Amazake

I bought koji to make my own soy sauce.  Soy sauce takes several months to properly ferment so no soy sauce post for a while.  With a big tub full of koji mold spores, I looked up other items I could ferment using the koji.  I thought about making sake but it required getting some sake wine yeast and I didn't want to drive to a home brew shop.  Plus after reading about home brewed sake, it didn't seem like it was worth the trouble.  I then considered making miso.  I then remembered I don't particularly like miso and looking at the recipe, making miso requires starter miso.  The other item listed on the container was amazake.  I started reading up on amazake and it seems very similar to the rice wine dessert that my mom loves.  People raved about amazake.  It's yummy and good for you.

So with this information, I set out to make some amazake.  I fermented half in a yogurt maker and the other half in an igloo beverage cooler.  In the morning I had amazake.  I didn't like it.  It was sweet but not sugary sweet like cane sugar.  It was more malty sweet but the strange yeasty smell was not appetizing.  The yeasty smell wasn't exactly like fresh baked bread but more like smelly feet.  I cooled the amazake and froze it for later.

2 cups short grain rice
5+ cups water
1 cup koji

1. Cook rice until soft.  (I used a a rice cooker and left the lid open to prevent it boiling over.  I can be done in a pot on the stove top.)
2.  Let rice cool to 140 degrees then stir in the koji grains.
3. Ferment at 122 to 140 degrees for 10 ten hours.  (My yogurt maker ferments at exactly 120 degrees so slightly lower than the ideal temperature.  Some people use a rice cooker at the keep warm setting but mine was too hot.  I found the igloo beverage cooler ideal for this.  When the temperature dropped close to 120 degrees, I drained some of the water out and heated it in the microwave for a few minutes before pouring it back into the cooler.
4. When amazake tastes sweet, it's ready.  Bring the amazake to a boil to stop the fermentation.  

I froze the amazake and moved on to fermenting other things.  Maybe I'll come back to the amazake and use it to make something at a later time.