Sakekasu

All is not lost however. I was left with quite a bit of lees ("sakekasu" in Japanese).

It is another versatile ingredient.
It can be made into a cake, mixed into a bread,  used for pickling vegetables, fish and meat. Japanese vegans use it when they want to add creamy, cheesy flavour into their western style dishes. Hence, pasta sakekasu tomato sauce, sakekasu quiches etc. etc.

The tastier the sake is, the better tasting its lees is, but there is no shop selling the thing, so my own sake is the only option.


To begin with, I start with something more simple-- sakekasu soy sauce.

Sakekasu: Soy Sauce= 1:1

I use it as if it is just a normal bottled of soy sauce when I am cooking stir fry. Half the sodium, tastes better. I think I can keep it in a fridge for up to about a month, though it has never really lasted that long.

Ages ago, sakekasu was 'the alcohol of common people' as the lees is much cheaper but still pretty alcoholic. It must have been particularly so in those days before the machine wringing out every drop of sake out of it.
 There is a particularly memorable joke people told during the Edo period (1603-1868) introduced in  Drinking Japan .

The friends of one nortoriously penniless drunkard ask: "How much did you drink?" He replies "Half a kilogram". (p.14)

Well, I don't think my sakekasu is good enough to eat on its own, but it does seem to make good enough a sauce.

Doburoku

There were two different types of sake brewing in my kitchen in the last week. One is largely following the recipe of Yoichi Yamada. The other is an amazake with yeast chucked in.
Two days ago, when I tasted them, Yamada recipe one tasted rather nice. I thought I should filter and bottle the day after but was too busy to do so on the next day. Only today, I filtered them.


LESSON: NEVER WAIT TO BOTTLE YOUR BREW IF YOU FEEL THE BREW IS AT THE RIGHT POINT.


Lovely sweetness has disappeared and the acidity that was behind the sweetness is now overpowering. Very disappointed.

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.