The on-going soy sauce controversy…

A couple of new issues have been brought up by Tadaki- is sea salt saltier, the same as, or less salty than regular salt? I really don’t know. I thought it was saltier, but Bittman claims the opposite. Considering he is a chef, cook book writer, and columnist for the New York Times, I’m going with him…for now, regardless of Campbell’s Soup’s marketing. In the end, I added a bit of water to the mash to dilute the salt, and it does taste more like regular soy sauce (in terms of saltiness) now.

Inigo suggests that: “I’d be concerned with the acidic taste, which shouldn’t be happening“. I just tasted it again, and perhaps I have over-stated the acidity. Comparing it to Kikkoman, they are fairly similar in acidity. I agree with Tadaki that the acid taste is likely from lactobacillus, and therefor not really anything to be concerned about. In fact, my original salinity was chosen to promote lactobacillus (among other micro-organisms) fermentation.

As to the aerobic vs. anaerobic question…well, I only really properly tried to aerate it when I first brined the dried soy patties. This was because in beer making, good aeration is needed initially (and only initially) to get the yeast to grow and multiply. After that you try to avoid exposure to oxygen to prevent oxidization (produces off-flavours). With the soy, after the initial shaking-up to aerate the mash, I have only stirred the mash fairly regularly, but not too vigourously, so a bit of oxygen was likely added, but not much. Transferring to the glass jar probably re-aerated the mash, but then all salt I added probably killed off most of what was growing in the mash. Taken together, all this means I probably have something like the ‘microaerophillic’ conditions described in that patent Tadaki sent:

The purpose of these intermittent aeration steps is essentially accomplish in the fermenting Maromi a microaerophillic condition, i.e., a state of oxygen tension that is less than atomospheric and being on the border between aerobic and anaerobic conditions. As can be appreciated from the above, the initial fermentation can be under either anaerobic or microaerophillic conditions, but microaerophillic conditions are preferred. Microaerophillic conditions, at least for part of the fermentation time, develop a superior full-flavor and full-body soy sauce.

I have also noticed that after handling my soy sauce, I can have a fairly stong fish-sauce like smell on my hands - just like after handling a bottle of fish-sauce. This echoes what canucklehead found on tasting his uncle’s home made soy sauce.

Yogurt making

Well, after this post on my home made yogurt, I’m running out of fermentables to write up, I think only bread remains undocumented. Yogurt making is actually one of the primary reasons I started this blog, as it was Jen B.’s interest in it that prompted all this. However, I only make yogurt once a month at most so it has taken a while to be able to take pictures of the process (and on the day I made it one camera was out of power, and the other with my wife, so I had to use an actual film camera with a few pictures left, then get them developed - can you notice difference? The last 3 pictures were taken with a digital camera) . I usually make five tubs of 750 ml in each batch, which lasts us for over a month often.

This longevity is, I believe, the original reason for making yogurt - as a way to preserve dairy products. Only one batch (when I discovered that my electronic thermometer gives funny readings when immersed in water for long periods) had issues - a bit of mold growth on the sides of the last tub when I opened it (but the yogurt itself was OK - at least, nothing happened to me after eating it). The reason for the mold was that because my thermometer was not working properly, I was not holding the yogurt at high enough temperatures, so it did not acidify enough, which in turn made it more susceptible to mold infections - but only marginally so.

So, the theory behind yogurt is to ferment milk using a lactobacillus/thermobacillus culture to acidify it to help preserve it, and (a bit less clear on this part) to make it more easily digestible by adult humans. Initially the milk should be scalded - briefly brought up to at least 95 degrees . From what I understand, this is to modify the milk protein (makes the yogurt thicker and taste better), and probably kills off most competing bacteria. To properly and quickly ferment, the milk must then be held at temperatures between 40 and 50 degrees for several hours.

In practice, this is how I do it:

Here I have assembled the ingredients (milk, and store-bough active culture yogurt) and the scalding pot and thermometer.

