Dear all,
I recently decided to go for my own koji and therefor ordered some starter from GEM culter (light and red rice koji starter and barley starter).
I closely followed the included instructions and the "light rice" koji turned out beautifully.
(I used my incubator set at approx. 32°C (90F)).
So far so good. I then decided to go for the "red rice koji" and there the problem started.
That stuff went of like a rocket. I can barely control the heat development (the heat development started to dramatically increase after approx 20 hours). I brought it down to 28°C and approx 3 hours later it went up again to 37°C (100F). I turned the incubator down tow 28°C.
Now, after 27h of incubation on some grains (only a few) small yellow "patches" appeared. The smell of the overall koji is wonderful. I am not sure if that is starting sporulation (or other organisms or dirty grains)? Shall I remove those single grains. What is your experience? Is this normal (probably you wont even recognize it on brown rice)?
Thanks for your help.
All the best,
Chris.