Trying to make some miso from scratch today. The process seems simple enough.
- 500g barley Koji
- 300g dried soy bean
- 400ml water from boiled soy bean
- 150g salt
- 50g salt (cover mixture in crock)
The next morning the beans had expanded quite a bit, maybe next time I should use more soaking water. I drained them and put them in a pot and covered them with water so it was about 3 inches above the beans. Let it boil at a low simmer for 2 hours.
Once the 2 hours were up I collected 400ml from the pot, which was almost all the water anyway, and put the soy beans to cool in a sheet pan. Put the water in the fridge to cool.
Once they were cool I put the water and the salt in the blender to make sure it was dissolved. This wasn’t a great idea as the mixture turned milky and filled with air bubbles. I poured the milky solution out and then put the beans in the blender. Pulsed a couple of times to get them roughly chopped up. Then mixed everything but the 50g of salt in a bowl and put it all in a 2L crock. In theory it should have fit but the air from the blender definitely caused problems.
Once it was all in the crock I covered the top with the salt that was left, put some plastic wrap right against the salt and then put the rocks on top of that.
Now, time to wait about 10 months to see if I get miso.
Update 05/20/16:
Yup, all that air came back and bit me. I opened the crock today and it smelled of old shoes and there was green furry stuff growing on the walls and under the plastic. As far as I can read on-line it shouldn’t smell this way. I’m going to call it a loss, toss it, and start from scratch.