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Soy and legumes from Japan — Akita

Akita miso秋田味噌

Akita miso is a red-brown, salty rice miso from a rice-rich prefecture where almost every farm once made its own. Soybeans are steamed for many hours, cooled, pounded and packed with rice koji and salt, mostly in spring, then left in tubs for a year or more. Farm households surveyed in 1965–66 ate miso about two and a half years old on average.

Fully documentedSoy and legumes12 months

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceA traditional recipe by volume, as given on Japanese Wikipedia. Farm recipes varied widely; a 1965–66 survey of 635 households found rice from 0.5 to 16.2 per 10 of soybeans by volume.
Soybeans1 to (about 18 L)[JA-WIKI-秋田味噌]
Rice koji1 to (about 18 L)[JA-WIKI-秋田味噌]
Salt5 shō (about 9 L)Premium miso uses more koji and as little as 3 shō (5.4 L) of salt[JA-WIKI-秋田味噌]
Seed water (tanemizu)Only for steamed beans, 10–15 %; using the bean cooking liquid is discouraged[akita1966]
Starterrice koji

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 months

Start
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What changes: Soybeans steam on the hearth for many hours until they turn brown

Step 1 of 4
Steam the soybeans until brown
Time
6–24 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds

Output: brown steamed soybeans.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
soft
Colour
beans turn brown

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Akita miso is a red-brown, salty rice miso from a rice-rich prefecture where almost every farm once made its own. Soybeans are steamed for many hours, cooled, pounded and packed with rice koji and salt, mostly in spring, then left in tubs for a year or more. Farm households surveyed in 1965–66 ate miso about two and a half years old on average. Made in 4 steps over 12 months. The longest step, age a year or more, takes at least 12 months (Japanese Wikipedia).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 12 monthsReported[JA-WIKI-秋田味噌]Age a year or more
Temperatureup to 50 °CReported[akita1966]Cool fast and pound

What makes this one different

Akita miso was long a farm miso aged for years, with recipes that varied widely from district to district. Today it is described as a high-koji, sweetish miso, but there is no numerical definition; the prefecture's food research centre is studying aroma targets to define it.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Kōkyū Akita miso (1972 standard)The prefectural brewing station issued a standard packing method in 1972 for premium Akita miso.
  • Mame miso of Ōyu (Towada)In one northern district (Ōyu, Towada), about 54 % of households made soybean miso with no koji at all.

Safety

The 1965–66 survey says salt can safely be cut only where the tub and storage place are clean, so that no unwanted microbes grow, and it names half the soybean amount as the salt limit to work towards. It advises cooling the beans fast to below 50 °C, warns that unclean tubs may form tyramine, and says bean cooking liquid used as seed water invites bacteria and abnormal fermentation.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

About 1668 the Kubota domain used about 28,000 koku of rice for miso and koji against an assessed yield of 320,000 koku. In 1910 the firm Kodama Gōmei first used the name "Akita miso". Many homes made miso and tamari until about 1940 (Japanese Wikipedia).

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [akita1966] 中島 慶 (author as printed), 秋田県農村における自家醸造味噌の実態調査 (Survey of home-brewed miso in Akita farm villages; questionnaire of December 1965 to January 1966), pp. 72–88; archived by the Akita Prefectural Health and Environment Centergov
  2. [akita-r5] Akita Research Institute of Food and Brewing, 発酵特性デザインを可能とする味噌用酵母育種技術の検討 (research evaluation sheet, FY2023–24)gov
  3. [JA-WIKI-秋田味噌] Japanese Wikipedia, 秋田味噌 (citing Komatsu S., 味噌風土記 秋田, J. Brew. Soc. Japan 73(1):32–34)wiki