Making Soy Sauce At Home

[hummingbirdkiss]

Hello hummingbirdkiss, welcome to the DIY club

thanks so much Danielkumiadi it is a disease isn't it ..if it can be made I have to try 

I make fish sauce and my husband almost moved out but he now understands why! it is so good! 

[takadi]

Hai Takadi, can you tell me why we need to weight the actual soybean and flour?

 

The total salinity of the end product should be at least 18 percent, not just the brine. This number was derived from reverse calculations done from sodium levels from the nutritional facts label on the back of the kikkoman soy sauce bottle, as well as some numbers I found during some research I did (inlcuding recommended numbers from the company itself).  If you put just the soy cakes in without accounting for extra salt, the salt will redistribute into the soy cakes out of the brine and lower the total salt density and make it a more inviting environment for other microbes. This had happened to me while my soy sauce was out in the hot sun so it was starting to form a skin of yeast or bacteria on top, and it started to smell a little funky (a smell that reminded me of parmesan cheese, a little like vomit, lol). Anyways it didn't smell horrible or rotten and it got better after I added more salt, but unfortunately, I had to totally redo my batch because an animal had actually gotten into it and ate all the soycakes!   Had to dump the whole thing out

 

Redoing my batch, I used about twice the amount of soy, 10 lbs of soy beans and 15 liters of water. Measured out 18 percent of total weight of soybeans cakes and water for salt. The soybean cakes were weighed after the mold had taken hold to account for any weight change. It's been almost three weeks and the soy sauce has already gotten considerably darker and is starting to smell like a strong miso, with something extra that I can't describe (it smells like caramelized or cured meat for some reason). It has gotten considerably colder outside where I am so I brought it back inside and am stirring it every 1-2 days. Not sure what the lack of sun and warmth will do for the end product but I am planning to age this for at least 6 months to 2 years, taking out samples every six months. Hopefully the long aging times will more than make up for it. 

 

 

Edited December 12, 2015 by takadi (log)

[takadi]

thanks so much Danielkumiadi it is a disease isn't it ..if it can be made I have to try 

I make fish sauce and my husband almost moved out but he now understands why! it is so good! 

 

If you've already made fish sauce, soy sauce should be a piece of cake! I would be evicted if I tried that lol. 

 

If you are interested in making korean style soy sauce and doenjang, I found a really awesome documentary on youtube that explains the basics of making it

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtbgUYBRRp8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SafxD279uFI

Edited October 3, 2015 by takadi (log)

[danielkurniadi]

So, Takadi, i must weight my soycake, my water, and then weight 18% salt (from total weight cake + water) and put into the water?

Hummingbirdkiss:

No, its not desease, maybe it just came from our DNA. Lol

[takadi]

Yup you got it...although the salt percentage is really up to your discretion. It can go as low as <16 percent although that is more risky and probably requires more purposeful innoculation and a more sterile environment. It can go as high as 25 to 30 percent.  From what I've seen however, 18-20 percent seems to be the usual number.

[danielkurniadi]

OK, i decide to dip my meju / soy cake after... errrr.. (i forgot the first date i fermented my soy cake.. wait.. I'll count it from my last post ) owww its 5 september 2015 and today is 5 October, exactly a month then.. its completely dried with not so much mold, you can see in the photo. has a little "meaty" and soy smell, plus little bit of bamboo smell. i just leave it in direct sunlight day and night and about 2 weeks i just leave it in warm warehouse / closet upstairs (actually almost forget about it hehe).

 

 

and what i found in the room, an old 30 years glass jar, i remembered this jar on my dining table back in 80's, i've measured it and it contains 3,7 liters of water, so its 1 US gallon volume. marked it.

 

 

my tap water and well water are about 250 ppm, so its rather hard water, and must be boiled first (well, its Indonesia lol), or can i use reversed osmosis water as well? and how much water needed to ferment 370 grams of dried meju?

 

thanks. will dip the meju right wafter i got water level suggestion.

[danielkurniadi]

After calculating from http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Soy-Sauce, 370gr of meju only use 800gr of water. dang.. i must find smaller container. then i found clay pot for boil Chinese herbal medicine, can hold 1 litre ++.

 

 

still sterilizing with boiling some water directly on stove.

 

PS:

forget about the clay pot. it got crack, water drip out.. how unlucky

Edited October 5, 2015 by danielkurniadi (log)

[danielkurniadi]

Divide meju to 4 pieces, then here is how it looks, get some mold inside too.

 

Finally, fermenting time! got a 2 litres plastic container.

 

Today is 9 October 2015 (as my reminder)

This brine contain 20% kosher salt. (without iodine).

