How to make your own Amazake

Amazake is a classic way to prepare sweet rice in Japan. Often in winter, especially around new years, when you enter a Buddhist temple, you are offered a hot, sweet, gingery drink made from rice. This is the most common way to serve amazake and a truly warming, delightful drink.  Here in the states, if you want to have real amazake, there is only one choice and that is to make your own. Of course some of you are immediately going to point out a horrendous company based about 1 mile from my loft that makes what they call "amazake". Well, guess what, they are faking it and selling fake amazake but few Americans, unfortunately, know the differene between the real cultured rice and the stuff that is laden with processed crap.
Fortunately, making amazake is EASY. I mean simple, beyond easy.

You only need 3 ingredients:
mochi kome (sweet brown rice)
koji (cultured rice)
water

for a basic recipe, follow this:

In a rice cooker prepare 1 cup mochi kome with twice the amount of water you would usually use. Use sweet brown rice, not white!
or in a pot, cook 1 cup mochi kome with 4 cups water and cook 1 hour at very low heat.

After the rice is cooked, let it cool down to room temperature.
Then add
2 cups koji (Koji can be purchased from miso and sake makers and Cold Mountain Miso company sells it in tubs and can be found in most Japanese and health food markets but as  usual, avoid Whole Foods like the plague. Besides they do not carry it lol)


Incubate the rice/koji mixture at 140 degrees for 16 hours. I use my dehydrator for this, covering the rice well so it does not dry out.

After 16 hours, remove the rice and you will find it is unusually sweet! You now have amazake in your hands. The koji has completely broken down the starches into sugars and you are left with what was once Japan's "sugar", before the meiji period.
Now if you add yeast to the amazake you can make sake.
If you put the amazke in shochu for 2 months and then filter it out, you have Hon Mirin (not the processed crap you find on the shelf which is alchohol and corn syrup!)

And now for the amazing winter drink that anyone who has visited a temple in winter in Japan has once warmed their hands and bodies and hearts with.


1 cup amazake
1 cup boiling water
small piece of ginger


place all in a blender and blend till smooth and drink up.


shinnen akemashite o-medetō-gozaimasu