This one has been a few couple years in the making and I think it is safe to say I finally nailed it as I went to burp this puppy on Friday night and it exploded out of the jar in a crazy crescendo of corn and koji scented foam. Angel, wide eyed, stood there frozen, watching as I came out of the booze closet with this monster. Grab a bowl! I half shouted, half asked in desperation. I wanted to save every last drop of this magical liquid sludge.

A little over a year ago I posted Bar Hack: First Attempt at Corngeat. The recipe was decent in that it tasted like corn and had that umami oomph I was looking for but inside the jar is what counts and although it got funky and corny it never went crazy and got super foamy and bubbly. Since then I have had many failed attempts with other experimentations, especially over the past month where I would set something up earlier in the week and then be very excited to see it when I had my two days off and then came into work on Tuesday only to have my energy drained by taking a whiff and inhaling a batch of pure shart. It was not the cleanliness of the jar nor the ingredients, it was just me trying to use old stuff from the freezer in a further attempt at 1. Some thoughtful usage. 2. Being a cheap ass and not wanting to buy more koji rice. 3. Falling into a bit of a groove. For a long while I have been using the cast offs of my amazake batches freezing them, and then using those frozen blocks of koji inoculated goodness to start many, many batches of fermented nut orgeats. But, it seems that the apple had fallen maybe too far from the tree in certain cases but I also think it may have been shortsighted to jump start certain batches with mixed ingredients. What I mean is this: I would usually just use a frozen macadamia batch to jump start some mac daddy but then I would use it on peanut or sesame and I think the whole thing got a little jumbled. Probably best to keep it as simple as possible, no?

Anyway, I went back to the drawing board and it worked out quite well.

Corngeat

1 cup Koji Rice (You can buy this stuff at any Japanese store in the refrigerated section)

Refuse and juice from 6 ears of organic corn

1 liter bottled or filtered water

You read it right, three ingredients. The hard part is waiting and needing all the equipment it will take to do all of this because it is a bit involved but hey, you are in luck, dear reader. I am here for you.

Here is a good list of the hardware you will need. Yes, the Champioin juicer is essential. At home people can get away will just blending everything up. It will work the same.

Champion Juicer

Large bowl

1 two quart glass jar*

1 large receptacle for use as a water bath

1 Immersion Circulator/Cooker Thingamabob

A Chinois but two is better

A four quart measuring cup but two is better

A super bag or nut bag

A two ounce ladle for plunging your chinois

I think that is it (yes, my apostrophe button is still out of commission).

Before you begin on this journey clean everything well. I do it in a particularly OCD way. I scrub everything with soap, then use the chemical sanitizer, then rinse with flesh scalding hot water, then use the chemical sanitizer again, then rinse with the flesh scalding water again. I don’t use gloves because I have PTSD from having to use them to bartend during the pandemic, but I also am good about not picking my nose or ass while prepping. Some people have a serious penchant for touching their face and hair without knowing it. I do not because I once worked for a chef that would verbally harangue me every time I did so.

So, let’s begin. I think (hope) I have enough pictures to illustrate all of this.

1. Shuck all your corn. Save the silk for tea if you are so inclined.
2. Cut all the kernels off your corn. I do this inside a large bowl because it can be quite messy and the kernels like to bounce everywhere.
3. Juice the kernels in your Champion but use a large enough bowl to catch all the cast offs that come out of the juicer’s bunghole. See pic.

Once you have all of this, put it all into the two quart jar with the cup of koji rice and the quart of bottled, filtered water.

Now screw the cap on, but not too tight, label at the very top and place into the large receptacle. Fill with water right below the line inside the jar, set your circulator to 140° and let it rip for 10 to 15 hours.

Why do I do it like this? A couple of reasons. For one, I hate plastic and I also hate putting liquids into those vacuum bags. Yes, yes, I know they supposedly do not leech any weird plastic flavor or chemicals into the product. Again, I hate plastic. Yes, glass has the enormous drawback of shattering, and it has on many occasions…But if we drink out of glass and pour booze out of glass I think our fermentations should be in glass.

Now, once you have cooked your corn and koji rice concoction, pull it out of the water and give it a burp. This is where my method varies from that of the contents in the book Koji Alchemy. I puree the contents of the jar with a stick blender and leave the remaining solids inside the jar for further fermentation.

From here, just place the jar in a dark, somewhat cool area for 4-7 days. Burp the jar daily. If you did it all correctly you will get a nice fizzy and funky foamy concoction. Yes, the jar is too small for this sometimes…Well, most times, but I like the chaos that ensues.

When you are ready to go after 4-7 days, place a chinois over your four quart measuring cup and simply (carefully) dump the contents of your jar into the chinois. Use the two ounce ladle to plunge the rest of the liquid out of the mass.

Note: This will smell a little odd but in a good way. If it smells odd in a bad way you probably want to launch it. Taste it first though. Do not fear.

Once you have completed this step, place your super bag/nut bag into the chinois and then set this up the same with the clean four quart measuring cup underneath.

Below is a pic of a completely unrelated procedure, but look in the middle there and you will see the chinois/measuring cup set up. Sorry, this is as close as I have to a photo of this without having to dig deep into my phone. Someday soon there will be a tome illustrating all of this with more professional snapshots.

Once you get it all through the super bag/nut bag you have got yourself some delicious sour corn amazake my friend. Weigh it, add equal parts cane sugar and blend it on the slowest speed for five minutes. Corngeat. There you go.

Hey we have a vegetable based, nut free, dairy free deal here. Vegans rejoice!

Here is your AI generated image for this blog post, #392!