Alternative Grains for Koji (Aspergillus oryzae

[oxbowfarm]

Wondering if anyone on HG has tried culturing koji on a grain other than rice? I've been having some tentative plans for making our own miso if the soybean experiments bear fruit, or even making dry bean miso if they don't. But koji is traditionally cultured on rice and then added to the beans if I'm not mistaken.

I really don't live in a climate conducive to rice culture, and I'm hoping I can just culture the koji on cracked flint corn or something. I'm going to take a stab at it I think, but I'm wondering if anyone has already gone there/ done that?

Tim

[MikeH]

Jan 10, 2012 5:49:40 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

I really don't live in a climate conducive to rice culture,

Tim,

Off topic, there are folks in Vermont about 275 miles northeast of you who are growing rice.

Regards,
Mike

[oxbowfarm]

That is pretty cool Mike. But I still think our farm is way too "marginal" for rice.

"To grow rice, the soil must be able to hold water; and because of its need for water, rice must be grown in an area with a good watershed and abundant water. The crop also needs a certain accumulation of heat throughout the growing season, so the Akaogis are collecting weather information this year. "

Just about my entire property except the woodland on the hill is Chenango channery silt loam which is basically code for "gravel dropped by a glacier when it melted really fast". My soil is about as well drained as it is possible for a soil to be. The trout creek that flows through our property disappears underground every summer only to resurface on our neighbors downstream. I can't even have a year-round creek, let alone a pond or a rice paddy.

Nothing against rice, but unless you are culturally conditioned to need to grow rice, other grains are a better choice where it is marginal. Obviously when conditions are right it grows very very well in order to justify the extremely labor intensive cultivation it requires. If I have to grow rice to make miso I'll abandon the project.

[MikeH]

Depends on how miso you want to make. You could do rice in a bucket which would give you give a great deal of control over the variables with minimal inputs.



Regards,
Mike

[ottawagardener]

I keep meaning to try some mountain rice in the bottomlands of our place. Might not work. Might still be fun. It's a bit low down in my list of things to do this year though. Infrastructure building with a shovel and just my two hands takes awhile. P.S. love the quote.

[spacecase0]

it looks like Aspergillus oryzae was also grown on soybeans,
so I am guessing that it will grow on all kinds of things,
here is what the web turned up....

I found a study from people looking to make milk clotting agents to make cheese
and they grew it on "wheat bran along with 4% defatted soy flour and 2% skim milk powder"
pubget.com/mesh_browser/Fungi/Mitosporic%20Fungi/Aspergillus/Aspergillus%20oryzae/pg/1

here is another fermentation where they used red beans
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2002/00000065/00000009/art00016

I just got a book on naturally fermented foods,
they did have koji in there, I will check there for ideas,
but it looks to me like it will grow on all kinds of things

[spacecase0]

I looked up how to grow it, and it looks like soy beans is the very popular one,
can you grow soy ?

[templeton]

I thought I had seen it somewhere recently:
check out the recipe for buckwheat and yellow split pea miso here
www.nordicfoodlab.com/2011/10/miso/
Have a bit of a browse around for some other interesting stuff they are doing.
let us know how it goes.
Miso has been on my to do list for a couple of decades...
T

[templeton]

And a quick look at my very hippy recipe book collection yielded Shurtleff and Aoyagi 1983,"The Book of Miso second edition" Ten Speed Press, Berkely, California.
p171
"Alternate Carbohydrate Sources
For rice or barley koji, you may substitute up to 50 % cornmeal or corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes,or kabocha; these foods should be well steamed or boiled. Wheat koji may be substituted in equal parts.

Alternate Protein Sources
For soybeans, you may substitute up to 100% broad, black, lima, or garbanzo beans, or others listed on p 44 Indian pulses Bengal gram, Thur dhal, green gram, and Field beans) also work well. If 10 to 20 %soybeans (and peanuts) are used together with these ingredients, the amino acid balance and total useable protien will be considerably enanced"

P 44
" ...have had good results making new types of miso using peanuts, garbanzo beans, black soybeans, azuki beans, common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris incl pinto, navy, kidney, great northern etc) natto, okara, green lentils or green peas as the protein source.
They have also made koji from corn (dent or flint), millet, wheat, or buckwheat. in 1982 Imagine Foods in Missouri introduced a miso in which kelp replaces some of the usual salt."


So, in short, yes, you can use other ingredients. I quoted at length because I thought the original might be a bit hard to find
No doubt there are more modern publications around now, but this book has comprehensive instructions on making miso from first principles.

In the back of the book it notes that they have also published volume 2, Miso production, for setting up your own miso shop or factory.
T
T

[MikeH]

Tim,

The koji is typically grown on rice and is often available from Asian food markets in this form. It is also possible to purchase koji culture which can then be grown on to a medium such as rice, barley, other grains or legumes. Unfortunately domesticated koji is not an easy mould to keep going (unless you have a sterile lab to work in) so with either of these methods it will be necessary to purchase more koji each time you wish to make miso. Even so, it will be much cheaper (and more fun and satisfying) to buy koji and make your own miso than it will be to buy packaged miso. (In Japan there are traditional methods of “wild fermenting” miso, without the addition of domesticated koji, which I will discuss in a future post).

The comment about wild fermenting made me wonder if Sandor Katz does a miso ferment. He does but the real gem in that section of the book is his mention of koji sources: South River Miso Company and GEM Cultures. The first is interesting but the second is paydirt because they sell the Aspergillus oryzae culture including one to make soybean or Hatcho miso.

It looks like you don't need an intermediate step.

If there's an additional post on wild fermenting miso, I'll pass it along.

Regards,
Mike

[oxbowfarm]

Thank you for the information Mike, this looks like some fun experimentation for the future. I really have come to love miso.

[MikeH]

The Book of Miso by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi

Fermented barley cake

[12540dumont]

This year, I'm trying for the second time, hopefully without wild pigs to grow upland rice.

I have early Wataribune going in a tray along with some others. Although I plant to purchase the Koji, I hope in a few years to have enough to make good Sake. Wataribune (the ferryboat, or little boat that goes between the islands) was practically extinct. They are using it in Japan to make some very good sake.

It's kind of funny, but in Japan, just about everyone used to brew their own sake, make their own miso and ferment their own vegetables. Sort of like here, folks brewed their own beer, canned and dried their own food.

There are many upland rices that do not require their feet sitting in water. Here's a photo of my rice the day before the pigs took it down.

At the end of the season, there was still one rice that I harvested, Duborskian. I got it from Solstice Seeds in Vermont.


Let us know how the whole miso thing goes. I love miso too.

Attachments: