I recently dropped into our local sake maker and picked up another package of koji rice. My plan was to make my third batch of homemade miso since our first one is disappearing quickly and the second one is just over a month into its fermentation which will take a fully year or so. However, I borrowed the book Koji Alchemy and have been reading through it and I’m finding it so fascinating and it is giving me some other ideas for my koji rice.
The first thing I decided to try making is amazake. I’d never drank this before but it is popular in Japan. Despite the fact that it is just koji rice, cooked rice and water 1:1:2 it is super sweet and umami. Aspergillus oryzae is the mold that lives in koji rice, and much of it usefulness stems from the massive amounts of both amylases and proteases that it produces. Foods that are fermented by koji rice will be sweeter and more umami rich because of the action of these enzymes. Glutamate is well known as the amino acid that is the primary factor that gives food that umami deliciousness. It is because of the proteases that glutamate is released from foods in large amounts, it is what gives miso and soy sauce that awesome delicious flavour.
Amazake is not fermented so in making it unlike the miso, we are not trying to grow the aspergillus oryzae but instead we are relying on the enzymes already present from the aspergillus in the koji to break down the starch and protein in the rice to make the amazake sweet and yummy. I used my Instant Pot set to Keep Warm, Less placing a couple of inches of water in the pot and then placing the jam jar with the koji rice, cooked rice and water in the water bath. This setting at most stays on for 10 hours, so I had to run it twice, once at 4 hours and once at 10 hours to get the full effect.
This morning I took the jar of amazake out of the Instant Pot and stirred it well to break down the rice and tasted it. It was shocking how sweet it is without any added sugar. Wow such delicious interesting thing this amazake. So the main reason I wanted to make it was to play with the koji rice I had but then I also had a plan for bread of course. I am using this amazake to prepare a Tangzhong for my vegan version of the sourdough Hokkaido milk bread. Because it is so sweet I didn’t need to add any sugar to the dough. So we shall see if the resulting bread it too sweet for my liking. Having tasted it, I wonder how it would work to make a stiff sweet levain!!
I’ll posted about my first test bake with my amazake in another blog post.
I buy Amazake and its sold as fermented rice which can either be made into a drink or enjoyed as a rice pudding. It has no sugar but very sweet which cones from the fermentation. I did add it to a sourdough a while back with very good results but the sweetness doesn’t come through. Then again i only added 34g into the final dough but even if used as a sweet starter it doesnt have any sugar in it so it’ll only be the low hydration having any affect.
Nice loaf you used amazake in Abe, you seldom post hearth loaves so this one stands out.
As you know the sugar in the amazake comes from the incredible amount of amylase from the Aspergillus. In the case of amazake made the way I made it, during its preparation it isn’t actually fermenting, rather the amylase is breaking down the rice starches converting them to sugars. Aspergillus isn’t able to grow at temperatures greater than 45ºC so the preparation temperature of amazake of 57.2ºC that I used there is no growth of aspergillum oryzae. However, the optimal temperature range for the amylase in the Aspergillus of koji rice is 131-140ºF so the amylase quickly gets to work and the amazake is made beautifully sweet and delicious.
I have a test loaf using the amazake in the tangzhong fermenting now that I’ll share later after it is baked. Hopefully it turns out well.
Thanks Benny. This was some time ago before i tried a pullman. Its tricky in my oven to do hearth loaves so while this did turn out well its much easier to stick to loaf pans.
You know a lot more about the amazake making process than me. All i know is its [added] sugar free but tastes like sweet rice pudding.
As to whether you can make it translate into a sweet starter I’ll leave that to you but i will be following your experiment.
I have a few other projects two based off the amazake. I have just inoculated some 35% fat cream with the amazake to make koji cultured cream and I’m hoping that I’ll have koji cultured butter and koji buttermilk at the end of that.
I’m also making a shio koji with the amazake. I’ve never used this before but have read that it makes everything taste better! We shall see if that is the case.
