I have meant to post a little something about anazake for some time but I keep putting it off. Now that I have gotten a question about how to make it I can see that it is overdue and I should get my act together. Amazake is a rice and koji mixture that is most thought of as a drink but has other uses as well.
OK, so to make amazake you need koji and rice. You can make koji with the method discussed in the earlier post, “Making Koji for Sake.” In this case you will need to start with koji-kin. If you prefer you can skip making your own and just buy the koji. I have both koji and koji-kin in the store.
Once you have the ingredients, koji and rice, cook 3 cups of rice just as you would to eat the rice. When cooked, thoroughly mix 1 cup koji with the now 3 cups of cooked rice. Leave this in a warm area (75F-85F is good but could be as high as 140F) for between 6 hours and 12 hours. You should stir this every couple of hours; each time tasting it. It should get sweeter and sweeter until it stabilizes. When it stops getting sweeter it is done. At this point it should be quite mush like. Put it in a sauce pan and boil it for 5 minutes but be careful not to scorch it. This denatures the enzymes and stops the transformation. Continue reading “Amazake – it ain’t sake”