Update on Kome Koji batch using Tane Koji

Making my own Tane-Koji has been very interesting and I have learned a lot about Koji thanks to the information shared by others who have made their own.  

The benefits of making your own Tane-Koji would be cost, however a lot of work and effort goes into further incubation and drying out the Koji so that spores are released with maximum yield.  

I learned that trying to use Koji that were still damp only achieve a low yield of spores, so a further 36 hours of drying at 35°C has now dried them out.

On a positive note, the Kome-Koji is coming along nicely and there is a fair coverage of mould growing.  The smell is very pleasant and I hope that further testing will produce good results.

The Kome-Koji rice as it starts to develop spores.  All grains have a good covering of Koji.

Magnification showing Koji growth.

 I have now started to dry out the Kome-Koji to induce spore production, which will be my closing update for this trial.

Although making your own Tane-Koji is cheaper, I still think that purchasing the spores from Vision Brewing, Akita Konno, or any other supplier is good value for money, and they have worked hard to make the spores available to people worldwide and supporting them is important.

Last night I undertook the mammoth task of steaming 5kg of rice to make a new batch of Kome-Koji, to be used in my first batch of sake.  To make this possible I purchased two steamers, which will just about steam 1.8kg of rice per tier.  I have used a 10g pouch of spores from Vision Brewing which should be sufficient.
More to come on this later....

One of my Russell Hobbs steamers purchased from Homebase at a bargain price of £19.99

I am slowly starting to add details of all the equipment I use and where they can be purchased in the UK, which can be found on the Ingredients and Equipment page.