Edited October 9, 2015 by danielkurniadi (log)

[Deryn]

What is it about soybeans in particular that seem to make it the only bean one can use to make a sauce with the taste, etc. we associate with 'soy sauce'?

I know one can make soy sauce substitutes from things like mushrooms, but why does there seem to be no information about making it with any other bean? Adzuki beans may produce a much sweeter sauce - I can understand that since they are made into 'sweet red bean paste' so something in them must be 'sweeter' - but is there another fairly commonly available bean which would ferment and produce a sauce that is similar to soy? It is much harder to find but one can now buy miso which is made with chickpeas and other beans so why not a 'chickpea' or 'black eyed pea' sauce that tastes very much like a 'soy sauce'?

edited because I thought that I was resurrecting an old thread - but apparently didn't read to the end of that thread (since I found the thread through an outside search).

Edited November 9, 2015 by Deryn (log)

[takadi]

Deryn, see the following links

 

http://products.momofuku.com/bonji/

 

http://products.momofuku.com/hozon/

 

Your hunches are correct. I'm currently fermenting a chickpea "miso" or a hozon in David Chang's terminology. But pretty much anything with significant amounts of protein can be fermented to make a soy sauce/miso like product, particularly nuts and legumes and certain grains. Of course different sources are more conducive to different types of molds and bacteria...it would be interesting to see what a koji fermented cheese would look like

[Deryn]

Thank you, Takadi.

I don't think I am in a position to make my own due to where I live, not to mention that while it is obviously a very interesting process, it is probably above my pay grade. But, I am fascinated with what you and Daniel are doing.

I can only hope that eventually Momofuku might sell the bonji - currently I see they do but on a 'wholesale only' basis. I would love to try it.

I have to avoid soy as much as possible but Asian type dishes are my favorite foods it seems so I wish that a reasonable 'sauce' similar in taste, etc. made from other common beans was also readily available. When a recipe only calls for a bit it is easy to just leave it out but some require a fair amount of soysauce and that is trickier.

[danielkurniadi]

After 4 months and going very well, somebody put my container below birdcage. The result is: something from that bird felldown into my container, bird food or maybe its feces. And grow another mold on my soycake. So consider it spoiled. RIP my Soy Sauce.

 

Maybe i must stop this. Before i kill somebody LOL.. AAARRRGGHH!!!

Edited December 26, 2015 by danielkurniadi (log)

[fajfall]

When I've submerged the dried soy cakes in the water, what do I do regarding the lid? Is it meant to be left open? Covered with a cheese cloth to get air in but keep insects out? Or can I leave a lid completely on? I hope it can be left on so that there's no smell and no insects coming in. I have a balcony and can leave it in the sun all day, so would that help fermentation?

[Fermentfanatic]

I know this is an old post, but just wondering  if anyone knows how much water to use with the brine?

[Guido]

Hey everyone, so after reading this thread I stayed planning on making my own batch this year. Then this week at the store I found a bottle off natural fermented soy sauce to compare regular store soy sauce too. After I tried it I know now I'll never by a bottle of industrial made soy sauce again because the flavor just dose not compare.

 

I'm going to start my batch once the weather gets warmer and I find some koji starter. I'll probably just post my batch in here instead of making a new thread.

[Sheryl236]

Hello! After reading this thread, I plan to make soy sauce :). My only question is that is it safe to let the soy bean cakes to mold with wild molds? Because of all the stuff about mycotoxins and other stuff.

[BryanQuocLe]

This is such an exciting thread; I think I might just have to dive in at some point before the end of the year...

 

@Sheryl236, I've been wondering that too. I did a little digging, and it seems like the main yeast that's responsible for developing flavor in soy sauce fermentation (Z. rouxii) might actually clear out the mycotoxins left over in the fermenting brine:
 

Quote

This study successfully screened out one strain of Z. rouxii that had the ability detoxify AFB₁ with aerobic solid state fermentation in peanut meal.

 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5308274/

 

I'm by no means a food safety expert! But it's promising that maybe over the 6 months to 1 year of fermenting the soy sauce, you're probably going to see some decrease in mycotoxins.

 

@Fermentfanatic, I've been seeing the numbers 18-20% (by weight) a lot here and on other articles/posts on the internet. My guess has been that you have to add the weight of soybeans and flour that you want to the weight of water that you're using (volume = weight for water, so 1 L or 1,000 mL = 1,000 g), then multiply by 0.18 or .2 to give you the amount of salt total.

 

Example:

 

4 L water + 250 g soybeans + 250 g flour = 4500 g total (approx.)

 

4500 * 0.18 = 810 g salt

 

4500 * 0.2 = 900 g salt

[BryanQuocLe]

Okay, so I have been playing around with alternative 'soy sauces' after reading about the experimentation being done at the Momofuku Lab using inoculated koji rice. I was particularly impacted by the 'bonji' that they produce using rye grains.