I also recently reactivated my long ignored grape yeast water. I had been in the fridge for the past 1.5 years. I got new grapes, cleaned and sliced in half and inoculated a new grape yeast water with some of the old grape yeast water. It was super active within two days. I’ve just not inoculated a jar of raspberries and water with some of the grape yeast water and I’m hoping that I can produce first raspberry wine and then have it go straight to raspberry vinegar. Again we shall see if that works. I have two jar of a dark rose that I’ve been converting to rose vinegar for the past couple of weeks. I had added unpasteurized apple cider vinegar to it to bring the alcohol down to about 8% and for the bit of vinegar mother in the apple cider vinegar. It seems to be working, I recently tasted it and it certainly is tasting good and it is developing a mother. Now someone on TFL had told me to swirl the vinegar daily so I was doing that but it disturbed the mother. It will be fine, but I’ve stopped swirling and will just let the mother form at the surface of the vinegar.
Great advice, I actually spiked the grape yeast water as well to help it really get going. I’ll see how the ferment goes without the sugar first just to know but may add sugar later. I actually don’t want the alcohol to get too high because anything above 9% will prevent the Acetobacter from being able to work.
Without sugar you’ll only get about 0.5-1% max. Especially since yeast water is mainly water. Raspberry juice on the other hand would be a higher ABV but only around 5-7% (at a guess). Still well within the limit though. Without measuring the gravity itll impossible to get an accurate ABV reading however if you tell me how much water there is i will take an educated guess of how much sugar to add and still be within the limit.
I don’t know how much water I’ve added. I simply filled a jar with raspberries, not packing them particularly. Then added some of the yeast water and then topped off the jar to cover the raspberries in water. From what you’re saying it sounds like adding some sugar is a good idea.
Definitely if you actually want a wine. Yeast water only really gets the yeast active but not designed for much alcohol at all. For that you’ll need pure juice. If you want i think theres a better way. Either add sugar or buy a bottle of fruit juice with no pulp or any added ‘ites’ or ‘ates’ and i will show you how to make a bottle of wine with your yeast water.
I added some sugar last night and this morning the fizz is incredible and the raspberry water actually overflowed into my proofing box with everything else. Easy enough to clean up but lesson learned it can fizz quite high.
Filtered my first batch of dark rose vinegar and saved the mother to start another one.
Sounds good. You wont know how high the ABV is however allow the fizzing to stop completely and it should clear with the dead yeast falling to the bottom before carefully pouring off the wine. Taste it at different stages. You’ll need a significant amount of sugar to get a high ABV and i highly doubt wild yeast can go over 9% anyway. Normal grape juice of 16g of sugar per 100g juice will yield about an 8% ABV give or take.
That’s great thank you Abe. I’ve just given it a thorough stir to mash up some of the raspberries a bit to get the yeast better access to the natural sugars and to extract more raspberry flavour. I suppose if the fizzing slows down I could add more sugar to get it going a bit longer and to get more ethanol that can be converted to acetic acid later.
Yes you can do it that way. Add bit by bit till you get it to a stage you want. Wait till the fizzing slows right down and taste then add more sugar if necessary. However if you find its tasting sweet then the yeast has reached its alcohol tolerance and wont go higher. If its dry then you can try adding more. Dont worry about going over 9% with wild fruit yeast. Highly unlikely they can tolerate a high ABV. This process can take a week or two then a further week or two for it to clarify but when it stops you’ll need to strain the fruit then transfer into another jar for secondary (clarifying). Preferably a smaller jar so you arent left with a lot of space. Once its clear and all the dead yeast cells have fallen out then transfer carefully off the yeast cells and turn it into vinegar.
Looking good!
P.s. because you have used fruit but no pectic enzyme to break it down the resulting wine may end up a bit murky. See how it goes. Looking forward to results.
I’ve got 5 litres of mead i need to bottle which was started on the 5th of January. Its been maturing for a while now. While i was waiting for that i’ve been making quick simple wines to enjoy while the mead was aging. Right now i’ve got a pyment - mead and grape wine hybrid - fermenting. One bottle and as soon as it stops bubbling I’ll wait for it to settle then drink. But my aim is to prevent my wine from turning to vinegar. Trick is, while oxygen is ok in the primary - bubbly - stage (even beneficial) it becomes problematic when the fermenting stops. So when transferring it into a demijohn to clarify and age it must be done carefully to not introduce oxygen. I imagine you needn’t be too careful.
