Adventures in... Amazake!

AMAZAKE! Even the name sounds awesome. I ran across this little gem randomly a couple months ago... some recipe in the blogosphere recommended using amazake in place of milk for gluten-free baking that is fluffier than the typical gluten-free fare. Since I love to hear about new stuff, I immediately started googling it.

As it happens, amazake is a fermented rice beverage, that is fermented for a much shorter time than the sake you think of when you think of fermented rice. With amazake, you use the same starter culture as sake, but only ferment said rice for a day or less. The culture breaks the rice down into simple sugars, which makes it sweet and tasty. Apparently this Japanese drink is a holiday beverage; from what I gathered at the Japanese grocery store, they drink it over the winter holidays, the same way we think of eggnog as a winter treat.

I love anything made with rice because it's one of the few grains I can tolerate, and I just loved the idea of a cultured rice that would make my gluten-free cooking more fun. But it turns out that amazake is still in the "underground" here in the US. I found ONE brand of it at a health food store, and it was super expensive for a 12 oz bottle. And when I went to Japanese grocery stores around town and asked if they had either amazake OR the koji rice starter needed to make it, I was greeted with blank stares. I was a LITTLE surprised by this, because the koji starter is used to ferment miso, too, and my internet searches suggested I could find koji light rice starter at my neighborhood japanese grocer. Alas, the ATL is clueless about amazake.

So, to the internet I went, and I purchased a koji spore starter pack. That was the cheapest option I could find. It came in the mail on Thursday, and I was so excited! It turns out, this is more complicated than I initially expected. All I got was little pack of spores, with instructions on a 48 hour process of combining these spores with rice to create koji rice. THEN I store the koji rice, and I can mix THAT cultured rice with other cooked rice in a 24 hour process to make some amazake. Phew! This is going to be intense. Luckily, I will be home for the next 4 days, three of which make up a long weekend. Perfect timing for an insane culturing project!

Since the internets seem pretty oblivious to culturing koji rice and making amazake, I think I will need to document this process and, if it's successful, post about it so that there's some more info out there for the culture-loving internets. I mean, even Instructables doesn't have a tutorial on making amazake. I guess I'll have to be the first!

Tonight my task is just to rinse 6 cups of white rice VERY WELL, then soak it in water overnight. Tomorrow the more intense process of making koji rice begins. I will probably save it all up until my amazake is made, then put together a good tutorial post or two after all is said and done. Let the adventure begin!