So I added my koji to my nakazoe last night, stirred it it, and went to bed looking forward to finishing up with my tomezoe this morning. What I failed to do was put my vessel in the fridge overnight. Fortunately, I did bag the vessel, and came out this morning to half of my brew in said bag, about 1 out of the 2 gallons that was there the night before.
Obviously, this could have been prevented by either 1) using a larger fermenter, or 2) putting it in the fridge overnight (which I typically do, and simply spaced out on doing). My question is:
Now that I’m down in volume, do I split my tomezoe into 2 days of smaller additions, or press forward and yield 3/4 of the original batch?
For argument’s sake, I could try and get more rice and koji overnighted (don’t really wanna spend the money), and either 1) just have a bunch left over, or 2) make a huge batch. Frankly, I’d rather not do either this time; I’d really like to move along as nothing happened and have the batch turn out just fine.
Do I need to tweak the quantities and/or timing of my final addition to compensate for my unsightly loss?
Foam! Isn’t it crazy how active the fermentation can be without controlled temps? I just saw your post and I’m sure you’ve made a decision at this point, so what did you do?
It’d worthwhile to see the final result of the batch if all the other variables stayed the same.
I went ahead and pushed through without any additional rice or koji; I figure I lost about a quarter of the total volume of this batch. I’m hoping to make up some of it by a bit more efficient pressing, and washing the kasu with a bit more distilled water. I did this last batch and had pleasant results. :cheers:
On the topic of foam; my brew is still very foamy, VERY FOAMY. In a 4 gallon bucket, I have to give the 2.5 gallons a stir every 8 hours to keep it from spilling out. And that’s at 45 deg F.
I’ve had the violent foam-over experience. 
Sake can be a resilient brew though. Maybe that warm night you had grew a bunch of extra yeast?
Distilled water, I hadn’t heard of that. At what point do you add it? I shizuku my kasu. Hehe. Thats the drip-style.
I add it after I press my kasu; pretty much just to cover whats left in the bag/bucket, stir it up, and press it one more time. While I don’t really believe it gains me any additional seishu, I have some thick and tasty nigori. I believe Bob mentioned to me that some brewers also add distillers spirits (shochu?) to their kasu to help stretch the batch, perhaps along with more water?
I could be really mangling my misinformations here…
