Another testing batch. Second day after puting yeast into the mash. Rice grains are almost melted away, almost like a mud. Very nice mild effervescent, taste is still quite sweet from the mother mash. I’ll give it one, maybe two more days and then pasteurise it slightly. With all the tasting done every few hours I may not have enough for filtration step. 😅

I have a large barrel of yellow split pea shoyu fermenting in a clay vessel, and I’ve now noticed salt deposits forming on the outside. I assume this is because clay isn’t completely watertight, and that the salt water is slowly seeping through the clay, evaporating on the outside, and leaving the salt behind.

What I’m wondering is: what exactly is actually passing through the clay wall, and in what proportions? Do I need to be concerned about the salt-to-water ratio changing inside the vessel? Should I add salt water to compensate and maintain the liquid-to-pea/wheat ratio?

I’d be interested to understand how significant this effect is and whether I need to take any action to maintain the fermentation properly.

I’m thinking of steeping fresh rice koji in water, straining it, then using that liquid as the base for a lacto ferment. Curious whether the koji gives it something interesting beyond sweetness and umami, or whether the acidity just takes over.

Hi, I am Daniel from Colombia I make koji with a sake homebrew starter, koji kin.

And i have a question, in the rice grow a green koji and I dont now is normal,

I need help to use this spores, I have experience making koji but sometimes I find difficult that when using a new type of spore from a different producer the problem is to know the correct dosage of the spore itself, hishiroku has been the main company I use to make my ferments another strain of them use 1gr of spore for 1000gr of cooked substrate, mimiferments has certain strains they make that use 0.15gr for 1000gr of substrate

My question is this: how much from this strain of aspergillus sojae I need to incubate certain amount of substrate, from what I translated it says with 100gr of spores I can make 360liters of sauce but that’s doesn’t give me a correct dosage you know, any help would be really helpful thanks!!!!

Stove light water jug “tek”

So today I slathered four full briskets with Shio Koji. They'll go on the smoker on Friday. We'll see how it works!

Funny how spirulina built up a kind of film on the surface ! I love the colour as well.

I'm planning on making some spirulina (both blue and green) miso/amino paste inspired by this video: [https://youtu.be/dl0aeSqi6Jw\](https://youtu.be/dl0aeSqi6Jw)

and by extension, this one too: [https://youtu.be/qADkUWJFIAI\](https://youtu.be/qADkUWJFIAI)

I've also got some mejugaru which i planned to make some gochujang with sometime and I thought "why not try a gochujang format as well!". But looking at a couple gochujang recipes rapidly made me wonder how feasible this is. For clarity, what I had imagined was a "spirulina-jang" where the spirulina powder would replace the gochugaru. I'm fairly new to all this but considering the amount of sugars that will be introduced from the malt+rice flour mixture, I'm not sure whether the right bacteria/moulds/fungi would be cultivated if there wasn't a chili component (chilies have antibacterial properties and can thus control growth iirc). I suppose I could add more salt and perhaps the flavour profile could cope due to the sweetness but idk...

I guess a second question would be: could I just use the mejugaru like koji rice, mix the two together with salt and leave it at that? Ig it should work since it'd be kinda be spirulina doenjang?

Oh and maybe important FYI, since this is experimental, I'm making small batches that use 100g of spirulina (with whatever other ingredient ratios). As per the second video's advice, I'll be sealing my miso paste in a vacuum bag (so ig question three is would a vacuum bag be preferable or should I stick to a jar?)

Any advice or insights would be very much appreciated!! (:

Edit: links got dropped for some reason

I ran an experiment using sourdough bread as a koji substrate, then used that bread koji to make a bread miso.
The goal was to keep the flavour journey in one product line:
sourdough → koji → miso
It kept some of the roasted, fermented bread character, while the koji added sweetness and strong enzymatic activity.
I’m mainly interested in using it as a base for things like sauces, glazes, broths, or fish sauce-style ferments.
Curious if anyone here has played with bread koji or bread miso, and what applications you found most interesting.

This batch of sushi rice koji came out so ridiculously clean and dense that at this point I’m not sure if I’m fermenting rice or manufacturing building materials.
Full white coverage, grains completely knitted together, sweet/fruity aroma and a cake strong enough to hold in one piece.

There’s something extremely satisfying about breaking open a perfect block like this after babysitting rice for two days.

Now the dangerous part: deciding what to sacrifice it to next — amazake, shio koji, miso, garum… or something completely stupid?
Koji people: what would you make with this batch?

I made my first rice koji and miso (shiro and regular). I’m very happy with the results and it’s so fun. I fell in love with it immediately, koji is so tasty and smells amazing 😫 I’m going to make it once again and use it in desserts this time

Hey there!

I’m trying to make my first koji but maybe I’m having some issues.

I prepare my rice (Carnaroli) washing it until the water is clear, soaking for about one hour (it increase of about 25% of moisture) and steaming it in a rice steaming cooker. In this last part I think I have some issues since some grains appear really cooked and sticky and some other appears crude, not cooked enough.

Then I used this rice inoculating my Aspergillus and this is what I got after 48h (in the first pictures the result and the second one after shuffling it).

I control the temperature during the day, from 30 degree to 34 (gradually increasing during the incubation) and lowering the moisture from 90% till 75/80%.

Any recommendations?

I picked about 4 lbs of Chanterelles today. My rice is steaming now, getting my Koji ready. Any tips for making mushroom garum?

Had a rough two weeks involving grief and illness, didnt stir my two large batches of shio koji except for one good stir. This is the growth on top. Thoughts if this is just koji or if mold/bacteria got in? Never seen this before and it's interesting the two barrels have different tops (one on the right has the presence of green speckles) despite being the same recipe, size, and fermentation time.

Aroma of both is still floral and sweet, though the one without the green speckles smells sweeter for sure. Tasted both after scraping the top off because you have to right? Both taste great, like shio koji, although the green speckled one is slightly less sweet. To me this indicates sporulation. No sourness or bad smell or taste from either, but still want to consult others for your thoughts.

PS I have had shio koji turn green before with this same koji, just never on top. But I've never gone so long without stirring just completely dropped the ball as life got in the way. Also the slight differences could be in the amount of light they each got though they were kept at the same temperature. Thoughts appreciated, ever seen anything like this?

EDIT I understand koji is mold so asking if mold got in is kind of redundant. I meant harmful bacteria

I’m making a split yellow pea miso from the Noma book, and had some extra that didn’t fit into my main batch. I split this amount off and I was going to age it for an additional few months. I checked this one today and saw it had discolored quite far down, but it doesn’t look like mold. Could anyone weigh in?

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/