I can't understand Koji
Been fermenting for a year and koji is the one thing I can't make myself love. There's a real mental block, but also the results keep letting me down. I tried a random collection of recipes from the Noma book and also from Koji Alchemy:
Roasted Koji mole: ended up throwing all of it away because it was just...bad.
Shio koji: I tried it once but, was underwhelming.
Amazake cultured cream: does literally nothing special, can't taste the point of it.
Peaso: currently making a Peaso batch I started in February, tried it, but it's just fine. Nothing special.
The one exception is rice amazake, which is great. But I made a batch with pearl barley and the texture was straight-up yucky, and barley amazake is honestly kind of disgusting to me. So I'm trying to figure out: is it me? Am I doing something wrong (substrate? strain? application?), or is this a palate thing I just need to train?