— i share these experiments to learn from mistakes and growing together with knowledge – but i also dont take any responsibility if you follow my way and getting into some troubles. I can not be blamed and be responsible for any consequences of misreading and/or misunderstanding any information written herein, so be crazy as i am but not an idiot please. —

Finally got the chance to make ‘real soft cheese’ inoculated with my koji spores. ROUND 1.
Day0. morning 8:00am
Get 2 pots of cow’s milk.
Heat up slowly to 65 degrees.
Chilled down to 36 degrees.
Dissolve the koji spores in some warm water.
Inoculate the two pots of milk – one gets awamori koji spores – one gets light rice koji spores.

Add your culture to acidify your cheese.
Keep stirring.
Then add your coagulant.
Don’t touch it for at least an hour!
Cut the curds carefully. Because we are making soft cheese now – so the pieces should be left nice and big.
Leave it to rest for a bit – keep cutting the biggest pieces into half.
Wash. Take out some of the whey and put back some water to wash it carefully.
Pour your curds into your prepared cheese molds.
Flip them carefully a few times.
Day0. evening

Wait till the evening – get the acidity to the right level.
SALT. Sprinkle with sea salt – for seasoning and also to avoid naughty bacteria.
Day1. Let it dry for a day.
Day2. Take them down to ‘the cave’ – a place where you can maintain chilled temperature and a fair amount of moisture.
Turn them in every second day.
Be patient and wait till at least 10 days.Check them and see how they look like. Time for some proper ageing. I place them in the fridge.

So results after 12 days resting in the ‘cave’ (the white one is a ‘normal’ brie-like – using for comparison only).

There is a LOT going on. Obvious contamination in the milk and/or on the surface of the cheese.

Mold could not grow all way through properly (missing starch to feed itself).

Texture is soft, ‘feta-like’, creamy.

Awamori is way stronger than the white one (maybe need way less culture).

We covered a couple with a thin layer of ash at the beginning – the mold seemed to like it way more.

2ND STAGE.

I keep a few to see how it age in the back of the fridge. To avoid the unwanted (and wanted) molds growing i started to brush the surface of the cheese with some homemade spirit (Okinawa-style).

CONCLUSION.

Re-make it. Again using not dispersed but 100% clean spores. One batch only so i can avoid contamination even between the different koji spores. Using Ash to cover the surface and keep it clean. Add less culture for acidity so the maturing potentially can happen in a ‘room temperature’ – which can be more favorable to koji. Exciting. :)

I did enjoy some cheeky little kojeese and black garlic stuffed courgette flowers coming from the BBQ …