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Keep us posted! I'm fascinated by alternative garums/koji ferments, so would love to hear how the beef turns out.

From what I've read about koji, you lose somewhere in the ball park of 50% of enzyme activity as soon as the manufacturer dries the koji and throws the product in the fridge. Accounting for weight loss through drying, I imagine if you go 1:1 for beef to koji ratio, there shouldn't be too much of an issue. I went a little higher compared to other recipes in my ferment just in case; I think your only issue would be that the final product might be a little sweeter from extra rice, but hopefully that gets fermented off by the salt-tolerant yeasts. I'd say you can add fresh miso to let them grab a foothold, otherwise it might take longer for them to inoculate from the air.

Disclaimer: I'm not a food safety expert.

How much salt are you using? If you're above 18% total weight, I don't think you need to worry about hitting the danger zones because the salt content would keep everything safe. For what it's worth, I think most garums and sauces are made just a bit north of room temperature - going 140 F might trash the koji enzymes (and any fermenting microbes) if you're going for several months, vs. if you were doing sous vide and only needing the enzymes for +3 days. I wish I had a copy of the Noma Guide to look through and see what they have to say about garum, I only have their posted articles to work off of.

There's a Japanese paper (literally, most of it is in Japanese  sorry about that, couldn't find a translation I found an English translation!) that says in the abstract that their pork meat sauce (shishibishio) was fermented at 30 C (86 F) for 6 months. So I think you should be fine from a food safety standpoint if you wanted to keep things closer to room temperature without needing temperature and humidity controls. You could raise to 37 - 40 C to give the enzyme and bacteria a speed boost, but that's about it. The only thing I can think of is to keep exposing the ferment to oxygen when you mix to prevent C. botulinum from forming, but your salt should mostly take care of that.

I hope that helps!

shishibishio-meat-sauce-paper-ENGLISH.pdf

Keep us posted! I'm fascinated by alternative garums/koji ferments, so would love to hear how the beef turns out.

From what I've read about koji, you lose somewhere in the ball park of 50% of enzyme activity as soon as the manufacturer dries the koji and throws the product in the fridge. Accounting for weight loss through drying, I imagine if you go 1:1, there shouldn't be too much of an issue. I went a little higher compared to other recipes in my ferment just in case; I think your only issue would be that the final product might be a little sweeter from extra rice, but hopefully that gets fermented off by the salt-tolerant yeasts. I'd say you can add fresh miso to let them grab a foothold, otherwise it might take longer for them to inoculate from the air.

Disclaimer: I'm not a food safety expert.

How much salt are you using? If you're above 18% total weight, I don't think you need to worry about hitting the danger zones because the salt content would keep everything safe. For what it's worth, I think most garums and sauces are made just a bit north of room temperature - going 140 F might trash the koji enzymes (and any fermenting microbes) if you're going for several months, vs. if you were doing sous vide and only needing the enzymes for +3 days. I wish I had a copy of the Noma Guide to look through and see what they have to say about garum, I only have their posted articles to work off of.

There's a Japanese paper (literally, most of it is in Japanese  sorry about that, couldn't find a translation I found an English translation!) that says in the abstract that their pork meat sauce (shishibishio) was fermented at 30 C (86 F) for 6 months. So I think you should be fine from a food safety standpoint if you wanted to keep things closer to room temperature without needing temperature and humidity controls. You could raise to 37 - 40 C to give the enzyme and bacteria a speed boost, but that's about it. The only thing I can think of is to keep exposing the ferment to oxygen when you mix to prevent C. botulinum from forming, but your salt should mostly take care of that.

I hope that helps!

shishibishio-meat-sauce-paper-ENGLISH.pdf

Keep us posted! I'm fascinated by alternative garums/koji ferments, so would love to hear how the beef turns out.

From what I've read about koji, you lose somewhere in the ball park of 50% of enzyme activity as soon as the manufacturer dries the koji and throws the product in the fridge. Accounting for weight loss through drying, I imagine if you go 1:1, there shouldn't be too much of an issue. I went a little higher compared to other recipes in my ferment just in case; I think your only issue would be that the final product might be a little sweeter from extra rice, but hopefully that gets fermented off by the salt-tolerant yeasts. I'd say you can add fresh miso to let them grab a foothold, otherwise it might take longer for them to inoculate from the air.

Disclaimer: I'm not a food safety expert.

How much salt are you using? If you're above 18% total weight, I don't think you need to worry about hitting the danger zones because the salt content would keep everything safe. For what it's worth, I think most garums and sauces are made just a bit north of room temperature - going 140 F might trash the koji enzymes (and any fermenting microbes) if you're going for several months, vs. if you were doing sous vide and only needing the enzymes for +3 days. I wish I had a copy of the Noma Guide to look through and see what they have to say about garum, I only have their posted articles to work off of.

There's a Japanese paper (literally, most of it is in Japanese  sorry about that, couldn't find a translation I found an English translation!) that says in the abstract that their pork meat sauce (shishibishio) was fermented at 30 C (86 F) for 6 months. So I think you should be fine from a food safety standpoint if you wanted to keep things closer to room temperature without needing temperature and humidity controls. You could raise to 37 - 40 C to give the enzyme and bacteria a speed boost. The only thing I can think of is to keep exposing the ferment to oxygen when you mix to prevent C. botulinum from forming, but your salt should mostly take care of that.

I hope that helps!

shishibishio-meat-sauce-paper-ENGLISH.pdf