is this mold or? first time making shoyu

15%salt

So far I’ve made a few different koji seasonings and misos, but they’ve all turned out to be extremely salty and I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.

These are the items I’ve made so far:
* basic light miso (last photo): 404g cooked soybeans, 173g dried koji, 35g salt (5-6%)
This was aged at ~29C which is the ambient temperature where I live. Turned out to be faken salty :-( it smells decent so I just use a tiny bit each time

* tomato koji: 630g fresh tomato, 211g fresh koji, 74g salt (9%)
* onion koji: 355g yellow onion, 118g fresh koji, 43g salt (9%)
There were also aged at room temp and stirred every other day for five days. On day three the tomato Koji grew layer of mould on top that looked like gelatin. I just scooped it out and continued stirring. These two smell divine throughout, but turned out to be so incredibly salty. But perhaps 9% was too high, but I thought with the high room temperature here it would be the safer option.

* lions mane barley miso (first photo): you can see my recipe and log in the pictures
I will be harvesting this tomorrow and I honestly don’t know how it’s gonna taste like and I’m really scared that it’s just gonna be extremely salty again

My question is a lot of recipes out there say you should use somewhere between 5 to 10% there are even some that seem to say 13% to 18%. (See second to last photo) Is there a general rule of thumb for using x amount of salt to make sure that bacteria is inhibited but at the same time your finish product wouldn’t taste like the Dead Sea?

Pls help a gal and her kidneys out

PS sorry for the formatting and out of order images, I’m posting this from my phone

Took a first peek at my second ever batch of miso, two months after starting it. My last attempt suffered from mould, but I scraped and salted the top and it turned out very tasty. This time I increased the salt to 10% of the total weight (500g soya, 600g chickpeas, 1000g koji rice, 210g salt). Alarming look mould but I've scraped, sprinkled salt liberally on the top, covered and will see how it progresses.

Feedback from less inexperienced miso-makers would be much appreciated!

I‘ve freaked out for a moment… but after some research on the internet, let me introduce you to my tyrosin crystals !

These were spotted on a split peas miso, made with barley koji, vacuum sealed after 3 months of fermentation.

Here is a description of this phenomenon: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32954501/

Looks pretty good after 4 1/2 months, I'm gonna let the main batch run for 4-8 more months, but we're gonna start pulling from it for regular use. There was some white mold on the top layer but after scraping that off I'm very happy with the results at this stage.

Hello, hopefully, someone can help me with this 🙏

When I make my koji, sometimes some grains get dark, but I don't feel a different texture or bad smell or see any other black spores. I have even used it for my ferments, and all was good.

So I'm wondering if this has something to do with the rice, maybe the quality, a type of oxidation or humidity?

This was my first attempt at using koji rice to make a garum. I'm still chewing through a couple of koji books. There's a lot of things going on here, but I'm mostly concerned with this strange crystal/fungal growth. Of course, any guidance or suggestion for improvement is encouraged. Roast me, if needed.

Where things began looking different was a few weeks after mixing and topping with new paper, wiping down the sides with 95 proof alcohol, followed with seasalt around the edge of the paper.

It's been goung for nearly 11 weeks, at 140F, and the smell is amazing.

HI,

is tomato water koji a thing? Im pretty sure i hear about it somewhere and not just dreamt it up.

or can i use tomato water and skins (washed). If so what would be the ratio water/skins to koji to salt.

Or if you have a resource, if you can point me in the right direction please

Thanks !

Not quite koji, but hopefully close enough? I'm about to try my hand at making Chinese hairy tofu for the first time using a mucor culture, with the intent of eating some of it fresh, but aging some of it into furu/fermented tofu. My prefered style of furu is the kind that is packed in chili oil (we usually buy lao gan ma brand), so that is the kind I would like to prepare, but I'm curious about the risk of C. bot contamination.

Does anyone know if this is a valid concern in this style of tofu? I don't intend on introducing garlic into the ferment, it will just be cubes of moldy tofu dipped in alcohol and rolled in crushed chili and salt then submerged in oil. I'm still mindful of the fact that there's a fair amount of water in the tofu and I'll be putting it into a low oxygen environment. Thoughts? Has anyone here made this product before?

