Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 51: I can no longer understand this world!

It is said that during the Kamakura period, the monk Hitoshi Kakushin went through untold hardships and with great determination traveled to China's Jingshan Temple, known as the "first of the Five Mountains and Ten Temples", to seek Mahayana Buddhism. It is unclear whether he obtained Buddhism or not, but he did learn the method of making miso, or fermented black bean sauce.

After he returned to Japan, he organized the monks and believers of his temple to start trial-making fermented black bean sauce, preparing for large-scale production in order to protect the Dharma. After the sauce was ready, he found that the "soy sauce" floating on it was salty and delicious, with a unique flavor and excellent taste. So soy sauce came into being in Japan - the nickname of soy sauce is soy sauce or soy sauce.

Of course, there are many other theories about the origin of Japanese soy sauce. For example, there is a story that Monk Juexin failed in his attempt to make black bean sauce and produced a jar of black water. He felt it was a pity to throw it away so he tasted it and thus discovered soy sauce. There is also a story that soy sauce was introduced to Japan by Monk Jianzhen in the Tang Dynasty and by immigrants in the Ming Dynasty.

It is difficult to tell what the real situation is now. After all, Japan had no tradition of recording historical materials before modern times. No one can say for sure what happened after so long, except for Koreans. Koreans firmly believe that soy sauce was invented by the great Korean inventor King Sejong, and then introduced to China and Japan.

Anyway, they have been saying this online, so it should be put up for World Heritage status soon.

As for the ancient soy sauce brewing process...

The basic ingredients are beans, wheat and salt. The plant protein of beans is responsible for converting into amino acids to provide umami flavor, the starch of buckwheat or wheat is responsible for converting into glucose to provide sweetness, and the salt is responsible for providing saltiness and fighting against bacteria, so that the brewing process can be completed smoothly.

Once the raw materials are ready, we can move on to the koji making process. The first step is to clean and steam the soybeans. If the soybeans do not have enough water, the koji fungus cannot multiply, but if there is too much water, it will seriously affect the quality of the finished product. Therefore, we must always pay attention to the steaming process and generally ensure that the moisture content of the soybeans is around 47%.

After the soybeans are steamed, the wheat is stir-fried and mixed in, and then the koji is added. Koji will multiply rapidly at high temperatures, and it needs a lot of oxygen during the proliferation process, so it needs to be stirred constantly, which is a hard job.

Once the koji fungus has finished multiplying, its hyphae begin to develop and start to decompose beans and wheat.

This process generally takes three days. During the whole process, the koji fungus will release a lot of heat. It is necessary to observe at all times and intervene manually in time to keep the temperature below 40 degrees. Otherwise, what you will get in the future is not soy sauce, but smelly natto. Above 40 degrees, natto bacteria and other bacteria will be more active, but it cannot be lower than 24 degrees, otherwise the koji fungus will stop developing or simply die.

After this process is completed, "koji" is obtained. At this time, you can add salt water to it, which is determined by the saltiness required in the future. The amount is usually 1.2 times of the "koji" - if this step is changed to adding salt grains, the finished product will be miso in the future.

After adding the brine, the "salt water koji" can be put into wooden barrels or clay jars for maturation, which takes at least a year. However, this year does not mean that you just leave it alone. Instead, you need to constantly check and stir it, and inject air to ensure the survival of the microorganisms.

The main daily work of ancient brewers is actually "How can I ensure that the microorganisms are alive and happy?" There are many little tricks involved, such as whether to use wooden barrels or clay jars, how often to stir in the summer, whether to wrap it with straw in the winter, whether to stir it more on rainy days, whether to lower the temperature when the weather is too hot, etc., which are usually the so-called "family secrets."

After a year, when the microorganisms have finished their work, the contents of the jar can be poured out, wrapped in cloth, and then squeezed. What comes out is raw soy sauce with various microorganisms. The raw soy sauce is then heated and boiled to kill the microorganisms, and the final product is obtained - soy sauce.

