What traditional Chinese medicines are needed to make sake koji?

The liquor koji mentioned here is also called liquor koji, medicated koji or wine cake, which belongs to the category of Xiaoqu. We locals used to call it distiller's yeast, which is the mother yeast used to brew rice wine, and can also be understood as the drug introduction of wine making.

The production of farm-style shochu koji takes plants common in Shan Ye fields as raw materials, adds rice flour, mixes them, and presses them into cakes or balls. After proper temperature and humidity fermentation, it becomes qu.

The main raw materials used in koji-making are: Polygonum hydropiper, Verbena officinalis, Herba Hedyotidis Diffusae, wormwood, Paederia, Polygonum Multiflori Radix, Rhizoma Smilacis Glabrae, ginger, mulberry leaves, cinnamon leaves, orange leaves, siwa, licorice and so on.

The raw materials and production methods used in each region will be different. Some places may only use two or three kinds of raw materials, but some places need dozens or even hundreds of raw materials to make excellent songs.

A relatively simple production method:

1. Pick fresh yam: Polygonum hydropiper, Polygonum Multiflori Radix, Lophatherum gracile, Smilax glabra, Lonicera japonica Thunb., Mulberry leaves, Cinnamomum cassia leaves and wormwood. Wash and dry all the raw materials, chop or chop them, and then soak them in fresh water overnight (the raw materials used here can be fresh or dry).

2. Soak the raw materials, filter out the juice, and add it into the rice flour and stir well. The ratio of rice flour to fruit juice is that the rice flour is slightly dry but can be kneaded into balls, and then the rice flour balls can be kneaded into balls one by one (or the raw materials in this step can be dried and chopped, then directly mixed with rice to make powder, and then kneaded into rice flour balls with appropriate amount of water to make balls).

3. Put all the kneaded balls into a dustpan or flat-bottomed tray, prepare three wine cakes, grind them into powder, sprinkle the wine cake powder on the balls, and shake the dustpan or tray to make each ball evenly stained with the wine cake powder.

Fourth, prepare a dustpan or flat-bottomed tray with rice bran or dried straw on it, and put the balls evenly on the rice bran or straw. After placing, spread a layer of straw on it. If the meatballs are placed on rice bran, directly find a cover with a suitable size, and then move them to an indoor heat preservation place for fermentation for 48 hours.

In this process, if the temperature and humidity are not enough, you need to cover it with old quilts and clothes to keep warm. Daqu can only be fermented successfully under suitable temperature and humidity environment.

5. After 48 hours of fermentation, white fluff about three to four millimeters long will grow on the surface of the granules. These fluff are microbial hyphae produced by koji: Rhizopus fermentation. At this time, the new song has been fermented successfully, and it can be moved outdoors to dry and save for about a week.

After fermentation, the new song can smell a faint scent of grass, the mycelium is as white as frost, and the silk hair is delicate and soft. However, if the fermentation fails, the surface of the particles will turn black or smell bad.

Conclusion: the room temperature should be controlled between 18 ~ 30℃ during the fermentation of koji. Too high or too low temperature and humidity are not conducive to the growth of mycelium. When appropriate, windows can be opened for ventilation, but koji during fermentation is not suitable for light. After 30 hours of fermentation, it can be opened again to check the growth of mycelium.