If you don’t hear the word “sunflower” and start unconsciously singing the Post Malone/Swae Lee song from Spiderverse in your head, there may be something wrong with you. For a long time, humming the song was the only thing that put my son to sleep. It’s in my goddam DNA. It’s a catchy one…and in other news I saw some sunflower seeds in the kitchen the other day and so made some amazake with them as an experiment. I expected nothing, and got something. How does Gabe say it? Underpromise and overdeliver? Yeah. It might be good advice for life in general or it could be terrible. There are few certain things in this cold, green world full of beauty and agony.

Here’s the amazake after a15 hours at 135 degrees F, a stick blend, and a day. As you can see, it foams up much like a nut amazake. There’s some cool bubbles forming in the raft, or mash, and a lot of action.

The biggest difference here, is the chunky mass itself. Nuts produce a creamier sort of texture which is probably why we see less or no seed orgeats. I mean, it’s possible no one has tried before, but I doubt I’m the only one. If I attempt to mansplain this, I would say the nut is the soft inside of the seed, whereas a seed still has the tough protective shell on the outside that resists any sort of softening? I don’t know. A sunflower seed is still removed from its initial thingamajiggie, so the mansplaining doesn’t make much sense. Is a nut not just a large seed? I’m sure there’s some difference but I don’t have the time to look into it. Maybe tomorrow.

At any rate, the report on a seed amazake is just lukewarm. The koji seemed to take but it didn’t create a milky environment like it does with nuts or beans, etc. I’m going to try again when we start getting squash. Maybe squash seeds will be better? Maybe I’ll break them up before starting the fermentation process to get at the soft chewy center a little easier. Is a bean not a nut and not a seed and vice versa all the way around?

I let this sit a week and although the funk and sourness was next level, it had no body and mouth feel whatsoever. A great first try for the next round.