The distilleries themselves now sell imo shochu as a highball. Soda lifts the aroma off the glass instead of burying it.
Citrus acid cuts sweet potato's weight. That's why Kagoshima bars reach for grapefruit and yuzu before anything else. Bitter, bright and forgiving. Ruby or white both work; white is drier. The grapefruit sour is a real bar order in Japan, not a novelty.
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
Imo shochu from Komasa Jyozo in Kagoshima. Importer's tasting notes: light bodied, dry. The profile below is built from the tasting notes its importer publishes.
sweet potato
light-bodied
dry
aged
Sweet
3/5
Body
3/5
Aroma
4/5
Fruit
2/5
Floral
1/5
Grain
1/5
Earth
2/5
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
sweet potato
ABV
24%
Aging
aged more than three years in kame, clay pots
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.
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.
Daidai is the citrus in ponzu, and ponzu is already on the table next to imo shochu
The peel is doing what the orange twist on an old fashioned does
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.
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.
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.
Hot water is the Kagoshima serve and it earns its reputation: heat pulls the earth and the sweetness up out of the glass. Cold water does the opposite and lengthens it without changing its shape.
Oyuwari: hot water first, then shochu, six of shochu to four of water. Imo shochu opens up in warmth
Soft water, cold, over ice or not. One to one is normal. Mix a day ahead (maewari) and the edges round off.
Hot water is the Kagoshima serve and it earns its reputation: heat pulls the earth and the sweetness up out of the glass. Cold water does the opposite and lengthens it without changing its shape.
Maewari: mix imo shochu and water a day ahead and it rounds out
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 distilleries themselves now sell imo shochu as a highball. Soda lifts the aroma off the glass instead of burying it.
An aged bottle is the one you would not lengthen with a beer substitute
One part shochu to five parts Hoppy drinks like a pint with none of beer's body. A 25 percent bottle lands just under 5; the figure follows the bottle, so a 40 percent one is nearer 7
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
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.
Hyuganatsu is Miyazaki's citrus and imo shochu is what Miyazaki pours it beside; the soft acid does the same work on a sweet potato bottle from anywhere
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.
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.
Kagoshima bartenders pair imo shochu with mikan when it is in season
Sweet, low-acid Japanese mandarin. Juice it or drop segments in a glass. It needs a squeeze of something sharper alongside.
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.
Citrus acid cuts sweet potato's weight. That's why Kagoshima bars reach for grapefruit and yuzu before anything else.
Kagoshima bartenders reach for yuzu with imo shochu first
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.
Barrow's Intense, made in Brooklyn, or Domaine de Canton, which is the easier one to find. Ginger and sugar arrive together either way, and both work hot as well as cold. Being spirits themselves they add alcohol along with the volume, which a juice or a syrup does not.
Ginger and sweet potato is a winter kitchen pairing before it is a bar one
Warm spice against caramel, without the sugar a ginger beer brings
Small Hand Foods', or sugar, water and gum arabic from the baking aisle at home. Worth knowing that most Japanese gum syrup on a shelf today has no arabic gum in it at all.
A 25 percent spirit brings far less viscosity than a 40 percent one, so a shaken sour goes thin
The sweetener for a bottle you do not actually want to sweeten
Jack Rudy's Extra Bitter, made with real cinchona bark, or Small Hand Foods'. Half a teaspoon and soda, set to the bottle in front of you rather than to a tonic maker's idea of a spirit.
You set the quinine and the sugar separately, so a dry bottle can have the bitterness without the sweetness
Jack Rudy's Extra Bitter, made with real cinchona bark, or Small Hand Foods'. Half a teaspoon and soda, set to the bottle in front of you rather than to a tonic maker's idea of a spirit.
Oita's citrus, softer than sudachi. Bartenders in Oita mix it with the local barley shochu and soda.
Oita's citrus, softer than sudachi. Bartenders in Oita mix it with the local barley shochu and soda.
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.
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.
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 small green citrus from Tokushima, sharper and more herbal than lime. Sold frozen or as juice in Japanese markets.
