Amazake Experiment on hold

Okay, so I've been doing more research on making koji rice from spores (if you're having a tough time keeping up, koji rice is the moldy rice that is mixed with cooked rice to make sake and, in my case, amazake. I have koji rice SPORES that I need to innoculate into koji rice, which I will THEN be able to use to mix a cup of koji rice with a couple cups of brown rice to make a fermented rice beverage that is ALSO a handy ingredient for gluten-free baking). I finally found a couple of websites that have instructions on making koji rice, and one that is AMAZINGLY detailed, AND contains the holy grail - instructions on how to convert some of the koji rice into spores that can be used to make MORE koji rice later... which would mean if I get it right next time, I won't have to buy more spores online in order to make more koji rice.

What I figured out from reading his tutorial is that the instructions that came with my spores were sorely lacking, AND lacking in caution. Turns out you need to be really careful with the spores because you don't want to breath them in. Uh, what? So now I've got a graphic image of mold spores covering my esophagus. Let's pray that's not the case. He also has a whole page devoted to how to steam the rice, and what it should look like at the end, which was my biggest issue.

While I do feel much better informed to make my next batch of koji rice, I am also a bit unprepared by way of equipment. While I think I can mainly get by with what I have on hand to create an incubation area, my biggest problem there was that I don't have a food thermometer that falls below 100 degrees... and I need to keep the koji rice incubated in the 90s. I think this all-in-one cooking timer/thermometer would do the trick, but... well, we've put the lock-down on our spending. Starting this month we are on a strict budget and I can't just drop $20 on a thermometer because I think it would be fun to do this koji rice experiment. So I basically need to wait until the end of the month and see if there's anything left in the budget for this little goody. If not, there's always next month... and if we really get in a bind, then there's always my birthday in December!

Also, now that I found that fantastic tutorial, I may not put up an Instructable on koji rice... I'm a big proponent of the "no need to reinvent the wheel" philosophy. But we'll see... maybe I'll still put one up there just so the information is in more than one place, and make sure to reference the original.

Next up, I need to find someone with extra kefir grains so I can get my culture fix that way. Anyone know someone with extras?