 

I spent the summer at a cheese plant, and talked to one of the master cheesemakers about what they do with some of the leftover cheeses. Sometimes they'll take it and add industrial enzymes to break down the protein into umami-flavored amino acids, which is basically the way to make processed cheese.

 

That got me thinking - I looked into anything dairy combined with koji enzymes, and pulled up one of these posts by Rich Shih on dairy miso. He was able to create parmesan-like flavors with yogurt and whey protein powder. So I got super intrigued.

 

I took the cheapest form of dairy solid with the highest protein I could find (in this case, nonfat dry milk powder, 725 g) and combined it with about 500 g of koji rice from the nearby oriental store (Cold Mountain brand), then submerged it in 3 L of 20% brine. I then added about a tablespoon of fresh miso from the store to inoculate the mix with salt-tolerant yeast and bacteria. It's been fermenting since August.

 

After three months, the mix has gone from light, creamy color to a hazy brown and smells a little like cow. I'm thinking about filtering it today and letting it ferment for another three months before trying it in cooking. After a few taste trials, it definitely has a nice, soft saltiness that wasn't expected (no cheesy flavor here). I'm thinking since NFDM powder is about 55% lactose, that the flavor I'm getting is a slight sweetness in combination with the broken down proteins and salt. Not sure yet if I like it, since I'm lactose intolerant! I've since learned that fermenting lactose is a slow process for many microbes, and probably many times slower when the concentration is somewhere in the range of 125 g/L (maximum solubility of lactose in water is 195 g/L).

 

I'll attach before and after photos later today.

[BryanQuocLe]

After looking at the two photos, I realize it's a little hard to see, but after 12 weeks, I got a bit of a faint amber-ish color from a white-cream color at week 1. I tried to highlight it with a filter on my camera, but it still looks pretty similar. The main difference has been that after 12 weeks, the mixture is a lot more fluid than before. At the week 1 mark, the ingredients were almost like a paste and didn't have much fluidity. 

 

Ingredients:

• ~725 grams (26 oz) of nonfat dry milk powder
• ~550 grams of rice koji
• 3 L of filtered water
• 500 grams + 150 grams of salt
• 1 tbsp fresh, unpasteurized miso

 

1. I mixed the rice koji, milk powder, and 500 gram of salt together dry so I could actually pour it all in the gallon jug. Wide-mouth containers are probably better for all of this, both with the exposure to oxygen, ease of stirring, and ease of pouring in ingredients.

2. I then poured the water into the jug, added fresh miso from the store to add salt-tolerant yeasts and bacteria, and shook the entire container hard to get everything to mix as much as I could.

3. I wrapped the top with a napkin and rubber band so I could let the mix breathe. I've noticed that there's a smell of stinky feet at the top, but when I mix the whole thing, it subsides. I'm thinking that I have something growing on top that's giving off the smell, and it does get stronger if I don't stir. Otherwise, it's a pretty neutral odor, almost with a hint of vinegar in the background.

4. I've been keeping the jug in a dark warm place for the past 12 weeks, but would love to experiment with keeping it in the sun. It's too bad it's cold in Wisconsin, but maybe when the spring rolls around I'll keep the jug outside.

5. Today, I just added another 150 grams of salt because I realized I didn't quite have enough salt considering all of the material in there (I was definitely way under 20% w/w, and under the 15% margin that seems to be important to keep things safe)

 

I'm hoping that in the next 6 to 9 months, I'll start to notice a stronger change in the color. I don't expect to see a real darkening without sunlight, but I'm hoping at least to see what happens. I did try to taste the fermenting paste/sauce a few weeks ago. Nothing earth-shattering - it was actually a little mild, but then again I didn't try it out with anything.

 

I realize this isn't technically a 'soy sauce' but I'm hoping it'll be helpful to learn about the process with rice koji. I might just try the wild mold method on those soy cakes too and see what I come up with.

 

While I know that you need koji-kin (mold spores) to propogate and grow koji mold, I'm wondering if there's a way to hack the process by taking pre-inoculated rice koji (from the store) and force it to grow on a new substrate. I've always wondered if there's a way to get the koji to spread; at the same time, I also think once the koji goes in the refrigerator, it starts to die and leave behind its enzymes (which are the real workhorses of flavor transformation). But this is all hearsay and I haven't read anywhere, research or otherwise, about the changes to how koji mold interacts with its environment once it gets dried and stored for shipping. There's obviously a reason why koji-kin is the way to go with starting these fermentations, but molds can also grow by fragmenting off the main body and regrowing into a new mold body, like growing a plant from clippings.