in my pot. Should ferment at least for 4-5 days in current climate, I guess.

The rest of the Koji are stored in my Tupperware. I am hoping to mature it a bit more and make miso paste.

24 hours later

This is a photo from the first attempt 24 hours later.
Some grains started to have white bits. So far, not much difference.

Third attempt

I soaked rice in water overnight. Drained it for about an hour.  Steamed it for an hour. Mixed it with 100g Genmai Koji (Brown Rice Koji).

This time, I will be using enamelled cast iron casserole. From the past experiences, I have taken a clean tea towel and dampened it with water, rung the excess water off and put it microwave to sterilise. This will be wrapping the koji rice giving it moisture required (I hope). I have put a hot water bottle below the pot and wrapped the whole thing in linen sheets.

Kitchen koji making

I want to make koji in my own little kitchen. Books talk about making incubators, koji boxes, or even koji making rooms. But none of that. At least at this stage of my life, everything has to be done within limited means. I have to be able to make koji as if I make my jars of jam.

Making things at home shouldn't have to be difficult. Even while I was a full time working mother in Tokyo I made British style bacon ( or approximation of it) at home.
And women do seem to make koji everywhere. I found Japanese women making koji in Greece, in Germany as well as, of course, in Japan. But what interest me the most are women making koji in Europe. They are working in similar environment to my own. While Japanese women talk about kotatsu, they talk about how to use bread proofing oven.

Coping with failure

Chucked the whole thing into rum in the hope of making mirin.

First failure

My first attempt -- failure. Put it on top of the oven-- not inside, as I thought that it would be warmer there. Think it was too hot and too dry.

Koji attempt no.1

Saturday night. I washed 3 cups of rice very, very well. Put it in a big bowl of water.
Sunday morning. Sieved the rice. Went to church.

When I came back, steamed rice for an hour, cooled it to 35c , mixed it with 100g of brown rice koji. After much consideration, I wrapped it up in a dry tea towel and put the whole thing into my thermal cooker to keep temperature right.

3 hours later, I checked the temperature. Too cold! I put just a bit of 40c water at the bottom of the outer pot.

Methods of Koji-making

There are two major ways to make koji. One is from commercially produced koji spores (Tanekoji). The other is from koji itself--- this is called tomo-koji (友麹　or 共麹）method. You buy the first packet of koji, mix it with steamed rice and if you managed to make a good batch of koji, keep some for the next batch.

A quick search on the internet told me that tomo-koji is easier to make at home, though over the time, it can be more unstable. First introduced to the modern housewives by the author Hiroko Hayashi, it seems to be a darling method of health conscious housewives all over Japan ( and abroad).

Juzo Nagata, a writer from a former koji making family, explains in his book how many different types of koji are there, but unfortunately, I don't have much choice here in the UK.

I found a pack of Genmai Koji (brown rice koji) on sale at a macrobiotics shop.  The Home Brew Shop also sells Koji-kin. For my first ever koji making attempt, I decided to go for Genmai Koji packet, i.e. I will try tomo-koji method. I will mix some from the packet to steamed white rice.

What is koji? (And why make it at home?)

Koji, (Aspergillus oryzae) is a type of mould that is used in making many Japanese foods. It is used in making soy sauce, miso paste, sake. It changes starch into sugar and uses protein to create savoury "umami" tastes.

The word "mould" conjures up images of something disgusting for some people--something that looks horrid and could even be toxic.

But, of course, there are moulds that transform food in positive ways. This is true in Western cuisine as well as Japanese. Who would want to get rid of the mould from a mature Stilton?

In a recent Guardian article about Japanese food, Charlie Brooker described another mould prepared food, Katsuobushi, as follows.

In summary: it's a dry, mouldy fish that has been sitting around for months. [...] desiccated mould-encrusted tuna. That's the source. Sorry to break that to you.

You might as well describe Stilton as mouldy curdled milk sitting around for months.

Anyway, back to koji. Because we are dealing with something that is alive, it can be tricky to make. You need to get the temperature and humidity absolutely right and there are craftspeople who devote their whole  lives to getting the process right.

This blog is about making it at home. It is born of necessity. I am a Japanese woman living in the Yorkshire dales and I don't have access to the ingredients I would be able to buy in Japan. I expect plenty of failure, but there is a little voice encouraging me as I set out to make my own koji: "Didn't women make miso at home for ages? Did they ALWAYS buy koji from shops? And hey? Didn't you let plenty of food go mouldy in your student days, anyway? In a sort of blundering sort of way, you must be an expert."

As G.K. Chesterton once put it, if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly.