Swap shochu into a gin recipe and you get lemonade. Here is what to change.

Most shochu sold in Japan is 25 percent. Most of the spirits a cocktail book is written for are 40 or more. Goto says it plainly in the same interview.

“The global standard for spirits is usually 40% or higher, so in America, shochu has a challenge to find its place.”

Pour 25 where the recipe expects 40 and the glass carries more than a third less alcohol. Everything else in the recipe was sized against the stronger spirit: the lime, the syrup, the vermouth. Take the strength out from under them and they are all that is left. In his words, you cannot tell whether the drink contains any alcohol at all.

The first fix costs nothing. Cut the citrus and the syrup back until the shochu leads again. Goto calls this finding the golden ratio, between the spirit, the sour in the lime and the sweet in the syrup.

He does not give a number for it. The bartender has to find it, drink by drink.

Not all shochu is 25. Undiluted shochu, genshu, runs from about 35 to 45 percent. JETRO's guide to shochu cocktails puts that strength into a classic martini or in place of gin and vodka, and puts barrel-aged shochu, at around 40, in place of whiskey in whiskey cocktails.

Every route on our substitution pages that needs real strength lists only bottles that publish theirs.

Keep the shochu for the flavour and let a small measure of something stronger carry the structure. Goto calls it a secret ingredient: a little spirit at around 40 percent, there to boost the shochu.

His Improved Shochu Cocktail, written for Punch, is 2 oz of barley shochu, 2 teaspoons of aged gin and 1½ teaspoons of cane syrup, stirred, served in a sake masu.

Two teaspoons. That is the whole fix.

Order matters as well. In a shaken drink with a split base, Goto shakes the gin, the lime and the syrup first, then adds the shochu.

“This will prevent the 25% ABV shochu from diluting in the shaker.”

He says it also makes the shochu more apparent to the guest.

I am a chef, not a mixologist. I do not start from two ounces of spirit and one ounce of something else. I taste the bottle and think, this would go with this. Then I move the ratios until the drink works.

The ratios on this site are written as a place to start for the same reason.

The strength is only a problem when the recipe was written for something stronger. In a long drink it is the point. JETRO files 25 to 30 percent shochu under low-proof drinks made with juice, tea or tonic, to go with food. Goto says the same about the strength itself.

“The low alcohol content is what makes it easy to pair with a meal.”

Every bottle page here starts a long drink at one part shochu to three or four parts mixer. If it tastes thin, go two to three next time.

Pick the drink you would have made with gin, rum or vodka. Read that spirit's page under Instead of before you pour, then taste it and move the ratios.