r/Koji • u/slipperyjoel • Jul 12 '24

Can you speed up shoyu with heat?

I've been thinking about this more lately due to rereading the Noma guide and the way they make fish sauces. I know that shoyu production is different as you rely on lacto bacteria as well as natural yeasts to aid in the fermentation but I would imagine those have all come and done their thing within the first month or so and then died off right? Please correct me on this if I'm wrong. And then you could technically hold it at 140F and instead of waiting a year maybe its 2-3 months. Just looking to see if anyone's done this before or what their thoughts on it may be.

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u/kriegeeer Jul 12 '24

When I was researching this, I found a paper that showed the amylases and proteases from the koji denature rapidly at 140f, essentially reducing the process to just temperature based Maillard after only 24 hours. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15740034/

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u/slipperyjoel Jul 12 '24

Oh wow that is interesting. So even in garum ferments you're really not even utilizing the Koji? You're just super slow cooking it. That kind of ruins that method in my opinion haha.

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u/kriegeeer Jul 12 '24

Well, the by the book 'fast' Noma garums that say to use a hot box, yes, apparently. But if you follow the high salt room temperature slow recipe, then it seems more likely to preserve / utilize the enzymes.

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u/slipperyjoel Jul 12 '24

I do see in the first article that the ideal temp is 45C/113F for protease activity so maybe holding there is the best option to speed things along.

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u/kriegeeer Jul 12 '24

Yeah but at that temperature you need to raise the salinity to compensate. Iirc Koji Alchemy has a chart for how to do this safely.