Oolong-hai and green tea highballs are izakaya staples, and barley is clean enough to let the tea lead.
The lemon sour is an izakaya staple. Bars usually build it on a neutral shochu, and a clean mugi does the same job with a little more grain behind it. Juice and peel are two different tools. Fresh juice, never bottled, is the whole basis of the lemon sour and the quickest way to put acid into a distilled base. The peel expressed over the top gives the oil and no acid at all, which is what a sweet or roasted bottle usually wants instead.
One part shochu to three or four parts of the long mixer, over plenty of ice, then the accent on top. If it tastes thin, go two to three next time.
What it tastes like
Mugi shochu from Ikinokura Shuzo in Nagasaki. Producer's tasting notes: rice, umami. The profile below is built from the tasting notes the producer publishes.
barley
rice
umami
Sweet
2/5
Body
1/5
Aroma
2/5
Fruit
1/5
Floral
not described
Grain
5/5
Earth
1/5
Umami
2/5
Read from the words above rather than measured. Where it says not described, none of the sources behind this page mention it, which is not the same as it not being there.
Base
rice and barley
Distillation
vacuum distillation
ABV
25%
What to mix with it
Tap a family to narrow it down. Every suggestion carries its reasoning, so if the reasoning does not convince you, ignore the suggestion.
A longer wedge is a family we'd reach for sooner with this bottle, worked out from its flavours rather than tasted. It isn't a score, or a comparison with other bottles.
Roasted buckwheat, in any Japanese grocery, hot or cold. In a soba restaurant the same serve is made with soba-yu, the starchy water the noodles were boiled in, which is thicker and cannot be bought.
Roasted buckwheat and roasted barley are one idea arrived at from two grains
The bottle carries the grain and the mixer carries it roasted, so it is one ingredient reaching the glass two ways.
Roasted buckwheat, in any Japanese grocery, hot or cold. In a soba restaurant the same serve is made with soba-yu, the starchy water the noodles were boiled in, which is thicker and cannot be bought.
Juice and peel are two different tools. Fresh juice, never bottled, is the whole basis of the lemon sour and the quickest way to put acid into a distilled base. The peel expressed over the top gives the oil and no acid at all, which is what a sweet or roasted bottle usually wants instead.
The lemon sour is an izakaya staple. Bars usually build it on a neutral shochu, and a clean mugi does the same job with a little more grain behind it.
The lemon sour is the drink most izakaya sell more of than anything else on the list
Rice sweetness wants acid, and lemon is the simplest acid there is
A small green citrus from Tokushima, sharper and more herbal than lime. Sold frozen or as juice in Japanese markets.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
Sharper and greener than the lemon a barley sour usually gets, which is what makes it worth the trip from Tokushima
Squeezed over rice, it is the flavor of a Japanese autumn table
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Soft water, cold, over ice or not. One to one is normal. Mix a day ahead (maewari) and the edges round off.
Mizuwari on a rice base is a dinner drink, not an aperitif
Six parts shochu to four parts water, the classic
Barley has less to open up than sweet potato, so water shows you exactly what is there. That is a fair test and not always a flattering one: a thin mugi has nowhere to hide in it.
Mikawa Mirin from Sumiya Bunjiro Shoten, made from glutinous rice, koji and shochu since 1911 with no added sugar. Not the sweetened seasoning sold as mirin-fu chomiryo, which is a different product.
It adds body and savour where a sugar syrup would only add sugar
The bottle already smells of rice, and this puts more of it in the glass.
A Miyazaki citrus eaten with the white pith left on, which is sweet rather than bitter. Gentler and more floral than lemon, so it flavours a drink without taking it over.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
Softer acid than lemon, so the rice sweetness stays in the glass
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Oita's citrus, softer than sudachi. Bartenders in Oita mix it with the local barley shochu and soda.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
Kabosu and barley shochu are both Oita's, and kabosu gets squeezed into drinks there; the gentler acid suits a mugi wherever it was distilled
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Sweet, low-acid Japanese mandarin. Juice it or drop segments in a glass. It needs a squeeze of something sharper alongside.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
Mikan juice over rice sweetness is gentle and familiar
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
The Japanese citrus that tastes like grapefruit, mandarin and lemon at once, with a floral peel. A little zest or juice goes a long way.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
The classic pair: rice sweetness under yuzu zest
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Lustau or González Byass. Fino is salt and living flor; this is what is left after the flor dies, and at 18 percent an ounce lengthens the glass rather than strengthening it.
Flor leaves a savoury edge behind it, and koji leaves the same one
The bottle carries the grain and the mixer carries it roasted, so it is one ingredient reaching the glass two ways.
Hot water in the glass first, spirit poured on top so it mixes itself. Around 40C in the glass is the sweet spot. This is not the only way, it is one way.
Mugi oyuwari in winter, with an umeboshi
Barley has less to open up than sweet potato, so water shows you exactly what is there. That is a fair test and not always a flattering one: a thin mugi has nowhere to hide in it.
Hoppy Beverage Co. has made it in Tokyo since 1948; at 0.8 percent it is legally a soft drink, and it is hard to find outside Japan. Chill the bottle, the shochu and the mug and no ice is needed.
The barley highball is one of the most common ways shochu gets drunk in Japan. Clean spirit, cold soda, nothing in the way.