Here the thermometer shows 95 degrees - the milk has finished scalding. I use only medium heat to do this as I find that it means less burned-on milk at the bottom of the pot, and it is easier to prevent boil-overs.

After scalding the milk, I cool it down to about 55 degrees (here the thermometer shows 53) in a cold water bath in my sink. This takes about 5 minutes - if I stir both milk and water.

Here I have divvied up the starter culture between the five tubs I will be using (I used Astro's Balkan style yogurt this time - this was the best culture I have used so far, as it made a very thick and proper yogurt). Although this means only 150 ml of yogurt starter per tub, I have not had any trouble starting fermentation.

Here is how I ferment the yogurt. I place all 5 tubs in this picnic cooler, and immerse them in the hottest tap water I can get - usually around 54 or 55 degrees. I then monitor the temperature, and when it falls to 40 degrees (usually takes at least 90 minutes) I empty the water and refill it with hot tap water again. I usually do this 3 times.

Here's a comparison of temperature readings from my electronic thermometer and my brewing thermometer. The electronic one shows 53 degrees, while the brewing thermometer shows only 49 degrees. Not sure why or which one is right, but I trust the brewing thermometer more!

This is what yogurt making looks like for most of the time it takes to do.

The finished product! After about 4.5 hours, the fermentation has acidified the milk, and it has turned into a nice thick yogurt. Notice how rigid it has become - even when tilted to a 45 degree angle. To me, it tastes pretty much the same as yogurt I buy (others describing their own yogurt say it tastes 'creamier'; the only time I found this to be true was the time it did not acidify enough because my thermometer mislead me, and it did not ferment properly). I have also read elsewhere that you should mix in dehydrated milk powder to achieve the thickness of commercial yogurts (or that commercial dairies add artificial thickeners to achieve their thickness). I don't really agree - my yogurt has always been as thick as the stuff I buy, so no need to add any milk powder, and it makes me doubt that artificial thickeners are neccessary even on a commercial scale - lactic acid works fine. What probably is happening is that people making their yogurt at home may not be keeping it warm long enough to produce sufficient acid, or they are not keeping the temperature high enough.

Brew-in-a-Bag (BIAB)

As I said in the first post about National Homebrew day, my brewing method is based on the BIAB method described by ‘Thirsty Boy’ on the Brewing Network’s forums. I have put together a few shots of my brewing day, just to compare to Justin’s more normal home-brewing set up. Please note that Justin brews 10 gallons per batch, compared to my 3.3 gallons - it may be difficult to scale the BIAB method much above 5 gallons, or so I hear.

The usual procedure in home brewing is to gently mill your grain - taking care to crush the grain rather than grind it, as the husks should be kept as entire as possible. These are put into a mash tun - usually some sort of picnic cooler with a manifold of one type or another at the bottom to allow drainage of the mash. Water is heated in the brew kettle to a strike temperature considerably above the mash temperature - it will decline when mixed with the milled grain. The mash is allowed to rest for about an hour. The mash mixture is then drained - the first runnings are ‘recirculated’ back into the tun, to ensure clear wort. Additional hot water is poured into the mash tun to ’sparge’ the grain - wash out remaining sugars. This wort is then boiled with hops, and fermented.

In contrast, here is the method I use:

There is my mash tun/brew kettle, lined with a mesh bag I sewed up. The fabric was from Walmart for like $2/meter, and that's about all you need. The pot holds a bit over 20 L.

Here are the results of my hand grinding in a corona-style mill. That's about 2.5 kg of coarsly (relative to flour) milled grain and whole wheat flour. I use up to 1/3 whole wheat flour in my grain bill - it costs about as much as base malt, but is much easier to get.

Here the milled grain has been dumped in the 'mash tun'

Literally 'doughing in': mixing the water in with the grain. As the grain is so finely milled, dough-balls are more of a concern I think, but I have to be carefull not to over-work the porridge, as it could really become dough-like due to the high wheat flour content.

