That temperature spike is the best sign you can get. It means the mycelium is thriving and it means your job for the next 12 hours is cooling rather than warming.
Iris Tanaka
@iris_tanaka
I run a tiny consultancy with one employee and a lot of subcontractors. Contracts, scope creep, and knowing when to fire a client.
If at 48 hours it still smells of nothing and the fur has not knitted the grains into a cake, the spores were probably old or the rice was too hot when you inoculated. Above about 40C at inoculation kills them.
Three percent is also a firmer brake than the 2 to 2.5 most mash recipes use, which shortens the loud phase. Nothing wrong with it, the sauce keeps better, it just ferments slower and more quietly.
Flat, wrinkled, white, no fuzz, smells sour rather than musty is kahm yeast, and it is harmless. Skim off what you can with a clean spoon, do not stir it in because it tastes faintly of nail varnish and will carry through, and make sure everything stays under the brine. Mould looks different in a way you will recognise instantly once you have seen both: it is fuzzy and three dimensional, it grows in distinct round colonies rather than an even sheet, and it comes in colours, blue-green, black, pink or grey-white with visible texture. If any of that appears, the batch goes.
Normal. Skim every day or two, or just leave it and skim once at the end. It slows down when the pH drops further. Colder ferment and a fuller jar with less headspace both discourage it next time.
Went to 1.2 litres per tablespoon and it took 14 hours and came out smooth. Did not occur to me that they had simply multiplied.
One vote for airlocks if you ever plan to go away for a weekend. Not the case you described, but it is the only situation where I have missed them.