Fermentation Cast

[Level: medium]

A lot of the more famous koji ferments require a lot of time: soy sauce, miso, sake. It goes from weeks to even months. In this episode we discuss an application that can be finished within a day, even within only 2 hours if you use our extra special trick. We are talking about: amazake! We dive into how to make this sweet and delicious drink and tell you how to make unorthodox amazake from chestnuts and even potatoes.

This episode is another co-production with Maxene Graze from the Koji Collection Substack.

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[Level: medium]
In the West, we often speak about koji as if it is one single thing, and as if it is just what you add to a miso to start the fermentation. In reality, koji has a much wider meaning. During this episode we discuss what is encompassed when we talk about koji. Koji also comes in many different forms, potencies and flavours. We will take you through the different types of koji spores that you can procure and will help you a hand with choosing the perfect spore for your next funky fermentation.

This episode is another co-production with Maxene Graze from the Koji Collection Substack.

Like the podcast? Support us and buy me us a coffee!

[Level: medium]
The next batch of episodes are all about koji. The first we dive deeper into the making process, which we briefly touched upon in season 1. There’s a lot more to this fluffy friend than a simple growth of 2 days! We discuss growth phases, how to recognise where you are in the process, koji-styles and how to judge the quality of your koji. The episodes end with a beautiful sonification of the growth process.
The Koji-episodes are recorded with our guest co-host Maxene Graze; author of the Koji Collection substack. She translates articles about koji from Japanese to English, to help broaden everyone’s knowledge about this fungus. To read the article on which this episode was based and see illustrations of the different types of koji, go to https://thekojicollection.substack.com/p/visuals-of-koji.

We'd also like to invite our listeners to share pictures of koji they made: good and bad. Once we have a proper collection, we will make a post containing all these pictures to help you recognise all different forms, succeses and failures.

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[Level: Expert]
Disrespectfully speaking ;-) , you might call our last guest of the Bolzano episodes a high brow milkman. Alan Kelly is a professor specialised in the science of milk. He sees milk as a liquid that wants to be a solid. Like a box of Lego, that depending on how the pieces are put together results in a different product.
Rennet is the basic denominator in how the milk changes texture and taste in the early stages of fermentation. Learn how different rennets affect the quality of the final cheese and become a better cheese maker yourself.

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[Level: Advanced]
Our next interviewee has something to be envious about: a collection of micro-organisms isolated from fermented foods. At the University of Ljublana Neža Čadež works on using this collection for all kinds of new fermented foods. In Bolzano she presented the results of a project aimed at making gluten free beer from buckwheat, a grain that when used with a regular beer yeast doesn’t make for a very tasty beer. In the Slovenian mountains, the team isolated rare yeast strains from spontaneously fermented ciders and selected one that performed best on buckwheat. Then, they improved it so it better utilizes maltose, the sugar mainly found in wort. Hear what Neža has to say about how they managed to do so. Spoiler: don’t carelessly play with this at home, and always keep an eye out for proper pH values.

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