Here the 'mash tun' has been lifted over to a cool burner and is mashing for an hour. To keep things simple, I add the hottest tap water possible (around 55 degrees) to the grain, then directly heat the mash to around 67 or 68 degrees (takes about 10 minutes). The mash will decline in temperature to about 65 degrees over half an hour. I reheat it for a minute or two up to 68 degrees again, and let it sit for another half hour.

Here's my thermometer showing the mash temperature, I think about 10 minutes in.

This is what the mash looks like after mashing for an hour. As opposed to usual mashing, I add all my water at the beginning of the mash, and do not sparge - I simply lift out the grain-bag, thus straining out the work. Sorry, forgot to take pictures of this part. It usually takes about 10 minutes to drain out the bag - I try to squeez out as much wort as possible (no tannin problems, yet).

Another view of the completed mash. From here on, my method is broadly similar to traditional home brewing (boil for an hour adding hops along the way, drain wort off trub, ferment).

National Homebrew Day - Not.

It ended up raining all day on Saturday. As a result (and due to a problem of too many brewers spoiling the brew in the SOBs - ask Justin) Justin and I decided not to go up to Newmarket, but stay at his place and brew his championship near-double IPA. Good times, good brews, good burgers.

Justin hand-grinding...

...the grain.

Brewing by the Oldsmobile, in the rain (or just out of it).

The happy brewer.

Recirculating the sweet wort

Justin likes to go easy on the hopping.

The view from the man-cave.

The space-ship's engines.

Boil, boil, toil, and trouble...is what brewing is all about.

Justin doing his best neighbourhood witch act.

Long-Winded Soy Sauce Update

I’ve been digesting what Kikkoman said to Inigo for a few days now, as well as what Takadi has asked (sorry about not responding earlier…it has been busy!).

Kikkoman initially says: “we suggest that you use 30 g of salt per 100 ml of water used”. In other words, 30% salt (by my weird calculation) or about 23% by weight.

Then they say: “it is recommended that you use at least 15 to 16% salt, otherwise the moromi mash could decay”.

This made me panic a bit, as my salt concentration, by weight, was only 6.25%! The fermentation has been producing a fairly strong sour smell (or as my wife described it, ‘cheesy’). This is most likely from a vigorous lactic acid bacterial fermentation. As I have mentioned earlier, it was re-forming a pellicle every day (which I would break apart during stirring).

So, I drew off about 800 ml of brine and boiled it with 350 g of salt. As not all the salt was dissolving, I added probably about 200 to 250 ml of fresh water. This I then added back to the fermenting soy sauce, raising the total salinity to about 15.2% (by weight - as you may have noticed, I have stopped using my odd way of measuring salt %!).

I have definitely killed off any visible microbial action now! And it obviously tastes very salty now - in fact saltier than my Kikkoman soy sauce. On the other hand, it does not taste bad at all - it is kind of like a mix of miso and soy, with some extra acidy. Or something like that anyway.

This brings me back to my ‘back of the envelope’ calculation of the salinity of the Kikkoman soy sauce. I have to swallow my pride and say that my memory of chemistry is abominable! Here’s what I said: “My guess is not enough to bring my figure up to 25% though - chlorine is much smaller than sodium, and even if they were the same size, it would double the salt concentration to around 14%, still far from 25%“. Wrong. The atomic mass of sodium is 22.99 g, and chlorine’s is 35.45 g - or over 150% larger! Recalculating the salinity meant going back to the label to see that there were 920 g of sodium in 15 ml of soy sauce. This is actually 6.1% sodium, there would thus be 6.1% + (1.5 x 6.1%) salt, but wait, salt water is denser than fresh water. Again taking a short cut (this will probably end up haunting me later), I found that regular sea water (3.5% salt) is about 2.8% denser than fresh water, and dead sea water (33% salt) is about 17% denser. I just used the average - so I estimate that the soy sauce is about 10% denser than fresh water.