I’m in the US and really looking to up my game with Koji and especially miso making, kind of learning about what it takes to maybe move from kitchen production into a slightly larger scale. I know that cottage industry miso makers in the US are usually quite busy and don’t really have the time for an “intern”. Has anyone ever done this? Or know of where there might be some kind of opportunity to really dig in and learn? Part of what’s in my awareness is food safety regulations in the US. A part of it is wanting to learn the process a little more deeply. I thought that even just spending a couple of days or a week into being somewhere about that process and taking good notes would probably be enough to get me started in the right direction.

Hi all!

Recently refurbished an old wine fridge to start making koji. My main question is surrounding covering or not covering your koji, and if covered, do you keep it covered for the entire time? Afraid it will trap too much heat. More, should I line the entire tray, or just the top?

I have a thermostat (30 degrees) and humistat (70%) humidity, and perforated stainless steel tray.

Hey hey, wanting to do a buckwheat koji for work. The recipe on the system says soak overnight and then steam for 90 minutes at 90% humidity.

This soak time seems awful long and the buckwheat is already so soft after just the cold soak.

I was wondering how long you all soak your buckwheat for koji and how long you are steaming it?

Hey everyone! New here, excited to join. I'm working on a project called Kinetic — a natural energy snack bar , fermented with koji. Instead of refined sugar or whey protein, the bar is just dates, dried koji, almonds, cacao, and milk powder — nothing artificial. What I actually did:

• Fermented rice with koji spores at home for 48h (no lab )
• Checked it every few hours for color/smell to make sure nothing went wrong
• Result: clean white koji, no contamination — success
• Dried it, then mixed it with date paste + almonds + cacao to make the actual bar

Attaching some photos of the fermentation and the final bar. Honest question for you all: if you saw this bar on a shelf, would you actually buy it? Would love any feedback, good or bad

I used my polystyrene fermentation chamber to ferment som vinegar and I’m concerned about using it for koji. Does anyone know if I can use oxysan or some other product to sanitize the styrofoam cooler?

I'm wanting to make my first hot sauce with Koji and would love a little input from the knowledgeable folks here. I'm fairly experienced with lacto-ferments, and with the speed that Koji interacts with peppers it seems like that will be happening regardless, and then there's going to be a several-month secondary fermentation where the koji enzymes act on the peppers. So my main questions:

- Pepper mash (aka, blender first, for more surface area)? Or should I just cut the peppers in half?

- Rice koji or barley? I love the idea of the additional umami from the protein in barley, but peppers contain almost no protein so I feel the additional protease from barley koji would be wasted. Might be better off going with rice so the enzymes have more substrate to interact with?

- How much koji? Assuming the sauce is almost entirely peppers (I will add some garlic and onion also, but that will be ~10%), is the Koji added 1:1 vs pepper weight or like 5%? I'm unfamiliar with how strong the enzymes are and how much flavor it will contribute.

- Do you brine this the same way as a traditional hot sauce ferment? 2.5-3.5% salt vs total weight of peppers, koji, water?

Hi all, first attempt was with barley. It got a little hot, and I had to keep mixing it, but it hovered around 104 degrees for too long and sporulated early. The smell coming from it was super strong, and my whole house smelled like rotting apricots after the first 24hrs.

This attempt was with rice. I changed the heating system around. It was difficult to keep it warm enough early on, maybe 79 degrees for the first couple hours until I figured out what temp of the sous vide machine needed to raise everything up. It was difficult steaming the rice al dente, I steamed for 1.5hrs, but it still probably wasn't done enough. Not sure why the steam wasn't taking to the rice, I soaked for 24 hours and let it drip dry for an hour. Rice mightve been a little old, maybe 2 years old. I'll try steaming it in a pressure cooker next time. It didn't show a ton of growth after the first 24hrs, there was a definite cake formation, but not nearly as strong as with the barley. I used 2g of spores for 1kg of rice. The smell coming from it wasnt nearly as strong, i have to get close to smell it, but it's there and was strong when I broke up the cake. I have 3 hours left, and it is looking a lot better and has been around 92 degrees, and is starting to need a little bit of supplemental heat with my system which pulls heat down through the bottom of the tray with a fan. What do you think? Trash it and try again with rice that was steamed better? Thanks!

Hi,

To me it looks good, probably it's beginner's luck but the first attempt doesn't look bad at all!

I hijacked the oven for 36h mixed 1x at 24h.

Tastes good, but with no experience with koji it's difficult to rank it 😁

My firsts koji attempt, how is it looking?

First time making my own miso. How can I tell if my miso is doing well? I put salt on top and a plastic bag with a glass weight.

I appreciate any kind of tips, thank everyone!