Owly055
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There seems to be little if any current interest here in experimenting with "fungal malting". I've been reading about these molds, used in producing saki, red saki, miso, soy sauce, and numerous other products, and feel that they offer some interesting potential for beer brewing. There are some old threads though.
The process is fairly straight forward. The cooked rice is innoculated with fungus, and allowed to propagate over a period of about 48 hours, at which point there is plenty of available amylase available, and the starch is gelatinized. At this point some sort of mashing is necessary to convert the starches to sugars.
In the traditional system, it is then inoculated with yeast, or in the case of rice wine using Chinese Yeast Balls, the yeast is made available at the outset. The fermentation and conversion proceed at the same time.
Alternatively, it could be dehydrated and crushed, or it could be treated like crystal malt, and stewed at conversion temperature, then dried or kilned and crushed. As another alternative, it could be toasted / kilned prior to being steamed and inoculated,
Each process should produce a different flavor profile.
Traditional Saki Koji is composed of the fungus Aspergillus oryzae on a substrate of milled rice.
Red Yeast Rice, which has nothing to do with yeast, is the fungus mold Monascus purpureus on a milled rice substrate, and has a bright red color.
Both are fungi which produce amylase, both are used for versions of saki and rice wine, and both apparently work on starches other than rice, such as barley, and sweet potatoes, both of which interest me in brewing.
As everybody here knows by now, I'm a dyed in the wool experimenter, not to mention an iconoclast, and my views and some of my experiments are often not well received here. Home brewing is an environment made to order for experimentation, and we are well supplied with the tools to do it. One can adhere to tradition and make good beer, or one can brew "outside the box" and make good beer. The array of ingredients available to us is huge. We have people doing traditional brewing right down to decoction mashing, others doing single infusion, others doing BIAB, and variants of it. We have people doing RIMS, and HERMS, recirculating BIAB, Sous Vide mashing, people boiling 30 minutes to 90 minutes, people doing no boil / no chill, people building impressive "brew bling stands" with arrays of vessels, pumps, hoses, and valves. We have people brewing 1 gallon brews, and people brewing 15 barrel brews. We have people doing 20 or 30 minute mashes, and others mashing overnight. And of course there's my continuous brew system often called "solera" (inaccurately), where I remove 33% a week to secondary and replace it with fresh wort.
........... Who have I forgotten?
I've ordered Koji and Red Rice Yeast with intent to experiment with them using various grains and other starch sources. This is both out of sheer curiosity, and because I anticipate spending a number of years voyaging in parts of the world where brewing supplies may not be easily had, expecting to have to use local starches such as sweet potatoes, plantains, taro, etc, along with incorporating local fruits, palm nectar, and who knows what all else........... A brewing adventure. I have a year or so to go before this, and expect to spend from 5-10 years (if not more) traveling the world. This is the time to discover what works and what doesn't.
H.W.
The process is fairly straight forward. The cooked rice is innoculated with fungus, and allowed to propagate over a period of about 48 hours, at which point there is plenty of available amylase available, and the starch is gelatinized. At this point some sort of mashing is necessary to convert the starches to sugars.
In the traditional system, it is then inoculated with yeast, or in the case of rice wine using Chinese Yeast Balls, the yeast is made available at the outset. The fermentation and conversion proceed at the same time.
Alternatively, it could be dehydrated and crushed, or it could be treated like crystal malt, and stewed at conversion temperature, then dried or kilned and crushed. As another alternative, it could be toasted / kilned prior to being steamed and inoculated,
Each process should produce a different flavor profile.
Traditional Saki Koji is composed of the fungus Aspergillus oryzae on a substrate of milled rice.
Red Yeast Rice, which has nothing to do with yeast, is the fungus mold Monascus purpureus on a milled rice substrate, and has a bright red color.
Both are fungi which produce amylase, both are used for versions of saki and rice wine, and both apparently work on starches other than rice, such as barley, and sweet potatoes, both of which interest me in brewing.
As everybody here knows by now, I'm a dyed in the wool experimenter, not to mention an iconoclast, and my views and some of my experiments are often not well received here. Home brewing is an environment made to order for experimentation, and we are well supplied with the tools to do it. One can adhere to tradition and make good beer, or one can brew "outside the box" and make good beer. The array of ingredients available to us is huge. We have people doing traditional brewing right down to decoction mashing, others doing single infusion, others doing BIAB, and variants of it. We have people doing RIMS, and HERMS, recirculating BIAB, Sous Vide mashing, people boiling 30 minutes to 90 minutes, people doing no boil / no chill, people building impressive "brew bling stands" with arrays of vessels, pumps, hoses, and valves. We have people brewing 1 gallon brews, and people brewing 15 barrel brews. We have people doing 20 or 30 minute mashes, and others mashing overnight. And of course there's my continuous brew system often called "solera" (inaccurately), where I remove 33% a week to secondary and replace it with fresh wort.
........... Who have I forgotten?
I've ordered Koji and Red Rice Yeast with intent to experiment with them using various grains and other starch sources. This is both out of sheer curiosity, and because I anticipate spending a number of years voyaging in parts of the world where brewing supplies may not be easily had, expecting to have to use local starches such as sweet potatoes, plantains, taro, etc, along with incorporating local fruits, palm nectar, and who knows what all else........... A brewing adventure. I have a year or so to go before this, and expect to spend from 5-10 years (if not more) traveling the world. This is the time to discover what works and what doesn't.
H.W.