Getting back to the question at hand - this means that Kikkoman’s sodium % was about 5.6% (920g / (1.1 x 15000ml)), so the salt concentration must have been around 14% (5.6% + (1.54 x 5.6%)). Ah Ha! Kikkoman may have been giving Inigo some funny numbers… 14% salt is WAY less than the 23% they recommend, and perhaps even below the level at which they claim the moromi mash would decay (remember, my calculations are not exact)! Maybe they dilute their soy sauce prior to packaging? Maybe European soy sauce is much saltier than North American?

And back to my observation that my 15% soy sauce is noticeably saltier tasting than Kikkoman’s (although not so much as to be unpalatable). This is especially interesting as I use sea salt. Mark Bittman*, in “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, states that sea salt tastes less salty than table salt. Hmmm…that means that my soy sauce’s salinity may be higher than I calculated, or Kikkoman’s lower. I think it is likelier that my soy sauce’s salinity is higher, as I have not been measure the volumes of water I have removed or added very accurately, and further, water has evaporated over the past few weeks.

Switching gears, takadi asks:

“I think it’s interesting you mention the differences between chinese soy and japanese soy and compare it almost to the differences between an ale and a lager. Perhaps that’s why Chinese soy sauces tend to be more robust and Japanese soy sauces more delicate. Would the ratio of wheat have anything to do with the fermentation process either?“

I’m really not a connoisseur of soy sauces - this whole experiment has been an eye-opener. As you say, it does sound like Chinese and Japanese soy fermentation styles differ in a way like ales and lagers do. However, I cannot really say much further, as I don’t know the differences well.

The wheat is a bit of a wild card for me, in terms of its effects. I think that in traditional soy sauce making, wheat flour provides a good innoculum source for wild yeasts, lactic acid bacteria, and molds - all of which grow naturally on wheat grains. Without a reliable source of starter/innoculum/koji, farmers may have had to do with what was available. Further, wheat is likely a source of easily assimilated carbohydrates for the molds to feed on, before they are able to attack the soy beans. Unfermented soy beans are not easily digestible by humans, and it may be the same for micro-organisms. Once a culture of micro-organisms has been developed, it is likely that they are adapted to eat pure soy beans, no longer requiring the initial availability of wheat. The wheat may also make it easier to form the loaves. Finally, the wheat may survive to the fermentation stage, providing sugars for yeasts and bacteria to produce alcohol and acids, which creates ’sanitary’ conditions inhospitable to less desirable micro-organisms. Early farmers lacked access to sanitizers or preservatives, making this last point important.

“When you talk about percentages of salt, do you mean percentage of salt in the brine, or percentage of salt total including all the other ingredients?“

Good point. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. My own brine was calculated ignoring the other ingredients, while my calculations of Kikkoman’s salinity include the other ingredients (I don’t know how much they weigh). I don’t feel like revisiting my salinity calculations right now, but I may later.

“It seems as if this method relies on wild yeast strains similar to creating sourdough starter. How would effect the flavor? “

Yes, this method does feel a lot like making a sourdough starter. As I mentioned in the first post, the soy patties initially smelled like my failed sourdough starter (it turned into a salt-risen bread starter). Salt-risen bread is fermented by clostridium bacteria. It makes a very cheesy tasting bread, so perhaps this has contributed to my wife’s opinion that the soy sauce fermentation smells cheesy. The cheesiness probably also comes from lactobacteria. Last weekend I tried a local brewery’s sour beer (fermented partly by lactobacteria) and it smelled cheesy. It was (personally) very over-soured - although very nice when diluted with their lager by 2/3.

“I’m also wondering how tamari is made without the addition of wheat to aid in the process of inoculating a culture.”

I really can’t say. As I say above, perhaps when a starter culture has been used for a while, it adapts to its conditions and is able to digest pure soy.

“…how do you keep the loaves warm in order for the strains to take hold?”

I kept them on top of my fridge, where it is a bit warmer. I don’t think you need to worry much about mold taking hold on your soy patties! As children discover in their school lockers and at the back of fridges, most foods get moldy sooner or later.

