Chapter 72: The Initial Brewing of Soy Sauce (Part 1)
By the time the koji was finished, the soybeans had transformed into a lush, hairy green mass, emitting a faint, pleasant aroma. Spores of Aspergillus oryzae began to drift through the air. Jiang You couldn't help but feel thankful that he was just a skeleton; he didn't even need a mask these days.
She prepared the brine and poured it into the crucible of time. After the brine and beans were fully mixed, fermentation began.
Fermentation is divided into two parts. The initial stage is aerobic fermentation, which requires stirring the beans to allow them to be evenly contacted with the brine and reduce the production of harmful bacteria. In the past, this fermentation lasted for one to two weeks and needed to be stirred every morning.
But now, with the help of Purification Magic and Time Crucible, this stage can also be accelerated and simplified.
To allow oxygen to better participate in the fermentation process, Jiangyou slowed down the crucible's accelerating effect. This is a crucial stage in the fermentation process, where Aspergillus oryzae breaks down the protein in the soybeans and the starch in the wheat flour, releasing amino acids, sugars, and other flavor compounds. The flavor and richness of the resulting soy sauce depends at least half on this process.
She focused her full attention on the mixture in the crucible, carefully absorbing the scent in the air with the spiritual wood pendant, carefully judging the progress of fermentation, and adjusting the temperature with magic.
Temperature also significantly impacts flavor during fermentation. Traditional soy sauce brewing requires 180 days of sun exposure, essentially using sunlight to raise the temperature and kill bacteria. While Takumiyu doesn't have 180 days of sunlight, it does have the magic of temperature control and sterilization, which still works.
When it comes to the later stage of anaerobic fermentation, things become much simpler. You just need to cover the crucible, adjust the time and flow rate, and let the soy sauce quietly complete the fermentation in the crucible.
Normally, this fermentation process takes about six months to a year, and the longer the fermentation time, the richer the flavor. This first pot of soy sauce was a bit of a test, so Takuyu let it ferment faster. After reaching 180 days, he opened the lid and scooped out a small jar. He then continued fermenting until he reached 1 year, scooping out another small jar.
After doing this a few times, she had several soy sauces with different flavors.
She hung large pieces of white gauze from the warehouse beams, tying them securely at the four corners with ropes, forming cloth bags. Underneath the bags sat clean jars to collect the filtered soy sauce. Then, with a large spoon, Takumi scooped the solid-liquid mixture from the jars into the gauze bags, and the brown soy sauce dripped into the jars under gravity.
Every jar of raw soy sauce needs to be filtered in this way. The residue is wrapped in a gauze bag and needs to be drip-filtered for several hours. This process cannot be accelerated and can only be completed naturally.
While the soy sauce was slowly filtering, Jiangyou scooped a small spoonful of soy sauce from each jar, tasted it lightly with the spiritual wood, and chose the fermentation time that she was most satisfied with. In her opinion, the soy sauce fermented for "1 year" tasted mellow and sweet, with just the right amount of umami and moderate saltiness, which was what she liked best.
She tied different colored ropes to the jar, and wrote down in her business log the length of time represented by each colored rope, as well as the recipe and key steps for brewing using the Time Crucible - these records can help her remember, reproduce and improve the brewed soy sauce. The more detailed the records are now, the easier it will be to work later.
As she wrote, she suddenly remembered something she'd forgotten: she'd printed the flyers, but she'd forgotten the product labels. She fretted for a few minutes, but it was already night, and if she rode back to Eston West, the printing shop would probably be closed. She had to think of another way.
Just then, Aunt Wolf came leisurely after dinner. While Jiang You had been busy all day, Aunt Talia had spent a joyful day hanging out with the witches, drinking plenty of delicious beer and listening to plenty of gossip.
She was happily waiting to share the latest gossip with Jiangyou when she saw Skeleton squatting at the door of the warehouse with a sad face and a notebook on his knees.
"What's wrong, Xiaoyou?" Auntie Wolf asked, sitting down next to Jiangyou. "I heard you were preparing for tomorrow's stall. What's going wrong?"
"No, it went pretty smoothly." Jiang You sighed, "I just forgot to print the label." She picked up an empty glass bottle, "It's a piece of paper that can be pasted on the bottle, with the product name, our store name, etc."
"Oh! That's easy!" Aunt Wolf volunteered. "Whatever you want to write, I'll do it!"
"Huh?"
Jiang You watched Auntie Wolf open her large bag and pull out seven or eight quills and several ink bottles of different colors. Auntie Wolf smiled mysteriously, "Have you heard of the carbon copy spell? It's a tutor's specialty, a powerful tool for dealing with students and creating test papers and question books!"
"Hiss!" Jiang You gasped, "I've never heard of it, but it sounds amazing!"
It’s actually really amazing.
Aunt Wolf followed what Jiangyou said and took out a few pieces of white paper half the size of a palm. She wrote the first line of big characters in beautiful cursive script: [Jianyou Brewing Workshop·Special Soy Sauce]. The next line was the location of Jiangyou's store, and then the brewing time, shelf life and main flavor of each type of soy sauce. It looked clear and simple at a glance.
The soy sauce that takes up to half a year to brew has a label written in green ink, the flagship product that is brewed for one year uses a striking orange-red color, and the soy sauce that is brewed for up to two years and has a strong flavor similar to dark soy sauce uses plain black ink. In this way, the flavor can be identified just by looking at the color of the label.
A magic circle of exorcism spell can also be drawn on the back of the label, so that when it is attached to the glass bottle, it can continuously sterilize the entire glass bottle and the liquid inside the bottle... Of course, the label itself also needs to be cast with some magic spells to prevent it from being waterproof, dustproof and falling off... Well, the process is a bit more, but it is not a difficult task for the lich.
After determining the basic label, Aunt Wolf, who had worked in the education industry all her life and had been a tutor, wet nurse and nanny, began to show her true strength.
Several rolls of white paper were spread out on the flat floor of the warehouse. Three feather pens automatically flew up, dipped their quills in the ink bottle, and began to write and draw on the white paper. Labels that were exactly the same as the example pictures came out one after another.
In an instant, the image of his teacher printing his own test paper in elementary school flashed through Takumi's mind, as did the image of the quill flying around automatically in Harry O's Wizarding World...
"Magic is so powerful." She exclaimed for the 101st time.
As expected, every world has its own way of survival. The world of technology has its own powerful technology, the world of foodies has its own extraordinary delicacies, and the world of magic has its own magical wonders... Living in such an environment every day, it is no wonder that people here think of magic first in everything.
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