Young sansho leaves, clapped between the palms and floated. Hard to find outside Japanese markets in spring, worth the hunt.
The classic spring garnish for rice dishes; it belongs on rice wine too
A clean barley spirit takes herbs the way vodka does, but with a cereal sweetness underneath that gives them something to sit on.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
The Korean-style yuzu preserve sold in jars. A spoon in hot water with shochu, or shaken cold.
Yuzu tea and barley shochu in hot water is a winter izakaya drink
Hot water, rice shochu, a spoon of yuzu tea
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Hana Makgeolli is brewed in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; Makku sells a canned one. Strength varies widely across the category, from around 6 percent in a can to the mid teens for an unfiltered takju, so read the label before deciding how much to pour.
The bottle already smells of rice, and this puts more of it in the glass.
Bitter orange: sour and aromatic rather than sweet, the citrus that goes into ponzu. Bottled juice is sold for cooking and works straight in a glass. Use the peel too, it carries most of the smell.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Okinawa's own citrus, picked green and sharp, more bitter than lime and more floral than sudachi. Squeezed over awamori and soda it is what the islands actually drink.
A clean mugi does under citrus what a neutral shochu does, with a little more grain left behind it.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Zuiyo's Kuririn, from Japanese chestnuts at 11 percent, or Dover's wa-shu kuri, which is on a rum base. A dessert direction, and not the same thing as kuri shochu, which is a base spirit.
The bottle carries the grain and the mixer carries it roasted, so it is one ingredient reaching the glass two ways.
Blandy's or Barbeito, ten year. It is the one fortified wine that brings real acid, so it can do the lemon's job on a bottle where fresh citrus reads harsh.
The bottle carries the grain and the mixer carries it roasted, so it is one ingredient reaching the glass two ways.
Luxardo. It is sweetened, whatever the name suggests: their own account of the process ends by adding a syrup of water and sugar to bring it to 32 percent. What makes it read as dry is the stone. The cherries sit in larch vats for up to three years, pits, leaves and all, before the lot is distilled and the heart rested in ash, and that almond bitterness arrives before the sugar does. So measure it as a sweetener that tastes bitter, not as a dry modifier, and a bar spoon changes a stirred drink completely.
The bottle carries the grain and the mixer carries it roasted, so it is one ingredient reaching the glass two ways.
Cold-pressed juice or thin slices. Green apple is already in the aroma of a lot of rice shochu, so this amplifies what is there rather than adding something new.
Barley's light sweetness reads as orchard fruit already, so apple and pear extend the bottle rather than decorate it.
St-Germain or similar: the flower with alcohol behind it, for stirred drinks. A half ounce is enough. For a long drink, the cordial above does the same flavour without the proof.
Shochu, elderflower liqueur, lemon: a sour that tastes like spring
Two slices from any Asian grocery, seeds out. It keeps getting more bitter the longer it sits, so taste as you go and pull the slices when it is where you want it.
A clean barley highball takes a garden note without losing its own grain under it.
Sakamoto's, fermented outdoors in earthenware jars in Fukuyama and aged at least a year; Toiro and Japanese Taste ship it in the US. A teaspoon in a mizuwari is the whole intervention, and a second one is usually a mistake.
A vinegar with savour under it rather than only sharpness, so beside a savoury bottle it reads as family instead of contrast
Sakamoto's, fermented outdoors in earthenware jars in Fukuyama and aged at least a year; Toiro and Japanese Taste ship it in the US. A teaspoon in a mizuwari is the whole intervention, and a second one is usually a mistake.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Torn leaves steeped briefly. Perfumed citrus without juice.
A clean barley spirit takes herbs the way vodka does, but with a cereal sweetness underneath that gives them something to sit on.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
A pinch of ground sansho over the top, or a few peppercorns steeped. Numbing, citrusy, green.
Sansho and rice is a Kyoto kitchen
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
The Kyushu condiment, in a tube in any Japanese grocer: fermented yuzu peel, green chili and salt. A quarter teaspoon stirred into an oyuwari, which is the serve Asahi publishes.
The salt in it raises the perceived sweetness of koji
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Eden Foods sells it as Ume Plum Vinegar in most US supermarkets, and it is one of the cheapest things on this list. A bar spoon, and unlike a crushed umeboshi it can go into a shaken drink.
Eden Foods sells it as Ume Plum Vinegar in most US supermarkets, and it is one of the cheapest things on this list. A bar spoon, and unlike a crushed umeboshi it can go into a shaken drink.
Ways to serve it
Mizuwari (with water)
On the rocks
Barley is the easiest shochu to hand to someone who has never had any. It behaves like a clean grain spirit with a little cereal sweetness, so a highball with lemon needs no explaining and no apology.
Cocktails other people made
We haven't found a cocktail written for this exact bottle. These were written for other bottles, so each one says which, and what changes if you pour this instead.
Written for Nikaido Kitchomu Barley Shochu, also a barley shochu. We have this one as the more savoury of the two, which is what will move most in the glass.
·nikaido kitchomu (mugi shochu) 40ml
·fuutan (imo shochu with kuro koji) 10ml
·lillet blanc (mixed with roasted rice and yuzu peel) 10ml
If a recipe calls for something else and this is what you have. The verdict is for this bottle rather than for its style, so a bottle without the strength a stirred drink needs is not offered for one.