“Do you think keeping the mixture inside an open glass jar would be a different environment than keeping it in a plastic tub? There would definitely be more sun exposure.”

I do think it would give more sun exposure, which by definition is a different environment. In fact, my grandmother just gave me a huge glass jar, and I have transfered the soy sauce into it. As the jar is much smaller than the bucket, I could bring it inside and fit in the window. Besides, you can see what is going on much better. It also seems somehow more ‘respectable’ when it is in a glass jar, rather than in a bucket!

Just after transfering

In the windowsill, after it settled down.

* Bittman’s cookbooks are the only ones I use regularly. Incidentally he has a blog at the NY Times, in which he posted a link to canucklehead’s soy sauce making directions - way to go canucklehead! - around the same time I was starting to make soy sauce.

National HomeBrew Day!

Heading up to Newmarket - a suburb’s suburb north of TO - to celebrate the Big Brew - the US National Homebrew Day with the Southern Ontario Brewers - or SOBs. Rather than actually try to do anything serious, like packing up my own set-up and demonstrating the wonders of Brew-In-A-Bag (BIAB) homebrewing, I am going to assist JJ with his brew. He’s preparing a batch for a homebrew competition - I believe this is now his 3rd round, so perhaps the top level. As he is generously letting me keep half the batch, I have no issues being his side-kick for the day.

Looking forward to meeting these SOBs - have had a chat with George Leet, who I guess is their leader. Most annoyingly, they have decided not to have a publicly accessible website or blog or anything, rather they have hidden themselves within Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15448345999. This of course means that non-Facebook members like me can only peripherally participate (I know what you are thinking: “Oh, get over it and join already!”, but my procrastination tendencies are bad enough without adding Facebook to the mix!).

Will post pics of the happenings.

Salty Language!

Inigo, from Umami Madrid sent me a truly fascinating email a few days ago, explaining that he had contacted Kikkoman Europe about how much salt to use. With his permission I have posted the exchage, starting with Kikkoman’s initial response to how much salt to use:

Dear Mr. Inigo Aguirre,

First of all, we thank you for your inquiry and your interest in making soy sauce by yourself for educational purposes.

As per your inquiry, I’m happy to reply although this may not be enough information to you.

It all depends on what kind of soy sauce (salty, light, etc.) you intend to make, but we suggest that you use 30 g of salt per 100 ml of water used.

I hope you will find a way to make it successfully.

Best regards,

Takehito Kubo

Kikkoman Trading Europe GmbH

So Inigo replies:

Dear Takehito,

Thanks very much for your info and kindest help. I have been using 25 g of salt per 100 g of water, so I think it will be fine.

One…actually two more questions:

What is the minimum amount of satl that could be used (e.g. for light soy sauce)?

Do you use wheat for the soy sauce or is flour just as good? I understand that Japanese soy sauce is done with whole toasted wheat, whereas Chinese soy sauce is done with wheat. Is this so?

In case you’re interested please click on my blog to see how I’m doing it (sorry, it is in Spanish).

Thank you very much. Best regards,

íñigo

And so Kikkoman replies again:

Dear Mr. Inigo Aguirre,

Thank you again for your inquiry.

For your information, it is recommended that you use at least 15 to 16% salt, otherwise the moromi mash could decay.

Furthermore, we use whole wheat as an ingredient to be roasted.

For general information, please find attached the process of making naturally brewed soy sauce.

http://www.kikkoman-europe.com/en/manufacturing/production/

I hope this information can be of help.

Best regards,

Takehito Kubo

Kikkoman Trading Europe GmbH

Tempeh Tasting, Part 2

As J.Back points out, the true test of how the tempeh tastes is how my wife feels about it, as she is really the tempeh fan around here. Once I saw J.Back’s comment, I immediately asked what Jul thought of the tempeh. She said: “Good!…I just had some tempeh at Juice-for-Life and it tasted just like that.”

