Koji Me Softly

I heard Koji sang a good song, I heard it had a style

And so I came to see it, to listen for a while

And there it was, this fine spore, a stranger to my eyes

Beginning of Incubation, 2019

White and Black Koji, 2019

In case you haven't met, let me introduce you to Aspergillus oryzae, more commonly known as koji. It is a family of mold that can break raw ingredients down to their basic units (ex. starch=>monosaccharides, proteins=>amino acids). Due to its enzymatic power, koji is a key player in the production of sake, shochu, miso, soy sauce and many other delicious products. At the risk of being a bit reductive, koji serves a similar function as malted barley in western grain based alcohol production. Both malt and "koji-fied" grain contain amylase enzymes (along with other enzymes) that break complex starch chains down into simple sugars that can then be fermented by brewers yeast as well as other families of yeast and bacteria.

Grain based alcohol traditions all across Asia have traditionally used Koji as their saccharification element (Koji is Japans national fungus!) where as U.S. brewing/distilling traditions have largely relied on malted barley. There was a moment in the late 1800's where a Japanese chemist by the name of Jokichi Takamine attempted to revolutionize the brewing/distilling industry here in the U.S. by developing new ways of producing enzymes through Koji. Although Takamine never saw those dreams realized due to the changing tides of powerful whiskey trusts, angry maltsters and most likely institutionalized racism, his ideas live on in the many patents that he had filed and his many other scientific contributions. Although it is not common in the U.S. to utilize koji grain in whiskey or beer production, exogenous enzymes produced by fungus and bacteria in labs are routinely used as a liquid concentrate.

Makeshift Koji Room, 2019

Hybrid Copper Pot Still, 2019

A recurring theme here at Ferm to Table is going to be koji, specifically in whiskey production. Much time has been spent pouring over Takamine's patents as well as current methods of koji production and utilization. Over the last couple of years I have been developing methods of growing and incorporating koji into our whiskey making process as a way of developing unexpected flavors. Through experimenting with different spores, incubation temperatures, substrates, fermentative yeasts and barrel types (among other things) we have been able to produce some unique whiskeys that will hopefully see a shelf at some point in the future. The one constant with whiskey is time and there is no substitute for it. While we wait, I hope you will find this website to be a point of reference in your own experiments and a place for thoughtful discussion. Happy fermenting!