Aman may not be clear about the specific brewing process of soy sauce. After all, her profession is a "primitive ninja", not a Tibetan craftsman, but she still knows a little about the general process. She knows that this is hard work. Not only does it take a whole year, but it also requires a lot of "family secret skills" that are passed down to sons but not daughters. She thinks it is really unrealistic for Yuanye to want to make this money.

But Yuanye was too stubborn, and there was no way she could do anything if he insisted on having sex with her. She had already prepared a lot of words and was ready to nag him about how he was a spendthrift and how he wasted money all day long. But she didn't expect Yuanye to not follow the routine at all, leaving her speechless and almost having a cerebral infarction on the spot - she had no idea what Yuanye was doing, it was completely different from the soy sauce brewing process she had seen before.

Yuanye first directed everyone to throw bean cakes, buckwheat husks, and rice husks into several large vats and add a large amount of water. Then he poured a small amount of pungent liquid and directed the Taojing brothers to stir constantly while wearing masks. After mixing well, they lifted the vats directly onto the built earthen stove and burned them over a low fire.

During this time, everyone took turns watching the fire to keep the temperature. After boiling for a day and a night, about twelve hours, he ordered the Taojing brothers to lift all the jars down. When they returned to normal temperature, he slowly poured a strange powder into it, and while pouring, he poked small paper sticks in and took them out and put them in another liquid until the color of the small paper sticks stopped changing.

Then he announced that the work was done, covered the vats and transported them to the backyard for storage. Then he became absent-minded and muttered something incomprehensible, such as "dilute hydrochloric acid should be able to be recovered through water vapor condensation", "the degree of corrosion in the vats is better than expected", "using earth alkali to directly balance the pH should also work", "it shouldn't kill people", etc. He then went back to his room, which was strictly forbidden to others, and began to plan the production equipment drawings - this time it was a trial production, and if he really wanted to put it into large-scale production, he would also need to design special equipment, such as ceramic tubes, labor-saving stirring tools, and so on.

Aman watched him leave, then looked at the tank that was left in the backyard and no one was taking care of it, scratching his head.

What is going on? Is this really brewing soy sauce?

I don't understand. I don't understand the raw materials. It would be fine if it was just bean cake, but why do they add so many buckwheat husks and rice husks?

Can people really eat it if it’s made like this?
Isn't this right?

She really couldn't figure it out, so she went to find Yuanye again, but Yuanye was very busy and didn't have time to pay attention to her. He just asked her to watch the jars and call him if she had any questions. It was not until the sixth day that Yuanye opened the lid and looked inside. After thinking about it, he called everyone over, wrapped the contents in cloth, squeezed them, and boiled them. He got half a jar of brown-black liquid, and then added half a jar of light salt water to fill up the jar again.

Aman held the jar and looked at it for a while, then smelled it, dipped his hand in it and tasted it, and fell into deep thought for a moment - Damn, it really seems to be soy sauce, salty, slightly sweet, and very fresh.

What is going on?
Her worldview was in turmoil. Was the world always working this way? Soy sauce didn't need a year to be brewed, and it didn't even require beans or wheat. It could be brewed with livestock feed? She hadn't noticed anything for so many years.
For a moment, she felt that she had wasted her best ten years of life. Her mind was completely confused and she couldn't figure it out. It felt like a magic trick, too beyond common sense. Yuanye saw her stunned, hesitated for a moment and dipped his hand in to taste it - his major was chemical machinery, and this process was invented by the Japanese. After the war, the Japanese were short of food and could not use soybeans to make soy sauce, so they came up with the dilute hydrochloric acid hydrolysis method to make soy sauce with soybean meal, wheat bran and rice bran.

The principle is very simple. Soy sauce needs to convert protein into various amino acids and starch into glucose. The ancient brewing method uses various microorganisms to slowly decompose and convert. It takes a very long time and the conversion rate is not very high. Modern Japanese directly use dilute hydrochloric acid to replace various microorganisms to quickly complete the hydrolysis and conversion. Not only does the efficiency increase greatly, but the raw materials that microorganisms did not like before can also be used, which can greatly save food rations.