So, there you go. Using store-bought tempeh as a starter really does work, and tastes like store-bought tempeh.

Tempeh Tasting

Just a quick comment on how the tempeh tastes. I fried up strips of tempeh in a bit of oil and butter, and seasoned with a bit of salt.

Fried tempeh!

It tasted like…well, fried tempeh! Kind of bitter, kind of mushroomy, kind of beany. It was good.

The real test will probably be if my wife, a true tempeh lover, will enjoy it raw, as she eats store-bought tempeh this way. My thoughts on raw tempeh? Bleagh!

Tempeh Part 2: Fermentation

Step 12: Let ferment at 30 degrees for 36-48 hours.

I believe that my fermentation temperature for the first 12 hours or so was around 28. It subsequently started rising, and I had to remove the lights, one at a time. I eventually clued in to the fact that the tempeh packages were generating a lot of heat - so much so that I had to remove some of the packages from the cooler for a while and place in a drafty window to cool down. They remained quite warm to the touch for the last 12 hours of fermentation *.

Step 13: Cut in half while in perforated bags. Remove the halves and wrap in cling wrap. Consume, freeze and/or refrigerate as required.

Timeline:

Day 1, afternoon - grind soy beans to remove husks and begin soak

Day 2, late evening - cook soy beans, dry, inoculate, fill perforated bags (around midnight)

Day 3, morning - checked temperature - around 28, added a few lights into cooler. Noticeable mushroom aroma in cooler.

Day 3, midday - checked temperature: mid to high 30s! Progressively removed lights from cooler, until none remained. Fungal strands visually apparent.

Day 3, afternoon - temperature again has risen to high 30s, remove bags from cooler and set in window to cool off.

Day 3, afternoon - return bags to cooler after 30 minutes, but leave cooler open to dissipate heat.

Day 3, evening - bags still warm to touch, visually beginning to be covered by white fungal growth, but many individual beans still visible.

Day 4, morning - bags warm to touch, most covered completely by fungal growth; black spore areas near perforations in bags. Removed from perforated bags, wrapped in cling wrap, placed in freezer. During handling some white fungal areas crushed and oxidized somewhat - beans again visible occasionally (see photos).

Monitoring temperature within cooler (32 at time of photo)

Around the 24 hour mark - white fungal growth apparent, but not complete

Around 33 hours after inoculation, fermentation complete. Black spores very apparent.

This is the bag that I think had heat damage - notice the central area is not covered in fungal growth. The reverse side is similar.

To remove from the bags, I cut the tempeh in half. Here is a cross-section (covered in cling wrap).

These are each half a bag, or 9cm by 12cm, wrapped and ready for the freezer.

* One of the bags (see photos) did not have a nice uniform white fungal coating by the end. It did have good coverage around the edges of the bag, but not in the centre. I believe this may be because it possibly overheated during fermentation. My reasoning is that I am fairly sure that the inoculum was evenly distributed throughout the soy beans, and even if it hadn’t been, it would not have been missing from such a large, symmetrical area in the centre of one bag. Further, the fact that the mold did take successfully around the edges of the bag, where it would presumably be cooler than in the centre, also point to heat damage. Some of the patties were verging on hot to the touch during the fermentation.

It can be seen on the area that has not been covered by fungal growth that there are nevertheless many fungal strands crisscrossing the soy beans. This would also indicate that it was not a lack of inoculum that caused this.

Another culprit may be anaerobic conditions, but I do not believe that this would have manifested itself in such a pattern.

The question remains, why only on one bag? I haven’t weighed the bags, but this bag appears to be somewhat thicker and heavier, meaning it would generate proportionately more heat than bags with fewer soy beans. As well, I accidentally left one of the bags in the cooler, while the others were out in the window. This may have been the one that stayed in the cooler.

As a result, I have left this one bag in the cooler in the hope that the fungus will be able to recolonize the middle area. As the fermentation has only proceeded for about 34 hours, I believe that I can safely let the bag continue to ferment for at least 12 hours if necessary.