A small green citrus from Tokushima, sharper and more herbal than lime. Sold frozen or as juice in Japanese markets.
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.
Braulio, made in Bormio from gentian, juniper, peppermint and yarrow, around forty-five dollars. A summer drink on shochu and a winter one on whisky, which is one bottle behaving two ways.
Braulio, made in Bormio from gentian, juniper, peppermint and yarrow, around forty-five dollars. A summer drink on shochu and a winter one on whisky, which is one bottle behaving two ways.
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.
Both have spent years going quietly brown, and they meet in the middle
Cynar, 16.5 percent, which is weaker than most shochu, so equal parts with a 25 percent bottle lands near 20 and the drink stays long. Soda or a grapefruit soda over the top is the producer's own serve.
Cynar, 16.5 percent, which is weaker than most shochu, so equal parts with a 25 percent bottle lands near 20 and the drink stays long. Soda or a grapefruit soda over the top is the producer's own serve.
The Japanese Bitters, five 100ml expressions, sold at Astor Wines in New York. Angostura at nearly 45 percent is a small spike in a 25 percent drink in a way these are not.
The Japanese Bitters, five 100ml expressions, sold at Astor Wines in New York. Angostura at nearly 45 percent is a small spike in a 25 percent drink in a way these are not.
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 yeasty haze gives back the body distillation took out
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.
Maraschino is what makes a stirred aged drink taste finished rather than flat
Cocchi Americano: moscato steeped with cinchona bark, gentian and bitter orange. The bark is the point of it, and it carries a quinine bitterness no citrus will give you.
Cocchi Americano: moscato steeped with cinchona bark, gentian and bitter orange. The bark is the point of it, and it carries a quinine bitterness no citrus will give you.
Carpano Antica or Cocchi. A quarter of the shochu's volume, stirred cold, makes a manhattan-style drink: on a 25 percent shochu that is about 23 before the ice gets to it, where a 40 percent rye starts nearer 35.
An aged bottle already has the caramel a manhattan wants; this brings the botanicals
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.
Salt is the fastest way to make an earthy bottle taste like more of itself.
The non-alcoholic koji drink, sweet from rice starch alone. Blend with the spirit and ice; it is a shochu smoothie.
Amazake softens imo shochu into a winter dessert
The non-alcoholic koji drink, sweet from rice starch alone. Blend with the spirit and ice; it is a shochu smoothie.
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.
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.
An earthy bottle has a savoury side already, and these meet it rather than trying to sweeten it away.
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.
Warm spice gives an earthy bottle a pulse without covering the earth itself.
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.
Warm spice gives an earthy bottle a pulse without covering the earth itself.
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 imo shochu oyuwari is a Kagoshima winter
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 cordial, sweet and alcohol-free, poured like a syrup. Muscat, lychee and honey in one flower. The liqueur has its own entry below: a different product rather than a stronger or weaker version of this one, and it brings alcohol along with the flower.
Only for the lychee-scented bottles. On a heavy, roasted imo the flowers simply disappear.
Unsweetened, four parts shochu to six parts soy milk, which is how the Japanese recipes write it. Stronger than it tastes, so pour it knowing that.
Unsweetened, four parts shochu to six parts soy milk, which is how the Japanese recipes write it. Stronger than it tastes, so pour it knowing that.
Ways to serve it
On the rocks
Mizuwari (with water)
Sweet potato shochu is the one people are told they have to drink with hot water. Hot water is genuinely good, and it is also the hardest first sip to sell. Start it long and cold with soda and a wedge of grapefruit, and come back to the hot water once you like the spirit.
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 Aka Kirishima Shochu, also a sweet potato shochu. We have this one as the less fruity of the two, which is what will move most in the glass.
Aka Kirishima is the lighter one, with red berry notes that suit a light, refreshing sparkling drink.
Written for Satsuma Kuradashi Genshu Shochu, also a sweet potato shochu. This bottle is lighter, 24% against 37%, so cut the mixer back or it will disappear.