Many modern soy sauce manufacturers still use this method, or make a compromise, half brewing and half hydrolysis. After all, brewing soy sauce using the traditional method takes too much time, and it is at a disadvantage in the market competition and it is very easy to be defeated. If you don’t believe it, you can look at the soy sauce bottles. Some of the ingredient lists contain auxiliary ingredients such as dilute hydrochloric acid - these are honest people, and some don’t even write it down even if they use it.

Of course, China uses the "low-salt solid-state process" introduced from the Soviet Union to produce soy sauce. A batch can be produced in 5 days, and the efficiency is increased by 7200% compared with the traditional brewing method. However, the equipment required for that process is too advanced and the factory site is too large, so Yuanye couldn't handle it. In the end, he still felt that the dilute hydrochloric acid hydrolysis method was the most reliable.

It is a bit slow, taking seven or eight days, which is much worse than shipping in five days. The efficiency is greatly reduced, but this process is most suitable for a time traveler like him who can do it by hand.

As for how dilute hydrochloric acid is produced, Japan is not short of sulfur. So with the presence of minerals such as sulfur and salt, how can sulfuric acid be synthesized using traditional methods? And how can hydrochloric acid be synthesized using sulfuric acid? And how can it be diluted? All of these can be learned by looking through high school chemistry textbooks. Anyone who has been to high school can do it.

The same goes for sodium carbonate, which is used to clean up the residual dilute hydrochloric acid and balance the pH. If you can find local alkali in your life, you can learn how to synthesize sodium carbonate by traditional methods by flipping through high school textbooks.

Other situations are similar. If there is a shortage of test tubes, reagents, etc., just think of some folk remedies. It will not be a problem for Yuanye.

There was just one problem. The chemical reagents synthesized using these traditional methods were not pure enough, and the chemical residues after production would definitely exceed the standard. Yuanye hesitated after dipping his hand in the soy sauce and didn't dare to put it in his mouth for a while - he didn't try it with chicken or donkey first, thinking it wouldn't kill people, right?
He had only read old papers on related production processes in the library when he was in school, and this was his first time to put it into practice. After the production, he felt very weak and a little unconfident, but then he thought that the Japanese in the 1950s and 1960s were not necessarily very particular. They didn't die from eating it, so there was no reason why he would die from it. What's more, he is now eating salt with excessive heavy metal content, so it shouldn't be a problem if he eats some soy sauce with excessive chemical residues.

Thinking of this, he also became a test subject, licked his fingers, and slowly tasted the flavor.

Hmm...it is indeed the taste of soy sauce. It tastes okay and there is no weird smell at all!

He turned to the "informed local" and asked her opinion: "Do you think there is something wrong?"

Ah Man looked confused: "It seems... there is nothing wrong, it's just that the color is a little too bright red. The soy sauces I've seen before seem to be darker in color and look dirty."

In fact, the biggest mistake is that there is nothing wrong. It took only seven or eight days to complete the work that would take a Tibetan craftsman a year, and it was done with some garbage. It still smells good. This is too wrong!

Is this reasonable? This is unreasonable!

She still hasn't figured out what is going on. She feels that the world is absurd and distorted, and common sense has been polluted by Yuanye, the Cthulhu. Yuanye thought about it, and looked at the color of the soy sauce. He determined that something went wrong during the two heating processes, and it was suspected that it was not carbonized enough, but this can be compensated.

He went to get a small jar, scooped two spoonfuls into the jar, stirred it, and asked Ah Man: "What about now? Is the color right now? If not, add two more spoonfuls!"

A-man watched this scene and saw the color of the soy sauce turn into bright brown. His little head was buzzing - it had been buzzing before, and now it was buzzing even more because he didn't understand.

What? Can the color of soy sauce be adjusted? I've never heard of this before!

Could it be that I, as the second wisest person in Koga's life-saving style, had lived in vain? Could it be that I was an ignorant person?

Her worldview was finally completely messed up and was completely polluted by Cthulhu Yuanye. She could no longer understand this world!
(End of this chapter)