Here's a wild idea for the "advanced" fermentor. Anyone of a more technical mind regarding brewing and enzymes please chime in...
While reading up on all-grain beer brewing I came across something that reminded me of my miso experiments. I've always had bad luck making koji, and would love to forgo both making koji or purchasing it due to it's high shipping cost. Koji is usually made from rice or barley that has been acted upon by a mold (koji-ken) culture. This mold culture produces both diastatic enzymes (predominantly amylase as found in malted barley) and proteolytic enzymes that eventually act on the proteins in the beans.
In reading about "protein rests" for brewing beer, I discovered that malted barley also contains at least two of the same proteolytic enzymes found in koji. So here's the brilliant (or possibly not so) idea: Skip the koji and use beer wort to break down the proteins in the legumes. I imagine I could "cook" the beans in a heavy wort at protein-rest temperatures for an extended period of time. This would not only simplify the process, but theoretically cause a rapid breakdown of the proteins in comparison to the months or years that miso has to sit around at room or cellar temperatures. After the mixture is cooked it can be salted, innoculated with wild yeasts and bacteria and crocked in the traditional manner, only requiring a period of time for flavors to develop.
The questions I now have are at what temperatures am I denaturing the proteolytic enzymes, and can I mash the barley at a low enough temperature to preserve said enzymes while getting a reasonable amount of starch/sugar extract for the wild yeasts to act on?